Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days

by Jared Cade

  The publicity from the film led to increased interest in Agatha’s private life and Rosalind was inundated with offers to write a first-hand account of her own life as Agatha’s daughter. Every single one was turned down. Contrary to Rosalind’s fears, the film did not damage Agatha’s literary reputation or discourage film and television producers from taking an interest in her mother’s work.

  Throughout the 1980s faithful film and television adaptations of Agatha’s stories became the norm under Rosalind’s vigilant eye. She was helped by literary agent Edmund Cork’s successor Brian Stone, who was also related to her husband Anthony Hicks. She was determined to prevent her mother’s books from being trivialized or turned into travesties like the series of four Miss Marple films starring Margaret Rutherford that had appeared in the 1960s. Hardened film and television producers were unnerved by Rosalind because she demanded script approval and got it.

  Anthony Martin, one of Brian Stone’s closest friends, was a brilliant source of information for this book. ‘Rosalind is a gorgon,’ Anthony Martin told me. ‘Producers are frightened of her. Normally authors are frightened of producers.’

  When Rosalind disliked any alterations producers made to her mother’s original stories, even minors ones, she strongly objected. Her uncompromising stance led to quality dramas being broadcast which drew huge television audiences.

  When BBC television made an offer to film the Hercule Poirot books, Rosalind turned it down because in her opinion the financial remuneration was not sufficient. The BBC rebounded with an offer to film all twelve Miss Marple novels. The role of the elderly spinster sleuth only went to the accomplished actress Joan Hickson after Rosalind had given her consent in the matter. Towards the end of the 1980s she also gave her blessing for the distinguished actor David Suchet to play the title role in the London Weekend Television series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot.

  In 1988, Brian Stone urged Agatha Christie Ltd to hire Anthony Martin to organize the forthcoming centenary events scheduled for 1990. Anthony Martin has stated he found Rosalind and her son Mathew ridiculously conservative and old-fashioned when it came to public relations. At Agatha Christie Ltd there were numerous arguments across the boardroom table between mother and son; Rosalind’s foremost concern was to protect her mother’s writing legacy, while Mathew was focused on how best to financially exploit interest in his grandmother’s work.

  ‘Rosalind and Mathew had their own ideas on how I ought to go about running the centenary,’ Anthony Martin told me. ‘Meetings could be very tense when they were in disagreement. When in doubt I followed Brian Stone’s advice since he was used to dealing with them. Part of my brief was to discourage interest in the disappearance. The family didn’t want it mentioned. Agatha’s marriage to Max wasn’t as happy as people think because he was having an affair with one of his archaeological assistants, a woman called Barbara Parker. As a publicist hired by the Christie estate, it was my job to keep it quiet.’

  In 1990 the publicity alone from the centenary celebrations of Agatha’s birth generated an extra £2.3 million for the Christie coffers. The week-long celebrations, which included an unveiling by Rosalind of a statue of her mother, climaxed on 15 September with the Orient Express running from London to Agatha’s home town of Torquay. On board were Rosalind and her husband Anthony, Judith and Graham Gardner, as well as the actor David Suchet, who was in full Hercule Poirot costume. Waiting to meet him at Torquay Station was the actress Joan Hickson, who was attired as Miss Marple. The police predicted that a hundred or so people might turn out to witness this historic meeting of Agatha’s two most famous sleuths, something she never permitted in her fiction, but David Suchet and Joan Hickson were mobbed by almost three thousands fans. The English Riviera Centre hosted a lavish celebratory dinner that night attended by over 400 guests, including the Hickses, the Gardners and the stars of the Miss Marple and Poirot series. Each table was named after a title of one of Agatha’s books and afterwards there was a fireworks display for guests to enjoy.

  It was Rosalind’s wish that nothing else should be written about the disappearance, but the publicity from the centenary celebrations ought to have forewarned her that interest in Agatha was stronger than ever. Given that Rosalind was such a staunch defender of her mother’s literary reputation and private life, some wondered if there was a falling out between her and Judith and Graham Gardner in 1998 following the publication of the first edition of my own biography, Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days.

  However, Rosalind and Judith no more fell out over the fiasco of the disappearance than their mothers. Both daughters had been through too much together over the years to wage war over their parents’ troubled past. As young children Rosalind and Judith had played together often at Ashfield and Abney Hall, and much later at Styles, where they had tumbled out of the wardrobe, aged seven and ten, respectively, just before the disappearance. The two girls were practically raised together because of their mothers’ close friendship and had shared numerous Christmases, birthdays and other family events. A special affinity had developed between Rosalind and Judith arising from the fall-out of the disappearance, the hardship of their parents’ divorces, being abandoned by their fathers and raised by their mothers. As women they had shared good and bad times, which had strengthened the bond between them. Judith had lost out in love to her Austrian fiancée and Rosalind’s first husband had been killed in enemy action, yet both women had survived the Second World War and their friendship was stronger for it. Rosalind’s Aunt Madge had married Judith’s Uncle Jimmy and there were always Wattses and Christies at Abney Hall and Greenway. Agatha and Rosalind had moved to London after the disappearance to be closer to Nan and Judith, and Nan and Judith had settled permanently in Devon after the Second World War to be closer to Agatha and her family. Rosalind and Judith were part of the fabric of each other’s lives: when they were not seeing each other, they were inevitably hearing about each other’s activities from family and friends.

  When Rosalind heard that a film was being made about her mother’s disappearance the first person she turned to for help in her ill-fated legal bid to block the release of Agatha was her old childhood friend Judith. The Gardners hated the film as much as Rosalind when they saw it and have never had a kind word to say about it. Rosalind also relied on Judith’s support when it came to organizing her mother’s centenary, and the two women, along with their husbands, Anthony and Graham, contributed generously to the Torquay Museum’s exhibition on Agatha’s life.

  Judith and Graham have stated they would never have dreamed of disclosing the truth about the disappearance at this time since the centenary was a celebration of Agatha’s life and literary legacy. It became clear to them afterwards that there would always be speculation about the disappearance unless they spoke out about it. When the Gardners met me in 1997 they decided it was time for the truth to be told, especially as Judith’s mother Nan had been directly involved. I was the first writer they had met who had read all of Agatha’s books; they were astonished by the fact I already knew so much about her life and had visited Abney Hall.

  Following the publication of Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days, Agatha Christie Ltd’s publicity machine went in to damage control mode in order to assuage Rosalind’s and Mathew’s fury over the embarrassing disclosures contained in the book. This took the form of an exhibition called Agatha Christie and Archaeology: Mystery in Mesopotamia, which ran from 8 November 2001 to 24 March 2002 at the British Museum in London. While the exhibition provided the public with an evocative insight into Agatha’s and Max’s life in the Middle East, the real purpose behind it was to promote the view that the Mallowans’ marriage had been a happy one.

  Two books were published in 2001 to coincide with the exhibition, Agatha Christie and Archaeology, edited by Charlotte Trümpler, and Henrietta McCall’s The Life and Times of Max Mallowan: Archaeology and Agatha Christie. The former featured articles written by various archaeological experts that i
lluminated Max’s work and the experiences that had influenced several of Agatha’s books. There was a chapter by Janet Morgan affirming the family’s official stance of amnesia where the disappearance was concerned and the view that Agatha’s marriage to Max had been blissful happy. Henrietta McCall’s biography, the first to be published about the archaeologist, some twenty-three years after Max’s death, summed up Agatha’s disappearance in a single word, ‘inexplicable’, and also adhered to the view of a happy second marriage. Both books met Rosalind’s approval, and she allowed precious photographs from the Christie family’s archives to be published in them.

  Rosalind also gave Wall to Wall productions permission to dramatize her mother’s autobiography. Agatha Christie: A Life in Pictures was televised in 2004 and claimed to be ‘based on the actual words of Agatha Christie’. However, this was only partly true: although Agatha’s autobiography makes no reference to the disappearance, the script included imaginary scenes between her and a psychiatrist depicting her trying to regain her memory. The film avoided any suggestion that she might have tried to kill herself on the night of the disappearance and instead took the more seemly view that she had a car accident, yet rather oddly quoted part of Agatha’s 1928 interview to the Daily Mail in which she claimed she tried to commit suicide. The producers inserted a disclaimer at the end of the film stating the identity of the alleged psychiatrist ‘remains unknown’. Agatha was also shown at the tenth anniversary celebrations of The Mousetrap giving a series of highly personal and in-depth interviews to journalists; these interviews never took place in real life. Rosalind was unhappy with the production, which she felt gave too much coverage to the breakdown of her parents’ marriage and the disappearance.

  As part of Agatha Christie Ltd’s ongoing damage control programme against Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days, Rosalind decided to commission yet another biography about her mother. Mathew Prichard is alleged to have suggested that the best way of covering up the truth was to release contradictory accounts of the disappearance, which would result in the public becoming confused and uninterested. Rosalind was adamant the official amnesia story should still stand. By now, she was complacent in her belief that any writer receiving the support of her family would be malleable to her censorship and influence.

  Shortly after Laura Thompson was hired for the job Rosalind died in October 2004 and her husband Anthony passed away in April of the following year. It was always her wish that the amnesia explanation should stand as the official verdict on her mother’s disappearance and that Agatha’s second marriage should be seen to have been perfect, even though she knew this had not been the case.

  On 13 November 2004, in a lengthy obituary that appeared two weeks after Rosalind’s death, the Daily Telegraph said she had been furious at the publication of Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days and that, at the annual meeting of the Agatha Christie Society in 1998, her son Mathew Prichard had launched a ‘virulent attack’ on the book, advising members of the society not to buy it.

  Laura Thompson subsequently stated in her 2007 biography, Agatha Christie: An English Mystery, that Rosalind had viewed Judith Gardner’s official endorsement of Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days as some kind of ‘personal vendetta’, but this claim is not supported by the facts.

  Until their deaths Rosalind and her husband Anthony remained friends with Judith and Graham. The Gardners continued to lunch regularly at Greenway with Rosalind and Anthony. The couple also visited the Gardners at their home. The last Christmas card Judith and Graham received from Rosalind a year before her death, dated 1 December 2003, is a friendly and chatty missive in which she said how pleased she was to get their letter for her birthday with all their news. Rosalind recalled a voyage she made at the age of eighteen when she accompanied her friend Susan North’s family to South Africa. She added that, despite a good summer, the last week had been nothing but rain and the National Trust still hadn’t done much in the grounds of Greenway. The greenhouses were all covered over and little had been done to the pools, but perhaps it was just as well because when the National Trust did something they were ‘fairly ruthless’. Rosalind went on to say that she and Anthony were happy living at Greenway. They were well looked after and it was a beautiful place. She admitted they were both pretty feeble and she got about the garden in a golf buggy. Anthony walked a bit, but they no longer went out to see people. ‘We are proper recluses,’ Rosalind said, although people did come to visit them from time to time. Her Christmas card was signed ‘love from Rosalind and Anthony’.

  When Laura Thompson’s biography was published her version of the disappearance flatly contradicted that of Janet Morgan’s, although they had both been given access to the Christie family papers. Contrary to Janet Morgan’s claim that Agatha took a train from Guildford Railway Station to London, Laura Thompson states that on the morning of Saturday 4 December Agatha abandoned her car and instead walked to Chilworth Railway Station where she took the ‘seven-thirty’ train up to London, which, according to Laura Thompson, ‘reached Waterloo at nine o’clock’. Railway records show that no trains destined for Waterloo left Chilworth Station at that time.

  Contrary to Janet Morgan, Laura Thompson insists Agatha did not have amnesia. ‘It is understandable, laudable indeed, that Rosalind should have clung for so long, and so obstinately, to the “official” theory . . . But the official theory has never held water.’ Laura Thompson suggests Agatha ‘absconded in the belief that giving Archie a weekend of agony, making him fear that she was dead, awakening his buried feelings, might restore him to her’.

  Laura Thompson’s description of the landscape contradicts her own version of events. ‘Newlands Corner on a December night is a fearful place. To stand there alone, in the silence, under the black winter skies, and look out over the vast empty slopes, is a terrifying thing to do. No woman, especially a woman of imagination, could do such a thing out of malice, or revenge, or any such petty motive.’

  What Laura Thompson’s explanation does not take into account is that numerous individuals searched for Agatha throughout the period she was missing until it became too dark to continue without the use of lanterns. The landscape failed to have a terrifying effect on them, and they all returned safely to civilization. Moreover, malice and revenge are powerful motives that have destroyed lives, and it is absurd to allude to them as petty.

  In the chapter entitled ‘The Quarry’, Laura Thompson’s 30-page fictionalized account of the disappearance begins with the words ‘Time now for a new story.’ According to Laura Thompson, Agatha ‘wrote a letter to Carlo, then a letter to Archie. As she did so the black windows seemed to watch her. Perhaps Archie was outside one of them. It was the long narrow one beside the front door that she had always feared. It had a sly, malevolent look, like a goat’s eyes.’ No one, including the police, was ever able to verify in what order Agatha wrote her three letters, which were addressed to her brother-in-law Campbell Christie, her husband Archie and her secretary Charlotte. Laura Thompson’s description of Agatha’s departure from Styles is even more lurid.

  Laura Thompson describes the centre of the house as ‘silent’ while beyond are the ‘discreet sounds of the servants and the soft breaths of Peter’. The stairs are ‘striped with shadow’ as Agatha climbs them to her bedroom, which is ‘chilly and flooded with moonlight’. She collects her dressing-case from the bed, dons a fur coat and a hat, then slips into Rosalind’s room and watches her daughter sleeping. The child’s face reminds her of Archie. Rosalind’s favourite teddy is falling out of bed. Agatha tucks it in again before going back downstairs. Peter wags his tail. She loves him, but she cannot stay. The house is ‘sending her out into the blackness’. She tells the maid, ‘whose white face has appeared in the hall’, that she is going to London. She kisses Peter, who ‘looks baffled’ because she is leaving without him. His body is warm as she hugs him, so tightly that he gives ‘a brief whine’. Then she goes outside to her car, ‘feet crunching’
as she pushes her way through the night, ‘moving fast now to escape the terror’.

  No one – apart from Laura Thompson who has taken facts and twisted them into romanticized fiction like the film Agatha – can say where Agatha donned her coat and hat. We only have the biographer’s word that the stairs were striped in shadows and moonlight flooded Agatha’s bedroom. If there was a full moon, how was the house sending Agatha out into the ‘blackness’?

  For the sky to have been totally black and starless it would have to have been covered in heavy rain clouds. It strains credibility that Laura Thompson should know that the expression on Peter’s face was puzzled or that he whined. Nor does Laura Thompson identify the precise nature of the ‘terror’ that allegedly prompted Agatha to move faster through the night.

  After Agatha has driven away from Styles and is passing through Surrey, Laura Thompson states ‘the black sky dipped upon her’. What had become of the moonlight? A short while later readers are told that she got out of the car and, above her, the sky was ‘a pure vast starless black . . . She found a rutted path. It led to a quarry, a round bowl of chalk, white and faceless beneath the moon . . . By lifting her left wrist to the sky she could see that it was ten past two’.

  In this fictionalized version of events the moon disappears and reappears more often than Agatha. So what were the weather conditions really like at Sunningdale and Newlands Corner on the night of Friday 3 December 1926? Records held at the British National Meteorology Library and Archive disclose ‘a quarter of the sky had been covered in cloud at 6 p.m.’ and by midnight ‘the sky had completely cleared of cloud cover’. According to the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, ‘the moon would only have been visible as a very slim arc’ during the day of Friday 3rd and would have set before the sun, so in effect there was no moon in the sky over the south of England that night because it was on the other side of the world.