When the famous mystery writer went missing for three weeks in 1926, her husband became a suspect in her disappearance.
Agatha Christie
CASE DETAILS
On the morning of December 4, 1926, in Newlands Corner, England, Agatha Christie’s car was found abandoned, about an hour’s drive from her home. It appeared she had vanished into thin air. Some suspected the worst; that her husband Archie had done her in. The story caused a sensation. How could one of the best known women in England simply disappear?
She was born Agatha Miller in 1890 and raised in the wealthy upper middle class of English society. When Agatha was 24, she married Colonel Archibald Christie, a handsome pilot in the Royal Flying Corps. Though many opposed the marriage, Agatha and Archie married on Christmas Day of 1914. Archie was immediately sent off to war.
While Archie was fighting in France, Agatha launched her writing career, creating the famous Belgian detective, H. Hercule Poirot. Each book Christie wrote had slightly better success than the one before. Until her fifth one, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It was her first big hit.
Archibald Christie wanted a divorce
In 1926, twelve years into their marriage, Agatha, Archie, and their young daughter Rosalind, moved into a mansion. They called it Styles, after Agatha’s first novel. Archie was now a successful investment banker.
Later, in 1926, Agatha’s mother, Clara, died. Agatha fell apart. She took Rosalind to the home where she had grown up to sort through her mother’s things. Though the move was temporary, it dragged on and on and Archie stayed away. Meanwhile, Agatha fell into a deeper depression. When Archie did finally come to visit, he brought bad news. Archie had become involved with a woman named Nancy Neal, and he wanted a divorce.
Agatha’s car was found abandoned
In a last ditch effort to save her marriage, Agatha took Rosalind and moved back home. Then, on December 3, 1926, Archie took off alone, saying he was going to a weekend house party, most likely a rendezvous with his mistress.
According to different reports, either around 9:30 or 11 o’clock that night, Agatha left the house, visibly upset. The maids were alarmed when they saw her leave with a small travel bag and fur coat. Agatha left a note to her secretary and asked that all her weekend appointments be canceled. Another note, of unknown content, was addressed to Archie.
The next morning, Agatha’s abandoned car was found just an hour’s drive from Styles. It had simply gone off the side of the road.
Teams of people searched for her body
Archie Christie was tracked down at Archie’s house party. He had the unfortunate timing to meet with authorities just as they were beginning to suspect foul play. The search for Agatha had begun. A nearby pool called Silent Pool, which Agatha had used in one of her previous stories, was dragged at least twice. And ordinary citizens joined the army in a ground search of the surrounding areas. Quickly, the press spun Christie’s disappearance into a tail of murder, suicide, and infidelity.
Gradually, eyewitnesses came forward to describe encounters they had with Agatha before she disappeared. The first was Earnest Cross, who was walking to work on the morning of Agatha’s disappearance. Cross said Agatha seemed upset. She wore only a thin dress, despite the cold weather. According to Cross, Agatha drove off into the opposite direction from Newlands Corner, the village where her car would later be found. Two railroad porters also spoke with Agatha outside the station and thought that she had boarded a train.
Agatha was found 200 miles away at a spa
Eleven days after Agatha Christie had been reported missing, she was seen at an elegant spa, 200 miles from her home. She was registered under the last name Neal, the same name as Archie’s mistress. The chief inspector wasted no time bringing Archie up to the spa.
For reasons known only to herself, Agatha at first identified Archie as her brother, not her husband. Soon after they were reunited, Archie and Agatha quickly left. They would never make a comment about Agatha’s mysterious disappearance. The press concluded that Agatha had suffered from amnesia. But experts, like author Gillian Gill, have their theory:
“I believe that Christie had a definitive and terrible fight with her husband. It drove her over the edge. She had been depressed, now she becomes on some level psychotic. She is not herself. She takes on another identity. She wanders off. She gets on the train. She takes another name. She goes into this hotel and she lives another life. That’s very, very, very rare, but it’s known. It’s documented in the annals of psychology. And we know that Agatha Christie was an unusual woman.”
Others, like Author Gwen Robyns, think it was a publicity stunt:
“I think she plotted and planned it from the start. She would use the media to push the only thing she knew, which was revenge, mystery, and the possibility of murder. She checked in to this hotel under the name Neal, her husband’s girlfriend’s name. I think it’s just madly funny. I think she took endless delight in the fact that the police shadowed Archie. He couldn’t go anywhere because they suspected him of murdering her. And I think she took marvelous delight in reading this in the papers. Again, I think in a sort of revenge and twisted up sort of way, she was thinking it was very funny.”
After that, Agatha and Archie soon went their separate ways. Agatha married archaeologist Max Mallowan in 1930, two years after Archie had wed Nancy Neal. By all accounts, both couples had long, happy marriages.
Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season seven with Robert Stack and in season eight with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.
Emma
She just wanted to be a character of her own story for a day
Anonymous
Tiger woods also went missing for a week. In an interview he explained how the loss of a parent and a divorce made him want to go in hiding. That is good incite on how a celebrity with no privacy goes through that. Agatha Christie was a special one of a kind person. But she also was human. She tried her car. The starters back then had to be cranked from the front. She gave up out of frustration and just took the train. But she was very determined to get away from it all. She just needed to be left alone. She took a week off.
Angel
She’s was such a brilliant writer that she used her own ideas for her benefit
Aaron B
With cases if they have an ex, husband/wife, or any close people like that it is most likely that person
Anonymous
Okay here’s a few ideas:
Hypothesis 1: Agatha couldn’t handle the guilt and pain of her husband being with another mistress so she tried to leave and see if he would still look for her when she left him, so she put herself under the name of “Neal” to appeal to Archie as if she was the woman he had the affair with.
Hypothesis 2: Agatha did have amnesia and just went off of the last bit of memory she had to fit the reality she wanted: to be loved by Archie. But with the amnesia she couldn’t grasp that she wanted to be loved by Archie romantically, so she just thought of the first thing, which would mean she would try to become the woman she originally knew Archie indeed cared for, but instead as a sibling.
Hypothesis 3: Agatha was doing it for revenge. Perhaps Agatha wanted to take out what she had on Archie as described in the passage: “I think she plotted and planned it from the start. She would use the media to push the only thing she knew, which was revenge, mystery, and the possibility of murder. She checked in to this hotel under the name Neal, her husband’s girlfriend’s name. I think it’s just madly funny. I think she took endless delight in the fact that the police shadowed Archie. He couldn’t go anywhere because they suspected him of murdering her. And I think she took marvelous delight in reading this in the papers. Again, I think in a sort of revenge and twisted up sort of way, she was thinking it was very funny.”
Going off of that, maybe she had multiple alternatives as well, because something like that might not go exactly planned. So she might have tried to frame Archie and have him in jail as revenge and cover herself up as Neal to seem like the mistress or like the mistress Archie had an affair with. But in case that didn’t work, she worked out the plan of amnesia to cover up anything she might have planned.
Hypothesis 4: Nancy Neal had a part in it. Maybe Nancy knew that Agatha had some sort of amnesia related problem, so out of jealousy she told Agatha her new name and described who Archie supposedly was to Agatha. Making her think Archie was his brother, and if anyone asked, Agatha would show her signs of amnesia and no one would suspect that she was told those lies.
Hypothesis 5: She just wanted to feel like she was in one of her novels she wrote and feel like a part of the murder mystery herself to better her writing.
Tara
This is interesting! She definitely irked planned this. I think she was living in her own teal life mystery novel.
Mary
A combination of the two theories seems likely. She was certainly capable of fomenting a plan to punish her husband while at the same time fleeing her reality under emotional duress. The most important mystery I never hear addressed is how did this all of this affect her child, Rosalind?…
Clintonsix
All information about News is an interesting thing.