The disappearance of Agatha Christie was the widely publicised eleven-day absence of the English writer Agatha Christie in December 1926. At the end of 1914, she married the Royal Flying Corps officer Archibald Christie, with whom she had her only child, a daughter, Rosalind Hicks. In 1916, the aspiring writer finished her first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and by the mid-1920s, had established herself as a recognised author of detective and thriller fiction, with her fame and royalties steadily growing. At the start of 1926, at her husband's insistence, the Christies bought a mansion in Sunningdale called "Styles". During this period Archie began an affair with an office typist, Nancy Neele, and in August 1926 he told his wife that he had fallen in love with someone else. The couple spent several months trying to repair their marriage unsuccessfully.
On 3 December 1926, during a particularly serious quarrel at their home, Archie declared that he saw no possibility of saving the marriage and would seek a divorce, after which he left for work in the City of London. That same evening Agatha disappeared from Styles without a trace. The following morning, in the county of Surrey, on a hill near the town of Newlands Corner, her car was found with its headlights on, standing at the edge of a quarry. Christie's disappearance caused enormous public interest, both at home and abroad, and a wide range of theories were put forward. Many suspected her husband of being involved, or assumed that the writer had staged her own disappearance for publicity. There were also theories involving foul play or death, including suicide. Several hundred police officers took part in the search for Christie, along with up to fifteen thousand civilian volunteers, according to the press's highest estimates.
On 14 December the writer was finally found. It turned out that Christie had registered under the surname of her husband's mistress — Teresa Neele — at the fashionable Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. There she had behaved in a rather modest and withdrawn manner. On Sunday 12 December, the police were informed that a woman resembling the missing writer had been seen at the hotel. Her husband was summoned and identified her. Agatha offered no explanation for her disappearance, citing amnesia. On 15 December, the couple, under the attention of journalists and onlookers, left the hotel and travelled by train to Cheadle, to the estate "Abney Hall", where the writer's sister Madge lived with her husband. There Agatha was examined by two doctors, who concluded that she was suffering from memory loss. Their conclusion became the basis of the "official" version maintained by the family for many years. In 1928, the Christies' marriage was dissolved, but Agatha chose to keep her husband's surname, under which she had become known as a writer. The need to support her family strengthened her resolve to become a professional author. She went on to become a leading figure in the detective genre, the most translated author and one of the best-selling writers in history. In 1930, she met the archaeologist Max Mallowan, to whom she was married for the rest of her life.
Agatha avoided returning to the events of December 1926 and shied away from discussing them publicly. Her detailed Autobiography says nothing about these facts; the author confines herself to a general remark about her separation from her husband. Members of her family and close friends tried to follow this same policy for decades, explaining what had happened as the result of their famous relative's loss of memory. It is believed that the circumstances of Christie's disappearance are reflected in a number of her works, both detective novels and works of a more melodramatic character. The issues connected with these events have been examined in numerous biographical books, articles and documentary films. In addition, the writer's disappearance has inspired literary works as well as feature and television films.
History
Previous events
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in 1890 into an upper-middle-class family that had once been wealthy but had grown poorer over time, and in which the Victorian spirit prevailed, along with, as a result, rather conservative, patriarchal views on family and society. In keeping with such traditions she received an unsystematic home education, intended above all to prepare her for the role of a good wife and mother. Researchers believe that the events of December 1926 were in many ways rooted in Agatha's early upbringing: "…for it was then, surprisingly enough, that the seeds were sown from which her later misfortunes would grow." Jared Cade, the author of this observation and a researcher of the "queen of crime's" disappearance, concluded that the "ideal" relationship of the future writer's parents influenced the fact that she too was destined for such a marriage and merely had "to grow up": "Parental love, combined with their full and eventful life, gave Agatha a happy and untroubled childhood, but it did not teach her to properly withstand the blows that fate had in store for her." Later Agatha herself emphasised the importance of Victorian values and the patriarchal character of family relations, which were deeply rooted features of the society of that period: The Millers' financial position deteriorated considerably after the death of Agatha's father, Frederick, in 1901, after which her mother Clarissa took on responsibility for the family; Agatha had a very warm relationship with her. At the age of eighteen she wrote short stories, some of which were later reworked and published ("The House of Dreams, The Last Séance, The Call of Wings).
With the outbreak of World War I, Agatha volunteered as a nurse at a military hospital, and somewhat later worked in the hospital dispensary. During this same period, at the end of December 1914, she married a military aviator whom she had begun seeing before the war, and took his surname, which she would later make famous. In 1916 Agatha completed her first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which was published only in 1920 by the publishing house The Bodley Head. For some time Christie still believed she was not going to pursue a literary career seriously, especially since neither the modest initial fee nor the financially unfavourable contract encouraged her to do so. Moreover, for a long time she considered her true calling to be that of a good wife and mother, seeing herself first and foremost as a "married lady" rather than a writer. Her desire to help her mother financially did much to inspire her second novel, since her mother found it difficult to maintain the family villa, "Ashfield", in her native Torquay. Agatha's husband advised her to write another novel, since it could earn money, and she, always relying on him in financial matters, agreed. Thus in 1922 the novel The Secret Adversary was published by the same house, The Bodley Head. The following year she finished The Murder on the Links, in which she returned to her detective duo — Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings. In August 1919 Agatha gave birth to her only child, a daughter, Rosalind Hicks.
In 1922, together with her husband, who had accepted an offer to work as a financial adviser to Major Ernest Belcher, Agatha undertook a round-the-world sea voyage through British possessions. On returning home, Archie learned that the company he had previously worked for in the City had not kept his position open. He became unemployed, which he found painful. As head of the family he tried to find some kind of work in order to maintain the social status expected of people of their circle. Ekaterina Tsimbaeva, a Russian biographer of Agatha Christie, noted that alongside the pleasure of the round-the-world cruise came the problems it caused with work, housing and raising their daughter, and the couple found this period difficult, even "having to pay for it with nervous breakdowns".
After the publication in August 1924 of Christie's fourth novel, The Man in the Brown Suit (which drew on the author's impressions of South Africa gained during the "imperial" cruise), her original publisher offered to extend her contract on more favourable terms. She refused, however, and found herself a literary agent, Edmund Cork, with whom she continued to work for the rest of her life. That same year the editors of the Evening News approached Christie for the right to serialise The Man in the Brown Suit in their newspaper, offering £500. The family saw this as a major success; the writer's husband could hardly believe it, while her mother Clarissa reacted more restrainedly, believing that her daughter fully deserved such recognition.
Family troubles
By the mid-1920s relations between the Christies had grown strained; Agatha would occasionally remind Archie, who had been out of work for a time, that the money he was spending came from her fees. She was also irritated that her husband did not give her enough attention, while he, was uncomfortable with his wife's growing fame. It also upset her that he took little interest in her writing: when she asked him to listen to the idea for a new book and give his opinion, he categorically refused. The family's financial position improved after Archie took a prestigious and respectable job in the City of London, earning around £2,000, which boosted his self-esteem and restored his peace of mind.
The Christies then decided to move to the outskirts of London; this was encouraged by the fact that Archie had become keen on golf (a game his wife had originally introduced him to), and outside the metropolis he would find it much more convenient to pursue his favourite pastime. The couple began spending significantly less time together, and Agatha later wrote that she had effectively become what is called a "golf widow". With the fee she received for The Man in the Brown Suit, the Christies bought a "long-nosed", "faithful" Morris Cowley, which became Agatha's favourite means of transport. She later recalled it many times with great warmth, as a source of enormous pleasure. After a few lessons from her husband, despite her initial timidity, she gradually mastered the art of driving. The couple settled with their daughter Rosalind in fashionable Sunningdale, in an estate (cottage) divided into four flats. It was during this time that Agatha realised she could become a professional writer. "Though I still had no confidence. I still thought writing was rather like embroidering sofa cushions," she wrote later in her Autobiography. Jared Cade suggested that it was precisely on the grounds of his wife's professional and financial success that Archie's discontent arose. He may have been "irritated by the attention now being paid to Agatha". The writer Laura Thompson, who partly acknowledges some rationality in this "sensualist" interpretation, rejected treating it as an absolute, since, in her words, Cade presented it as an "indisputable fact".