Friday, 3rd of December, 1926. Archibald Christie leaves Styles (county of Berkshire, west of London) to stay in a house with some friends for the weekend. Nancy Neele is also there. It is night-time. Rosalind, Archie and Agatha’s daughter, is in bed. Agatha goes out and drives away in her car.
This is what happened the day the Queen of Mystery disappeared.
Her
car was found abandoned near a lake in Newlands Corner (Surrey), but without
any trace of its owner. As stated by Kovačević (2016), the most varied
hypotheses about Agatha’s fate soon began to emerge. Some said that she had
escaped, others stated that she had committed suicide, and it was even said
that it was only a publicity stunt. Others talked about a possible murder
committed by her unfaithful husband, Archie Christie. In short, Agatha’s
disappearance caused a police investigation and much speculation by the press. The
Murder of Roger Ackroyd had recently become a successful novel and Agatha
was already a well-known writer. With her unexplained disappearance, her
picture occupied the front pages of all the leading newspapers of England.
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| Pictures of Agatha Christie in the Daily News. The central one corresponded to how she was last seen and the other two (left and right) showed Agatha with different hair and wearing glasses in case she would have disguised herself. |
Gill (1990) explains that, after eleven days without knowing about her whereabouts, Agatha was finally found in the luxurious Hydropathic Hotel in the city of Harrogate (north of England), alone and calling herself Teresa Neele. One of the guests at the hotel had recognized her and had called the police. On the 14th of December, Archie Christie arrived to identify his wife. She claimed to suffer from amnesia and said she had no idea how she could have got to Harrogate.
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| Agatha leaving the Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate |
Apparently, Agatha and Archie's marriage was going from bad to worse. He started seeing another woman, Nancy Neele, and in 1928 he asked Agatha for a divorce (“1925-1928: A Difficult Start”, About Agatha Christie, The Home of Agatha Christie). Many believe that the writer, upset by the impending divorce and the recent death of her mother, may have suffered a nervous breakdown that led her to disappear like that.
According to Kovačević (2016), many theories have tried to explain the strange event. Some argued that the novelist suffered a loss of memory after a car accident. Others held that the whole episode was devised by Christie herself to thwart a plan by her husband to spend the weekend with Nancy Neele in a house near the spot where she left her car. Indeed, one of the reasons why investigators believed that the writer's disappearance occurred as revenge on her husband was the fact that she checked into the hotel under the name of Teresa Neele, the same last name as her husband's lover.
In any case, whatever the cause of her disappearance, Agatha Christie never spoke about it again. Whether due to amnesia or an attempt to take revenge on her husband, it was always a mystery. And it still is.
For further information about Agatha's disappearance, you can watch this video from the BBC:
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