Agatha Christie was always linked to an aura of mystery that came from her great detective novels and the brilliant crimes she devised. That’s why when the author vanished, during a depression, many speculated the worst.
Learn the story of how Agatha Christie caused a disappearance worthy of her mystery novels.
Who was Agatha Christie?
Agatha Christie, known as the queen of crime, the lady of mystery, is possibly the most famous writer of detective novels, and the most translated in the world.
With an unsurpassed bestseller and a literary career as extensive as hers, Agatha is a reference in world literature, with her famous detective Poirot (without ever forgetting her other creation, Miss Marple).
The prelude to disappearance
In April 1926, Agatha Christie’s life took a sad turn: her mother, whom the author had been caring for for several years, died. This loss greatly affected the writer, who occasionally suffered from nerves, to the point of leaving her on the verge of depression.
That same year, Agatha’s husband, Archibald “Archie” Christie, confesses to the writer his relationship with another woman; a golfer named Nancy Neele. The Christies had been married since 1914, but after 11 years of marriage, the end of the road was in sight.
It is the night of December 3rd. After having a long argument with her husband – Archie had made explicit his desire to divorce – Agatha decides that she needs to get out. The author then leaves a letter for her secretary, telling her that she was going to Yorkshire (presumably for a walk)… and then leaves in her vehicle, a timeless-looking Morris Cowley.
The queen of mystery… missing!
Later that same morning, the author’s vehicle was found open and with no signs of the driver, in the Newlands Corner nature reserve; approximately 32 kilometers and 40 minutes from the original destination indicated on the letter. Inside the car were only a few articles of clothing and an expired driver’s license.
Agatha Christie’s disappearance created a national shock. The English Home Secretary, William Joynson-Hicks, mobilized more than a thousand police officers. The print media also showed interest in the search: one newspaper even offered £100 ($130.31) for news of the novelist’s whereabouts.
But although 15,000 volunteers and several airplanes were used to comb large rural areas, no further traces of Christie were found.
Even Conan Doyle, seeing how conventional methods were becoming exhausted, tried his luck by taking the author’s glove to a medium, in an attempt for the psychic to find some useful clue. Still, for ten days it was as if Agatha had dissolved into the air.
Finally found (with no memory of what happened?)
Finally, on December 14, a clear sign. One of the tenants of the Spa Swan Hotel, located in Harrogate, recognized in a guest the author sought and portrayed by the newspapers. Christie had registered on the site using the name Teresa Neele (husband’s mistress’s last name).
Even more curious: when Archie arrived at the site, his wife did not recognize him. Agatha had suffered some kind of temporary amnesia. “Psychogenic fugue” was the diagnosis given by two psychiatrists who subsequently treated her.
Psychogenic fugue is a state of memory loss that manifests in the individual in conjunction with personality dissociations. This condition can appear during periods of stress or deep depression.
At the time, the author claimed that she could not remember what she was doing in that hotel or how she had gotten there. The fact that Christie has omitted from her autobiography any comment regarding the mysterious disappearance of the 11 days seems to corroborate the hypothesis of a genuine forgetfulness, caused by the accumulation of stress, from which the author was suffering in those days.
