Detective and mystery stories have been capturing readers’ interest since the mid 19th-century, beginning with the publication of the first ever detective story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe, in 1841 and the first mystery novel, The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, in 1859. Collins is also widely credited with having published the first ever detective novel as well, The Moonstone, in 1868, although that claim is not uncontested. Over the next twenty or so years, mystery and detective novels were published rather regularly, with classics like The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and A Study in Scarlet, among other Sherlock Holmes novels, released.
The real peak in popularity of mystery and detective novels came in the 1920s and 30s, which came to be known as The Golden Age of Detective Fiction. It was during this period that certain conventions we recognize now as essential to the formulaic approach to crime-focused storytelling became the foundation of the genre. And it was during this time that Agatha Christie established herself as a major voice in the genre, the Queen of Mystery.
In her career, Agatha Christie published 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections. She wrote six novels—not of the detective variety—under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott and wrote the world’s longest running play, The Mousetrap, which ran from 1952 to 2020. Hers is a name readers and non-readers alike are familiar with, so prolific and iconic was her work.
But perhaps the most intriguing mystery connected with Agatha Christie is not one she wrote, but one she was the subject of. The one mystery that didn’t end with a satisfying explanation, all loose strings tied up in a neat little bow by a sharp-eyed detective—Agatha Christie’s own disappearance.
On the evening of December 4, 1926, Agatha Christie kissed her daughter goodnight, left her home with an attaché case, and drove off into the night in her beloved Morris Cowley. The next morning, her car was found overhanging a chalk quarry, having gotten stuck in a hedge that prevented it from going completely over the edge. The attaché case she’d brought with her was still there, as were the clothes and papers she’d packed. Agatha Christie was nowhere in sight.
Police immediately responded with a massive manhunt, mobilizing all available officers to search for miles around where Agatha’s car had been abandoned. At the time of her disappearance, Agatha was 36 years old and well into her career as a detective novelist with six novels already published, including some of her most notable works—The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Murder on the Links, and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Her disappearance made front page news by December 6th, with her husband already sharing with papers that his wife “had been suffering from a nervous breakdown.” What Colonel Archibald Christie was unwilling to share with the public, however, was the knowledge that he was having an affair with a younger woman. And Agatha knew.
It’s quite possible the couple had fought the evening Agatha left, however it seemed her husband was unwilling to share all the facts with police. By the evening of December 8th, the police called off the search, citing a letter Agatha’s brother-in-law had received in London that seemed to have been written after her disappearance in which she explained that she was going to a spa in Yorkshire for rest.
Despite having actually called off the search at the first sight of this letter, the police seemed to realize their hastiness in such a choice and resumed the investigation within two days. With over 500 police officers and volunteers combing the downs for any sign of Agatha and planes searching from the skies, the investigation expanded. Col. Christie joined in, bringing Agatha’s favorite dog—a little terrier—to assist in the search. Col. Christie and police followed the dog’s wanderings for three hours while the dog “whined pitifully” before giving up hope that the dog might be able to lead them to its owner. Shockingly, as of December 9th—just two days after having called off the search because of the letter delivered to her brother-in-law—the police were suddenly of the opinion that Agatha’s disappearance was a suicide. With nothing more than her abandoned car to go on, they jumped to an extreme, and completely unsupported, theory.
The New York Times reported that Agatha might have felt the desire to get away from her house, suggesting it may have been haunted: “It stands in a lonely lane, unlit at night, which has a reputation of being haunted. The lane has been the scene of a murder of a woman and the suicide of a man. … ‘If I do not leave Sunningdale soon, Sunningdale will be the end of me,’ she once said to a friend.”
December 11th marked one full week since Agatha had last been seen—at least credibly seen, since police had been dismissing hundreds of letters arriving from people claiming they’d seen her since her disappearance—and it came with a shocking discovery. Agatha’s brother in law wasn’t the only one who had received a letter. The novelist had left three letters. One for her brother-in-law, one for her secretary, and one for her husband. Her secretary was the only one who handed over the letter; Col. Christie refused to say what Agatha had written to him just before she disappeared. In fact, both Col. Christie and the brother in law burned their letters, her husband claiming the note had been of a personal nature and had been written before Agatha had decided to leave. The secretary did not hesitate to share the contents of her note: “It merely told me to cancel an engagement she had at Beverley, in Yorkshire, because, as she was feeling queer, she would not go there for the week-end. She wrote that she was going for a run in her car and would let me know Saturday by telegram or telephone where she was. There was nothing unusual in this, because often when she felt a little restless she would go for a run in her car and come back refreshed. She did not write the words attributed to her to the effect that if she did not leave Sunningdale soon, it would be the end of her. There is nothing of the kind in her note.” An important quote from this note caught the attention of police, though: “I must get away. I cannot stay here in Sunningdale much longer.”
Police, still thinking Agatha might have committed suicide, wasted no effort as the search continued. For reasons not specified, they still believed Agatha would be found in the Surrey Downs, within miles of where her car had been abandoned. By December 12th, the police were asking for local motorists and amateur sleuths to aid in the search of the downs, even requesting anyone with bloodhounds bring them down to the scene of the disappearance in hopes of catching Agatha’s scent. Thousands of people responded, flooding the downs with their cars and bikes as they scoured the land for any hint of the famous detective novelist who made this such a sensational case.
And sensational it was. The story of Agatha Christie’s disappearance dominated front pages of newspapers across England and the United States. The possibility that this was all just a publicity stunt was raised—and bolstered by an announcement for a forthcoming Agatha Christie mystery novel entitled The Mystery on the Downs that was placed in The Daily Herald—but quickly shot down by Agatha’s secretary. She said, “It is ridiculous. Mrs. Christie is quite too much a lady for that. She never for a moment would think of causing all this sorrow and suspense. Naturally, I do have a great deal to do with her and know her ways and moods intimately. That’s why I am certain that the people who suspect her of disappearing, either for the sake of publicity or to work out a new plot or for any other reason, are wrong. It is the last thing in the world she would do.” It was suggested that perhaps Agatha’s literary agent was just taking advantage of the commotion by placing the ad in the paper.
With so little to go on and over a week having already passed, police were scrambling for any lead they could find. Desperate, they turned to Agatha’s work, specifically a manuscript called The Blue Train that they thought was her work-in-progress, for any clues. They briefly believed that manuscript was in the possession of the suspicious brother-in-law, but they were quickly proven wrong. By the 13th, police were considering the idea that Agatha was hiding in London disguised in men’s clothing. Friends of hers had suggested they believed she’d turn up in London, but the detail of her possibly disguising herself with men’s attire was prompted by a discovery by the searchers of the downs. Between 10 and 15 thousand people had searched the downs, helped by “six trained bloodhounds, a crate load of Airedale terriers, many retrievers and Alsatian police dogs, and even the services of common mongrels.” Among several lady’s handbags that were found was one that looked similar to the one Agatha carried and a black handbag with men’s clothing and documents of some sort. Though there seems to be no real reason for the police to have assumed that this bag of men’s clothing had anything to do with Agatha’s disappearance, they went as far as having her husband check his wardrobe for any missing pieces and continued to theorize that the clothes were intended to be a disguise.
As the search dragged on, rumors surrounding the case became more sensational, especially as spiritualists joined the hunt for clues, holding seances at the scene and coming to the conclusion that Agatha’s disappearance was due to foul play. Even Arthur Conan Doyle brought an occultist to the scene to try to locate Agatha through supernatural means. A rumor that was particularly novel-like was that a sealed envelope had been left with clear instructions to only open it upon Agatha’s death. If Agatha returned alive, it was to be returned to her unopened. The letter inside was rumored to have been written within the hour before she left her home, its contents only known to Col. Christie and her secretary. As dramatic as this rumor sounded, there appears to be some truth to it because Col. Christie disputed claims that it had anything to do with her disappearance and said it explained nothing, validating its existence.
By the 14th, the search had led to a nearby bungalow where they discovered a myriad of questionable things: “a bottle labeled poison lead and opium, fragments of a torn-up postcard, a woman’s fur-lined coat, a box of face powder, the end of a loaf of bread, a cardboard box and two children’s books.” Also noteworthy were a “woman’s tracks in powder.” The police now shared that they believed Agatha had no intention of returning home after she left, though they wouldn’t share what new information had convinced them.
On December 15th, eleven days after she left her home, Agatha Christie was found. The head waiter of a popular Yorkshire spa called the police to report that a guest at his hotel might be the missing novelist. In a scene worthy of one of Agatha’s novels, her husband arrived at the hotel with the police and took a seat in the dining room, waiting for his wife’s arrival to confirm her identity. When the guest in question took her seat at another table in the dining room, it’s said she opened up and read from a newspaper in which her own disappearance was the headline. It was reported that she met her husband’s appearance with a “stony stare.”
Agatha had checked into the hotel under the name Mrs. Tressa Neele, a name that Col. Christie denied knowing anything about, saying Agatha didn’t know the meaning of the name either. He said, “She does not know who she is … she has suffered from the most complete loss of memory.” He further claimed that she had no idea how she’d gotten to the hotel and had no knowledge of herself beyond the conviction that she was Teresa Neele. Two doctors later corroborated these claims, saying Agatha suffered amnesia and a possible concussion. However, it was revealed later that Agatha had checked in using Col. Christie’s mistress’s name, proving that he had lied when he said neither of them had any idea what the significance of her name choice was.
Agatha and Col. Christie got divorced in early 1928. Agatha later got married to a museum archaeologist. Col. Christie married his mistress.
Agatha Christie only spoke of her disappearance publicly once. Around two years later, she told The Daily Mail that she’d been driving past the quarry that December night when “…there came into my mind the thought of driving into it. However, as my daughter was with me in the car, I dismissed the idea at once. That night I felt terribly miserable. I felt that I could go on no longer. I left home that night in a state of high nervous strain with the intention of doing something desperate. …When I reached a point on the road which I thought was near the quarry, I turned the car off the road down the hill toward it. I left the wheel and let the car run. The car struck something with a jerk and pulled up suddenly. I was flung against the steering wheel, and my head hit something. Up to this moment I was Mrs. Christie.” In a recent biography by Laura Thompson, a friend of Agatha’s described the disappearance as, “It was the unspoken subject. Agatha refused to talk about it. To anyone. It was a real no-go.”
Agatha Christie’s disappearance was suspicious, to say the very least. Agatha was found where she’d said she was going—a Yorkshire spa. How did the police—who launched a massive search—fail to check one of the most popular spas in all of Yorkshire when she’d said that’s where she was going? How did nobody at the hotel recognize her for eleven days when her face was plastered on the front page of major newspapers across the country? Had she been there the entire time? What information did the police find during the investigation that made them so sure Agatha had run away planning to never return? There was never any real explanation offered up, but her husband’s repeated refusals to hand over letters of interest—going so far as to burn one along with the brother-in-law’s—and his lying to police and reporters about not knowing the importance of the name Neele does little to turn suspicion away from him or what he might’ve known about Agatha’s reason for disappearing.
Even Agatha’s own explanation does little to satisfy the intense curiosity of her readers and fans. If she had left her home on the night of December 4, 1926 intending to commit suicide by driving off the edge into the chalk quarry, why did she pack a bag intended for the spa anyway? And if she hit her head and immediately lost her memory and any sense of who she was, how did she remember that she was going to the spa? How did she remember her husband’s mistress’s name? Perhaps all of this could be explained; people have had odd cases of memory loss throughout history. But we’re to assume that once she was found, she returned to normal and remembered she was Agatha Christie? Nothing had been shared publicly about the aftermath of her disappearance, so it seems that’s the only conclusion we can draw based on what we know of the rest of Agatha’s life and work.
The disappearance of Agatha Christie continues to ignite the interest of mystery lovers. Theories are in no short supply when it comes to the real answers behind her disappearance, but nothing can be known for certain. Perhaps it’s as simple as Agatha made it out to be, but even that theory comes with its unanswered questions. If only this were one of her novels, then we’d certainly reach a satisfying ending. As it is, no Hercule Poirot exists to shed light upon the oddities of this case. And so the greatest mystery of the Queen of Mystery goes unsolved.