Agatha often took this train, as did her famous Poirot.

It is not surprising that her imagination was so alive and vivid with this scenery being the backdrop of her childhood.

The Ashfield Estate

Shy little Agatha

What Agatha woke up to

Aggie's Disappearing Act

“The years 1926 to 1929 were the most painful and arduous in Agatha Christie’s life.”

 

Even though there was extensive research done on the topic of her disappearance, no one really knows exactly what happened. Agatha’s friends and family were quite tight lipped about the whole matter, and remained so throughout her life, leaving the press with no other option but to draw their own conclusions.  “On the Dictaphone recordings from which the first drafts of Christie’s autobiography were composed, Christie’s voice, we are told, is almost inaudible when she deals with the events of 1926.  Christie never filled in the eleven missing days in her life.”  Really, the only person who was vocal at all about the matter was Rosalind.  She commissioned Janet Morgan to write a biography, and gave her unlimited access to papers, photographs, and other memorabilia.   She also related what Agatha had told her of the missing eleven days- memories that Christie had very clearly left out in her own autobiography.  Even so, there were huge gaps and inconsistencies with the story.  When considering Agatha’s case, it is useful to learn the lessons Christie has taught us in her detective fiction, just as her own Poirot might do.  Why did she drive away in her car late at night?  What did she do in the next five or six hours?  Why did she abandon her car and other possessions?  Why was it so close to where Archie and Nancy were staying?  ETC. ETC. ETC.

 

Despite all of the speculation, one unifying fact makes Agatha’s acts make sense.  Agatha was deeply depressed throughout much of 1926, so depressed that she had been unable to complete a novel.  Her deep depression was caused by two events:  the unexpected death of Agatha’s mother and the even less expected request by Archie Christie that Agatha give him a divorce so that he could marry a mutual friend, Nancy Neele.  Archie dropped the bomb when visiting his family at Ashfield to celebrate Rosalind’s August birthday.  This is all detailed very specifically in Unfinished Portrait.  Companionship, or the lack of it, was a thorny issue between the Christie’s.  “Women always want to do things with men- and a man would always rather have another man.”

 

In Agatha’s opinion, Archie had turned from her most intimate companion to a hostile stranger, intent on separation, and willing to destroy his wife if it was the price of his freedom to marry another woman.  The nightmare of Agatha’s childhood had become a reality.  Archie was the Gunman.  Archie said, “Everybody can’t be happy- somebody has to be unhappy.”

 

When Archie requested a divorce, he expected her to be upset, but did not expect Agatha to flat out refuse.  She tried this for a long while, using her daughter’s need for a father as her main weapon.  She was driving herself completely insane during this period, not being able to remember her own name at points. 

 

Now that her perilous emotional state has been established, let us now return to the actual events of 1926.  The week before, Agatha was acting normally, only going into town to buy an extravagant white negligee.  On the morning of the event, Agatha and Archie were said to have had a violent fight.  She then took Rosalind to her mother-in-law’s house, and when she commented that Agatha wasn’t wearing her wedding ring, Agatha “sat perfectly still for a time, gazing into space, and giving an hysterical laugh, turned away and patted Rosalind’s head.”  Agatha then went home to dine alone around five.  Between 9 and 11 o’clock that night it is believed that she left the house saying she going out on a ‘drive.’  The period between her departure and her arrival at Waterloo is a mystery.  At 8 AM Saturday morning, her car was found unharmed and abandoned at Newlands Corner.  This was very close to the house that Archie and Nancy were occupying at the moment.  She was discovered eleven days later checked into a hotel under Neele’s name, and Agatha said that she suffered from amnesia and remembered nothing of the events of the previous days.  Apparently, after registering at the Harrogate spa under Mrs. Teresa Neele of Cape town, she lived a quite life of breakfasting in bed, shopping, reading the newspapers, doing crosswords, and playing bridge in the evenings before retiring early.  She apparently had concealed several hundred pounds in a money belt around her waist. 

 

She was said to have a concussion-fugue.  A fugue is an extreme unconscious reaction to a situation someone cannot cope with consciously.  And whether or not this was her intent, she put Archie through hell in several ways because of the disappearance.  He was probably very worried about Agatha’s whereabouts, and more importantly it brought he and Nancy’s name into the forefront of the press… something he had been trying to avoid.

 

When she returned, she and Archie hardly spoke and eventually divorced.  The years 1927-28 were years of reconstruction for her.  She had a band of loyal friends she affectionately called the “Order of the Faithful Dogs” and a psychiatrist who were most helpful to her.  Rosalind also remained with her.  To further clear her mind, she decided to embark on a solo journey to the Middle East, This would be her first journey alone, and she would be free to indulge her taste for travel and learning. 

 

She managed with her own strength and with the help of her friends to come out without much anger, resentment, and regret towards Archie.  She accepted wholeheartedly her burning desire she once felt for Archie, and also its sad outcome. 

 

“It’s never a mistake to marry a man you want to marry- even if you regret it.”

 

“Agatha regretted not her love for Archie, but what Archie had done with her love, and ultimately his actions were his own to answer for and live with, not hers.”

 

Insights into Complicated Relationship with Rosalind

This is a quote from Agatha’s book Unfinished Portrait written under the Mary Westmacott novel.  This deals with her feeling towards her daughter, and it seems that the characters in this novel parallel the characters in Agatha’s own life.

 

The relationship between she and her daughter is very complicated.  She tried to form a close relationship with her daughter, but they seemed to never be able to connect.  Agatha felt that her temperament and interests lined up with Archie’s.  Agatha couldn’t understand why her daughter didn’t enjoy playing imaginative little games growing up.  Rosalind’s severe practicality and her lack of artistic curiosity made it difficult for Agatha to relate to her as Agatha had related to her mother, Clara.

 

 

“I don’t know whether I’ve failed with Judy or succeeded. I don’t know whether she loves me or doesn’t love me.  I’ve given her material things. I haven’t been able to give her the other things- the things that matter to me- because she doesn’t want them.  I’ve done the only one thing I could.  Because I love her, I’ve let her alone.  I haven’t tried to force my views and my beliefs upon her.  I’ve tried to make her feel I’m there if she wants me.  But you see she didn’t want me.”

 

 

Aggie's Politics

“Had Archie Christie not had the soul of a stockbroker in the body of a romantic hero, had he not become addicted to golf and the City, had he been a more responsive and understanding partner, had he not been given the opportunity to fall in love with another woman, had he and Agatha had more children, or at least one other child more in Agatha’s own image- had any or some of these possibilities been realized, Agatha might perhaps have devoted herself to husband and family, repeating the family career of her mother.”

 

As pertaining to her daughter, it did not seem to occur to her that leaving her quite frequently with the help, nanny, governess, etc. would do any harm.  Agatha and Archie were planning a ten-month world tour, which would prove to be the high spot of the Christie marriage.  Agatha, during the trip found a few moments to go off alone, and was absolutely a social success.  She had great success doing comedy skits in an amateur show.  She was an outgoing, independent woman, taking center stage with confidence and charming all those she met. 

 

Back home, Archie was so consumed with golf and social conventions, and Agatha did not especially enjoy the company of the golfers or their wives.  He stopped Agatha in her tracks when she suggested that they have another child, but did try to make her happy by splurging on a car and teaching her how to drive.  As far as their conversations went, he was either discouraging or indifferent when Agatha tried to discuss ideas for a book with him, and did not enjoy the London literary world to which she was being introduced. 

 

“Idea? I’ve got any amount of ideas.  In fact, that’s just the difficulty.  I can never think of even one plot at a time.  I always think of at least five, and it’s agony to decide between them... One actually has to think, you know.  And thinking is always a bore.”

 

Christie is seen as politically conservative and socially conventional, but her attitude toward the New Woman is radically different from Mrs. Lynn Linton’s or from Waugh’s.  Christie is a strict sexual egalitarian in that she is able to imagine a cold heart beating under a soft young feminine breast, a calculating mind working behind the brown curls and dancing blue eyes.  Throughout her work, Agatha reveals a certain disregard for politicians.  She distrusts politics as indifferent or even hostile to the important spheres of life, religion, and interpersonal relationships.  However, Christie keeps herself and her work out of the political arena.  Her novels are relatively free from political references and/or slang. 

 

One category, though, Agatha did not avoid and that is the issue of anti-Semitism.  A very bold kind of anti-Semitism colors the Jewish characters in many of her early novels, and Christie reveals herself to be as unreflective and conventional as the majority of her compatriots.  We can laugh with her as she pokes fun at some of her characters, but specifically the portrayal of the Jewish financier in the Secret of Chimneys is hard to understand and forgive.  However, as she and other authors grew to understand what Nazism really meant for Jewish people, Christie abandoned her previous ways.  Agatha even corrects herself in Westmacott’s novel Giant’s Bread published in 1930.  Christie makes one of her five protagonists Jewish, and addresses head-on the Anti-Semitic prejudice present in England. 

 

“Agatha Christie had moved into the forefront of British detective-story writers.  Ironically, her very fame and success were to make the next, and most dramatic episode in her life, even more traumatic.”