Revenge on Spouse, Ad, or Mental Disorder: The Mystery of Agatha Christie's Disappearance

We all know the great Agatha Christie as the queen of the detective genre. But few people know that in her biography there are dark spots. They are connected with her personal life - the secret of disappearance. And only Hercule Poirot can solve this riddle.

On December 3, 1926, the writer disappeared from her home in Berkshire. Her car was found with headlights on a mountainside near Guildford. No signs of the presence of the writer herself or evidence of a car accident were found.

And the beginning of the whole story looked like this. On Friday, December 3, after 9.30 p.m. Agatha got out of the chair, climbed the stairs of her house to the second floor, kissed the sleeping daughter Rosalind (she was seven years old), wished her good night and returned again downstairs. Then she got into the car and drove away. She will no longer be seen for eleven days.

At that time, Agatha Christie was already a famous young writer. Thousands of police officers were raised in her search, hundreds of admirers of her work pasted up ads and took part in the search for free. The scale was so grand that even aviation was involved. Home Secretary William Joyson-Hicks made a special appeal to the police.

Two of Britain’s most famous detective writers joined the search - the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the author of novels about Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy Sayers. The police hoped that their specific talents would help find the missing writer.

The body of Agatha Christie was not found anywhere. And the version with suicide seemed doubtful. Her professional success looked very optimistic. The sixth novel, “The Assassination of Roger Ackroyd,” which was published shortly before, was for several weeks the sales leader in all the bookstores of the city. Envious people claimed that this is a well-designed advertising move to promote the book. Others blamed her husband, Archie Christie, a former British Air Force pilot and World War I veteran. It is known that he had a lover.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an enthusiastic occultist, tried to use his paranormal powers to find a solution. He took one of Agatha’s gloves for a seance. But her spirit did not come. Dorothy Sayers at the disappearance site was looking for possible evidence. But also to no avail. Agatha Christie was found safe and sound on December 14 at a hotel in Harrogate, but under such strange circumstances that there were even more questions than answers. Christy herself could not clarify the situation - she claimed that she did not remember anything.

The police restored the course of events. Agatha Christie left home for London, leaving a car on the way. Then she took the train to Harrogate, arrived in the spa town, checked in at the Old Swan Hotel with almost no luggage. But they settled her under a strange name - Theresa Neal, which was consonant with the name of her husband's mistress.

In the early 1920s, Harrogate was a popular resort among aristocrats in England and Europe. People came to be treated for water. Agatha Christie did not betray herself and behaved like all the vacationers - attended parties, danced, played tennis.

In the end, one of the hotel’s musicians, Bob Tappin, recognized her and reported to the police. Police warned her husband, Colonel Christie, who immediately arrived to pick up his missing wife. But she was in no hurry to leave. Agatha made him wait a long time in the hotel lobby while she was dressing her evening dress. The writer never spoke of those mysterious eleven days of her life.

Her biographer, Andrew Norman, believes she was in a state of "psychogenic trance." That is, she had a depressive hysterical disorder. Norman writes that the adoption of Theresa Neal's new identity, the inability to recognize herself in newspaper publications were signs that Agatha Christie had fallen into psychogenic amnesia. Her state of mind was extremely grave. She herself later writes about this through the character to Celia in the autobiographical novel "Unfinished Portrait". This condition was caused by cheating on her husband. A year after the incident, they divorced. Gradually, Agatha Christie regained her strength and again took up the pen.

To help her survive the divorce, friends advised the writer to go on an archaeological expedition to excavate the ancient Sumerian city of Ur. She went there on the Orient Express. On the very one in which the famous murder will take place from the novel of the same name ("Murder on the Orient Express"). There she was waiting for a new adventure and a new acquaintance. Meeting with her second husband - archaeologist Max Mallowan, with whom she will happily live forty years.

So what was it all the same: revenge on an unfaithful spouse, an advertising move or a mental disorder?