Vanessa Richardson (4:26)
On the evening of December 3, 1926, 36 year old Agatha Christie was at her home in the London suburb of Sunningdale. At around 9:30pm she climbed the stairs to her daughter's room. Seven year old Rosalind was fast asleep. Agatha slipped inside and gave her a kiss good night. Then she walked out the front door, climbed into her Morris Cowley sedan and drove off into the night. At 36 years old, Agatha Christie was already a big name in the world of crime fiction. She'd written six popular murder mystery novels, three of them starring the clever Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Her most recent book, the Murder of Roger Ackroyd, had come out earlier in the year to rave reviews and huge sales. But now she was about to play a lead role in her own mystery. The following morning, on December 4, 1926, her car was discovered 15 miles from her home near the Newlands Corner nature reserve. The vehicle looked like it had been run off the road. It was found at the bottom of a grassy hill, the hood buried in a clump of bushes. The headlights were still on and when police looked inside, they found many of Agatha's belongings, but Agatha herself was nowhere to be found. As authorities began to search for Agatha, they looked back on the author's life for clues. Agatha Christie was born in 1890 to an upper middle class English family. She spent most of her childhood roaming the grounds of her parents, large in the seaside town of Torquay. Her father had family money, so he never bothered with a job. Instead, he'd usually leave home early and play cards with his friends at the local social club. Then he'd return in the evening for dinner. Agatha's mother did work, but not a traditional career. She wrote poetry and was involved in the New Age Spiritualism movement, which believed in communicating with the dead through seances. Clara also explored other religions, like Unitarianism and Zoroastrianism. Growing up, Agatha had virtually no exposure to other children. Her sister and brother were much older, so they weren't around, and her mother insisted on homeschooling her, which meant she didn't have classmates either. But Agatha didn't mind. She was a shy girl with an extremely active imagination. Although she lacked real friends, she had plenty of imaginary ones, both human and animal. And sometimes these imaginary friends had starring roles in the short stories she wrote. And from an early age, she was obsessed with death and funerals. One of her regular pastimes was placing flowers on her pet canary's grave. Agatha would later say she had a very happy childhood, but eventually she grew up and had to exchange her imaginary relationships for some real ones. In 1912, 22 year old Agatha met Archibald Christie, a dashing 23 year old pilot. He swept her off her feet and they dated for two years before marrying just after the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Three days after their wedding, Archie went to France to fly for the Allies. Agatha would barely see him over the next four years. During the war, Agatha stayed in England, where she volunteered at a military hospital. She learned a lot about poisons and toxins during her time there. But it wasn't Agatha's dream. She'd always loved writing, and now that she had a newfound knowledge of medicine, she decided to try her hand at writing a murder mystery. The result was her debut novel, the Mysterious Affair at Stiles, in which detective Poirot investigates a fatal poisoning at an English manor house. Agatha sent the manuscript to multiple publishers, but there was little interest, and it took several years until finally, in 1919, someone was willing to take a chance on her. That gamble paid off tenfold. The Mysterious Affair at Stiles was a hit. Critics loved the story, and Agatha's description of the poisoning was so accurate that the novel got a rave review from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. With all the success, Agatha's publisher offered her a contract to write five more novels. Her career was taking off, but her home life was crashing and burning. By the time the Mysterious Affair at Stiles came Out. Archie was back from the war and Agatha had given birth to her first and only child, Rosalind. It should have been a happy time, but it seemed like being apart for so long had strained Agatha and Archie's marriage. Before long, Archie, who'd taken a job at a London investment bank after the war, began to pull away. He spent more and more time on the golf course or at his social club. And things only got worse for Agatha. A few years later, In April of 1926, her beloved mother died. 35 year old Agatha moved back to her childhood home in Torquay for a few months to go through her mother's belongings and manage the sale of the house. Not only was she overwhelmed by grief, but she still had to finish her next novel. The deadline was looming. This would have been a great time for Archie to step up and support her. And instead he stayed at their house outside London and left Agatha to handle the practical and emotional aftermath of her mother's death on her own. From time to time, Archie visited Agatha at the Torquay house. On one of these visits, in August 1926, he brought some not so great news. He'd fallen in love with a woman he'd met on the golf course, Nancy Neal, and he wanted a divorce. Despite all her husband's shortcomings, Agatha wasn't ready to give up on him just yet. In the fall, she returned to their home in Sunningdale and tried to persuade him to change his mind. But Archie wasn't interested in reconciliation. He avoided her as much as possible, spending most of his night sleeping at his social club in the city or with Nancy. This continued for several months, until Friday, December 3rd. That day, Archie told Agatha he wouldn't be coming home after work. He planned to spend the weekend with Nancy. This led to a blowout fight between Archie and Agatha, which ended with Archie storming out of the house. That left Agatha at home with her daughter in bed upstairs and household staff milling about. We don't know what was going through her head at that moment. With her mother dead and her marriage falling apart around her, we don't know why. She got into her car and drove off a little after 9:30pm and for the next 11 days, nobody knew where she was. Depending on who you believe, neither did she. In 1926, Agatha Christie was one of England's most popular mystery novelists. Sadly, her personal life wasn't going as well as her literary pursuits. And in April, her mother passed away. Thanks to Agatha's demanding publishing schedule, she had to keep writing through her grief. Then In August, her husband of 12 years, 37 year old Archibald Christie, told her he was having an affair and wanted a divorce. On December 3, after months of trying and failing to save her marriage, 36 year old Agatha drove away from her home home in Sunningdale, England. The following morning, her car was found crashed into the bushes at the bottom of a hill 15 miles away. Inside the vehicle, police found a packed bag of Agatha's clothes, her driver's license and a fur coat. The coat was an immediate cause for alarm. She'd crashed on a bitterly cold December night. If Agatha had wandered away in a daze after the crash, police worried she may have died of exposure somewhere in the surrounding countryside. But they also weren't ruling out foul play. Archie and his mistress Nancy, were immediately under suspicion. Police tracked the two of them down at their weekend getaway and brought them in for questioning. Eventually, they were able to provide alibis that proved they weren't responsible for whatever had happened to Agatha. However, their interviews were revealing. That's when the authorities first learned about the state of the Christie's marriage and and the effect it was having on Agatha. This information led investigators to an even darker possibility. Her car was found near a lake called the Silent Pool. Had Agatha been so depressed about her relationship that she drove off the road and drowned herself in the lake? If that was the case, it would explain why she'd abandoned all her belongings in the car, fearing the worst police dream, dredged the lake with a net, looking for a body. But the lake was empty. Wherever Agatha was, it wasn't there. Within a day, Agatha's disappearance was front page news across England. Police launched a full search, calming the countryside with thousands of officers and civilian volunteers, many of them fans of Agatha's work. The Daily Mail tabloid offered a 100 pound reward for information leading to her safe return. The equivalent of nearly £8,000 today. Not only that, but for the first time in history, airplanes were used in an English search operation. And that wasn't the only unique aspect of the investigation. Agatha's fellow mystery writer, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, requested one of her gloves. He gave it to a psychic medium in the hopes that it would lead them to Agatha. But whatever spirits the medium reached were just as clueless as the people looking for Agatha here on earth. The search continued for the next 10 days. Eventually, Agatha was found. But it wasn't a psychic or a detective who located her. It was a musician. Roughly 230 miles north of Agatha's wrecked car was a spa town called Harrogate one of the local resorts, was called the Hydropathic Hotel. People traveled from all over to soak in the warm Turkish baths there. As Agatha's disappearance turned into a national obsession, the mystery of the missing author became a hot topic among the guests. One of those guests was a lively and outgoing South African woman named Teresa Neal. When the manhunt came up, she said, Ms. Christie is a very, very elusive person. I cannot be bothered with her. In fact, Teresa didn't seem terribly bothered by anything. She was too busy having a good time. She spent her days shopping, taking long walks, and chatting with other visitors. During the evenings, she was in the hotel ballroom dancing the Charleston. On one of these nights, in mid December, a saxophone player in the house band took a closer look at Teresa and noticed that she looked a lot like Agatha Christie. In fact, the more he looked at her, the more he believed she actually was Agatha Christie. The band's drummer agreed, and together they contacted the police. On the evening of December 14, 1926, Archibald Christie accompanied a group of police officers to the Hydropathic Hotel. They were there to see if. If Agatha was truly at the resort. Archie set up shop in the hotel's dining room and waited as dinner approached. He watched as Agatha herself walked in, sat down at a nearby table, and began reading the newspaper. The front page featured a story on her disappearance. When Archie walked up and tried to talk to her, she just looked at him blankly. It seemed like she didn't even recognize the man she'd been married to for the past 12 years. He showed her a picture of their daughter Rosalind. But Agatha had no idea who she was. And when one of the friends she'd made at the hotel approached them, she introduced Archie as her brother. Eventually, Archie and the police were able to convince Agatha to leave the hotel and go to her sister's house in a nearby town. There, she was examined by doctors and diagnosed with a form of temporary amnesty amnesia brought on by stress and depression. And slowly but surely, detectives were able to piece together what had happened over the last 11 days. Immediately before or after running her car off the road. On December 3, Agatha experienced a bout of amnesia. In a daze, with no memory of who she was or what she was doing, she walked to a nearby town and bought a train ticket to London. At Waterloo Station, she saw an ad for the hydropathic hotel in Harrogate, which seemingly inspired her to take the next train there. Nobody could explain how she came up with the name Teresa Neal. However, many people pointed out that her alter ego shared a last name with her husband's mistress, Nancy Neal. The public did not like this explanation. Many believed the whole event had been a publicity stunt to drum up interest in her next book. And. And they were angry that English taxpayers had footed the bill for an exhaustive search for a woman who was relaxing at a resort hotel the entire time. It is true that the story of Agatha's disappearance led to a spike in sales of all of her books. But if she really did fake her amnesia, it's possible she had other motives besides money. Hours before she vanished, her husband had blown her off to see his mistress. As an established crime writer, Agatha knew Archie would become the prime suspect if she went missing. Not only that, but her disappearance ensured that Archie spent his romantic weekend in a police interrogation room instead of his lover's bed. And whether you want to call it karma or revenge, it also brought all the sordid details of his affair into the public eye. But the truth might be a lot simpler and upsetting. It's very possible that Agatha did have some kind of mental health episode. The combined trauma of her mother's death and her failing marriage could have led Agatha to experience a rare medical condition known as a dissociative fugue. People experiencing dissociative fugue lose all knowledge of their previous life. In many cases, they travel to new locations and assume new identities, Sometimes for many months or even years at a time. In 1985, a reporter named Jody Roberts experienced a dissociative fugue and disappeared from her home in Olympia, Washington. Her family and friends assumed she was dead, but 12 years later, she was discovered living in Alaska under the name Jane D. Williams, with no memory of her old life. If Agatha Christie hadn't been a recognizable public figure, it's possible her fugue state could have lasted a lot longer than a 11 days. In January of 1927, a few weeks after being found safe in Harrogate, Agatha was sent to the Canary Islands to recover from her ordeal. She returned to England three months later with her memories fully restored. If her disappearance had been a hoax designed to sabotage her husband's affair, it didn't work. She filed for divorce in 1928, and Archie soon married Nancy Neal. In a magazine interview that year, Agatha briefly touched on the disappearance. She claimed that on the night she vanished, she was so upset about the state of her marriage that she drove off the road, intending to end her life. Instead, she hit her head on the steering wheel, which she claims triggered her amnesia. That was the only time Agatha ever publicly spoke about what happened in her autobiography, she doesn't mention the episode at all. Instead, the only thing she said about the end of her first marriage was quote, there is no need to dwell on it. Fortunately, Agatha's second marriage would fare much better. Not long after her divorce, she met a British archaeologist named Max Malawan while touring ancient ruins in Iraq. Even though Max was 14 years younger than Agatha, the two hit it off. They tied the knot in 1930 and remained happily married until Agatha's death in 1976 when she was 85 years old. He died two years later. Between annual trips to dig sites in Iraq and Syria, Agatha wrote 60 more novels and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Today, she's the best selling fiction writer of all time, with more than 2 billion copies of her novels in print in over 100 languages. Agatha Christie dreamed up some of the most enduring mysteries of all time. But none of them is more fascinating than the one where she was the main character. Up next, the story of another strange and mysterious disappearance at Etsy.
