by Jared Cade
Although the police were permanently stationed at the front and back doors of Styles to prevent the press from mobbing Archie and the other inhabitants, they were unable to prevent him from being accosted away from his home. The Colonel began to crack and, in attempting to run the gauntlet on the night of Wednesday the 8th, he made a series of ill-advised remarks which appeared in the London Evening News the following day:
‘I cannot account for her disappearance save that her nerves have completely gone, and that she went away for no real purpose whatever.
I left home on Friday to spend the week-end with friends. Where I stayed I am not prepared to state. I have told the police. I do not want my friends dragged into this. It is my business alone. I have been badgered and pestered like a criminal, and all I want is to be left alone. My telephone is constantly ringing. All manner of people are asking about my wife. Why, I even get clairvoyants ringing me up and telling me the only hope I have of finding her is by holding a séance.
I am worried to death. When I heard that she had disappeared I at once went to Newlands Corner, where I was told the car had been found. That was on Saturday, and I have been here ever since.
My wife was going to spend the week-end away. I usually spend the week-end away.’
On Thursday the 9th the Daily Express was one of several newspapers to criticize the Berkshire and Surrey police forces for their failure to call in Scotland Yard. The reporters believed there was rivalry between the two constabularies, and their conviction was reinforced by the fact that the Berkshire police were not helping in the search of the Surrey Downs. What the journalists were not aware of was that Scotland Yard was already actively involved in investigating a large number of suspected sightings by people who thought they had seen Agatha.
The report of a suspected sighting of Agatha on an omnibus in London failed to take the heat off Archie. A Miss Bishop had contacted the Wokingham police in Berkshire to inform them that the woman in question had worn a curiously spotted sealskin coat. After hearing details of the incident Superintendent Goddard said: ‘I’m afraid that not much importance can be attached to her statement, but personally I think Mrs Christie is still alive.’
Two distinct avenues of investigation became evident on Thursday the 9th. The Berkshire police circulated a missing persons poster with a full-length composite photograph of Agatha showing what she had been wearing on the night of her disappearance, while Deputy Chief Constable Kenward instigated another search of the Surrey Downs. The press speculated that the reason for this was because a member of the public had found a shoe on the lower slopes of Albury the previous day, but as the officer explained in his report to the Home Office:
‘The lady disappeared under circumstances which opened out all sorts of possibilities; she might have been wandering with loss of memory over that vast open country around Newlands Corner, or she might have fallen down one of the numerous gravel pits that abound there and are covered in most instances with undergrowth and lying in helpless agony, or she might have been, as was strongly suggested to the police, the victim of a serious crime.’
The intensified search, the largest yet, saw parties dispatched in a northerly direction from Newlands Corner, others to Albury and Chilworth and still another as far as Peaslake. That afternoon the chief suspect drove to Newlands Corner with his wife’s dog and accompanied Deputy Chief Constable Kenward for three hours to no avail. Archie’s agitation was growing hourly, for the one thing he had dreaded all along had finally become a reality: Nancy’s name had found its way into the morning newspapers as ‘a friend’ of the Jameses.
On Thursday evening Archie lost his nerve completely. He gave an exclusive interview to his wife’s favourite newspaper, which, contrary to his intention, made it obvious that his marriage had disintegrated and set tongues wagging more energetically than ever.
Chapter Ten
‘The Suspense of the Uncertainty is Terrible’
The interview Archie gave the Daily Mail for its Friday the 10th edition had a profound effect on the public’s perception of his marriage. His suggestion that he was clinging to the hope that his wife had stage-managed her disappearance, far from gaining him sympathy, made more apparent the rift between the couple.
The story ran at considerable length under the headlines ‘Five Hundred Police Search for Mrs. Christie, Husband’s Statement to the Daily Mail, Belief in Voluntary Disappearance’, during the course of which Archie unwisely elaborated his theory:
‘It is quite true that my wife had discussed the possibility of disappearing at will. Some time ago she told her sister “I could disappear if I wished and set about it properly.” They were discussing what appeared in the papers, I think. That shows that the possibility of engineering a disappearance had been running through her mind, probably for the purpose of her work. Personally, I feel that is what happened. At any rate, I am buoying myself up with that belief.’
Archie, intent on avoiding any suggestion of murder, continued:
‘You see, there are three possible explanations of her disappearance: voluntary, loss of memory, and suicide. I am inclined to the first, although, of course, it may be loss of memory as a result of her highly nervous state. I do not believe this is a case of suicide. She never threatened suicide, but if she did contemplate that, I am sure her mind would turn to poison, but that she used poison largely in her stories. I have remonstrated with her in regard to this form of death, but her mind always turned to it. If she wanted to get poison, I am sure she could have done so. She was very clever at getting anything she wanted. But against the theory of suicide you have to remember this: if a person intends to end his life he does not take the trouble to go miles away and then remove a heavy coat and walk off into the blue before doing it. That is one reason why I do not think my wife has taken her life. She removed her fur coat and put it into the back of the car before she left it, and then I think she probably walked down hill and off – God knows where. I suggest she walked downhill because she always hated walking uphill.’
Archie spoke in veiled terms of the morning of the disappearance:
‘I left home at 9.15 a.m. in the ordinary way and that was the last time I saw my wife. I knew that she had arranged to go to Yorkshire for the week-end. I understand that in the morning she went motoring and then lunched alone. In the afternoon she went to see my mother at Dorking. She returned here in time for dinner, which she took alone. I do not know what happened after that; I only know that she got into such a state that she could not sit down quietly to read or work. I have got into that state myself many a time and have gone out for a walk just aimlessly. That, I think, is what my wife did, but instead of walking she took the car, a four-seater, and drove off. She apparently packed a small suitcase before she went and took it with her. It was found in the car with all its contents complete, so far as we know.’
When his unusual relationship with his wife was challenged in light of his sensational theory, Archie resorted to lies:
‘It is absolutely untrue to suggest there was anything in the nature of a row or tiff between my wife and myself on Friday morning. She was perfectly well – that is to say, as well as she had been for months past. She knew I was going away for the week-end; she knew who were going to be the members of the little party at the house at which I was going to stay and neither then nor at any time did she raise the slightest objection. I strongly deprecate introducing any tittle-tattle into this matter. That will not help me to find my wife; that is what I want to do. My wife has never made the slightest objection to any of my friends, all of whom she knew.’
Returning to his original theme of his wife having staged her vanishing act, Archie truthfully stated that he did not know how much money Agatha had on her:
‘If she had planned this disappearance it is quite possible that she may have accumulated a considerable sum of money secretly. I do know that neither of her two banking accounts – one at Sunningdale for household purposes, and the other at Do
rking for private purposes – has been drawn upon since she disappeared. Indeed, both of her cheque books are in the house . . . That is all I know, and I need hardly tell you that the suspense of the uncertainty is terrible.’
Short of telling the truth and confiding the real reasons for Agatha’s recent anguish, Archie could not have made a more disastrous move in his bid to disarm suspicion and gain public sympathy.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail had interviewed the proprietor of a West End store in Albemarle Street who disclosed that Agatha had visited the store on the Monday before her disappearance and had chosen an elaborate white satin nightgown trimmed with lace, saying she particularly wanted it for the weekend.
On Friday the 10th Archie had another unpleasant surprise: he was invited by both the Berkshire and Surrey police, who had finally learned of his destruction of his wife’s letter to him, to explain his reasons for failing to report the matter. His insistence that the letter had referred to a purely personal matter, which he refused to disclose and which he maintained had no bearing on events, was regarded with the utmost incredulity by the police officers. His admission that he burned it after being recalled to Styles on the morning of Saturday the 4th, following news of the discovery of Agatha’s abandoned car, was not regarded as consistent with a man who had nothing to hide and who was distraught to learn of her disappearance.
Subsequently a long police conference between the two investigating counties was held at Bagshot Police Station. Deputy Chief Constable Kenward and Inspector Butler were present. The meeting was not attended by Superintendent Goddard of the Berkshire police whose opinion throughout the investigation was: ‘When she has worked out her little problem she will return.’
The same day the Daily News scooped their competitors in a minor way when the detective novelist Dorothy L. Sayers gave her explanation for the disappearance.
‘In any problem of this kind there are four possible solutions: loss of memory, foul play, suicide or voluntary disappearance. The first – loss of memory – is bound to present us with a baffling situation, because it implies an entire lack of motive, and it is an axiom of detection that where there is a motive there is a clue. But a voluntary disappearance, also, may be so cleverly staged as to be exceedingly puzzling – especially if, as here, we are concerned with a skillful writer of detective stories, whose mind has been trained in the study of ways and means to perplex.’
She sounded a cautionary note when she pointed out that the newspaper reports, which were all the public had to go on, were necessarily ‘very incomplete’ and ‘one cannot ask all the questions which one’s own ideal detective would instantly put’. A number of unanswered questions suggested themselves to her. Were the car’s lights good when Agatha left home or so dim that she might have accidentally run off the road? Had the brakes been applied when the car left the road at Newlands Corner? How long did the car stand in the bushes before it was first seen? Was Agatha an experienced or an erratic driver? Had her family known of the intended visit to Beverley? Was the writer known at the boarding-house?
Dorothy L. Sayers concluded: ‘These are only a few of the things one wants to know about before one can even begin to “have a theory” . . . We can only hope the explanation will turn out not to be a tragic one, and wish the real detectives a speedy success in their quest.’
On the night of Friday the 10th reporters found out that Agatha had left a letter for Archie at Styles, and the next day they were quick to tell their readers that he had destroyed it without revealing its contents. The public were in very little doubt by now that Agatha’s communication to her secretary Charlotte on the night of the disappearance was more than a ‘note saying she was going for a drive’, as stated in the guarded police circular.
The Christie household was not the only one to come under increased press scrutiny. In an interview with the Daily Mail, Sam James, who had dismissed his servants for gossiping to the press about Archie’s liaison with Nancy, tersely denied that his friend had any involvement in the author’s disappearance:
‘The party consisted of my wife, a Miss Neele, the Colonel and myself. Suggestions have been made that Colonel Christie was called up by his wife while he was here, or that he went out and met his wife, or that she came here to meet him. Nothing of that kind happened. I believe that Mrs Christie returned home and found the Colonel was spending the week-end with us, and that she then drove off in a fit of pique.’
The scenario of Agatha being a scorned wife and Archie being a philandering, pleasure-seeking husband looked increasingly plausible. The fact that the Liverpool Weekly Post, on Saturday 4 December, had begun a three-month serialization of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, under the novelist’s original title, opened up the possibility to the public that she might have disappeared voluntarily as a publicity stunt. Her career was perhaps all she had left, as it was evident that her marriage was in tatters.
Edgar Wallace, whose play The Ringer was drawing audiences at Wyndham’s Theatre in London, added to the flames of speculation in the Daily Mail. Although his reconstruction of the disappearance was flawed by the assumption that the chalk pit into which her car almost plunged was between Newlands Corner and Guildford instead of Newlands Corner and Albury, he was correct in his speculations as to Agatha’s motive and why he thought the amnesia theory did not hold water:
‘The disappearance seems to be a typical case of ‘mental reprisal’ on somebody who has hurt her. To put it vulgarly, her first intention seems to have been to ‘spite’ an unknown person who would be distressed by her disappearance. That she did not contemplate suicide seems evident from the fact that she deliberately created an atmosphere of suicide by the picturesque abandonment of her car. Loss of memory, that is to say, mental confusion, might easily have followed, but a person so afflicted could not possibly escape notice. We must exclude the possibility of her being in some institute or in the care of somebody who has found her. The wide publicity that has been given to her disappearance disposes of such a possibility.’
It needed very little imagination to deduce that Archie was the person Agatha wished to spite. Edgar Wallace believed that she had been surprised by the excessive publicity and was finding it difficult to reappear. In summing up, he said:
‘If Agatha Christie is not dead of shock and exposure within a limited radius of the place where her car was found she must be alive and in full possession of her faculties, probably in London. It is impossible to lose your memory and find your way to a determined destination.’
Undeterred by his inability to pinpoint Agatha, in December 1927 Edgar Wallace produced one of his more sensational tales, published in the Pall Mall magazine, in which the discovery of bloodstains in and around a bungalow in Berkshire leads the police of that county to entertain the gravest of concerns for its missing occupant, Mrs Gray, who is linked to a mysterious motoring ordeal on a hilltop in the neighbouring county of Sussex. The short story was entitled ‘The Sunningdale Murder’.
Peg, distressed by Archie’s ill-judged interview with the Daily Mail, came to her son’s defence by allowing herself to be interviewed and informing the newspaper’s readers that Archie and Agatha were ‘a devoted couple’ and that, in her opinion, her daughter-in-law had not recovered from her mother’s death earlier that year. Peg suggested that after leaving the car Agatha had probably walked a considerable distance before meeting her end:
‘It is my opinion that she will not be found in water, as she was a strong swimmer, and the suddenness of any immersion would, I believe, at once restore her to her senses. I note that Colonel Christie thinks she voluntarily disappeared, but I cannot agree with my son.’
Later on Saturday the 11th the evening press publicized the Surrey Constabulary’s appeal for the public’s voluntary assistance in searching the Surrey Downs the following day. It was a calculated move, involving the cooperation and pooling of resources of police and press, to determine once and for all if this was where the solution to the mystery lay.
Chapter Eleven
Great Expectations
The Great Sunday Hunt, as it became known, began inauspiciously with rain falling until seven in the morning. Staff from the Duke of Northumberland’s Albury estate were best qualified of all to assist. Each day that Agatha had been missing the estate had sent out thirty of its men to search for her, including Fred Baker, Ben Merrit, Ern Tyso and Frank Tuilip. They knew Newlands Corner and the land for miles around like the backs of their hands and their intimate knowledge ensured that the police searches to date had been meticulously conducted. The opinion of the estate workers was that Agatha had committed suicide and it had become a matter of pride for them to locate her before anyone else did. The competition, however, was considerably stiffer than on the previous weekend owing to the public response to the police appeal broadcast in the press.
The Sunday Express featured an article by ex-Chief Inspector Walter Dew, the man who had arrested the wife-murderer Dr Crippen as he fled across the Atlantic on the Montrose with his lover Ethel Le Neve. (Recent DNA evidence has thrown doubt on Crippen’s conviction.) The retired police officer asserted that Agatha’s disappearance was altogether different from that of Crippen’s wife, Belle Ellmore. Dew maintained that no clever writer of Agatha’s standing would believe that to disgrace herself ‘for publicity’s sake’ would be of service to her in her work. He was happy to accept loss of memory or hysteria as the likeliest reason for Agatha’s absence:
