by Jared Cade
Despite her increasing fame, Agatha remained elusive as far as her readers were concerned. The wall of silence she built between herself and her public merely increased the mystique that had surrounded her since the disappearance. Her literary advisers found that one way of curbing speculation over the incident was to stipulate to the numerous magazines and newspapers that competed to serialize her work that no publicity for her writings should refer to the events of 1926.
Yet it is the view of those who knew her and appreciate how much of herself she put into her writing that ‘nothing comes from nothing’. Agatha included minor incidents from her life in her detective fiction, and her creation of Mrs Ariadne Oliver, the detective novelist with a pretended scattiness, became a useful smokescreen to put off her reading public. The character became a spokeswoman for Agatha’s literary views, and, in the absence of any intimate knowledge of Agatha’s life, many of her fans mistakenly came to believe they knew her well through the character of Mrs Oliver.
In Agatha’s 1935 novel Death in the Clouds Harrogate was cited as the name of a London street. But the only time she referred to it as a spa town was in her 1936 murder mystery Cards on the Table. Mrs Oliver remarks chattily that she had a Welsh nurse who took her to Harrogate one day and went home having forgotten all about her. In the same book Agatha defended her own writing methods and took a pragmatic swipe at the British press. ‘I don’t care two pins about accuracy,’ Mrs Oliver says. ‘Who is accurate? Nobody nowadays. If a reporter writes that a beautiful girl of twenty-two dies by turning on the gas after looking out over the sea and kissing her favourite Labrador, Bob, goodbye, does anyone make a fuss because the girl was twenty-six, the room faced inland, and the dog was a Sealyham terrier called Bonnie? I don’t see it matters if I mix up police ranks and say a revolver when I mean an automatic.’
For the initiated, like Nan, there was the occasional parallel in Agatha’s detective fiction to other aspects of the disappearance: for example, the detailed description she gives in her 1936 novel of the newspaper coverage surrounding The ABC Murders was directly drawn from her own experience of the press in 1926.
Agatha was extremely fond of Judith and often took her on holidays with her and Max, including a trip to the châteaux of the Loire Valley in France. Judith recalls that on the outward-bound train journey from England she and Max snatched playfully at each other’s hands across the table until Agatha snapped: ‘Judy, stop that at once!’ Judith instantly complied with the request. She was taken aback at the anger in Agatha’s voice and embarrassed that her innocent game had caused offence. She resolved never again to upset Agatha in this way, and their friendship continued until Agatha’s death.
In her autobiography Agatha recalls that Rosalind’s party-loving friend measured all the French castles by one criterion only: ‘They could really have made whoopee here, couldn’t they?” The unnamed friend was, of course, Judith. Years later, after Judith had married Graham Gardner, Agatha sent the couple a Christmas card: ‘Whoopee! to Judy and Graham.’
In 1936 Nan was diagnosed as having cancer of the rectum. An operation was successful, and Agatha inscribed her novel Murder in Mesopotamia: ‘To Nan, the perfect mother because she has been very ill!’ Dumb Witness, published in 1937 (the same year Nan finally divorced George Kon, much to Judith’s satisfaction), was officially dedicated to Agatha’s beloved dog Peter and featured his image on the front cover. Nan’s copy of the novel was inscribed by Agatha: ‘To my not so Dumb Friend, Nan, the Smelly Kipper – from her old friend Starry-Eyes (?)’ This was a reference to the occasion when as young girls they had nailed two kippers underneath the dining-room chairs at Abney Hall before the adults sat down to lunch. To their great delight the pungent odour had baffled their elders.
Despite her happiness with Max, Agatha remained conscious of the fourteen-year-old age gap between them, especially when his work separated them. She hinted to him in several letters that she would not mind if he looked elsewhere for companionship from time to time, provided he was discreet and did not leave her, because, as she pointed out to him, she was ‘like a dog that needs to be taken for walks’, albeit not on a lead.
On 9 September 1936, two days before their sixth wedding anniversary, Max wrote a letter to Agatha to mark the occasion. He said he thought that sometimes, but not so very often, two people find real love together as they had, and then it was something that lay deep and intangible, not to be shaken by the wind. She was his dearest friend and his darling lover at the same time, and for him she would remain beautiful and precious with the passing of the years. She had the sweetest face of anyone in the world. He told her he would not add more except to say that he didn’t think anyone could know how much they meant to each other.
The work Agatha produced during the 1930s has come to epitomize what has now become known as the golden age of detective fiction. The absence of reference to contemporary religious, political and socio-economic problems has ensured that her books remain timeless, fresh for each successive generation, unlike many other crime writers of the time.
While keeping her public at a distance after 1926, she allowed her attitude to marital infidelity to come through strongly in her books. Her classic 1937 mystery Death on the Nile involves a romantic triangle, and here, as in most of her other novels, she treats the character of the ‘other woman’ sympathetically. This even applies when the ‘other woman’ is guilty of murder. The same cannot be said of the male home-wreckers in Agatha’s fiction. She regarded men as the custodians of society and marriage and did not hesitate to denounce those who steal other men’s wives as lounge lizards or even gigolos.
Meanwhile Agatha’s daughter Rosalind had completed her School Certificate at Benenden School in Kent and had spent a short period abroad, first in France and then in Germany, perfecting her languages, before returning home for her London season in 1937. Rosalind and her friend Susan North, both aged seventeen, had their season arranged for them by the latter’s mother, Dorothy, who was on friendly terms with Agatha. On Monday 26 April the two girls attended a rehearsal for the Queen Charlotte’s Birthday Ball. One of the débutantes’ duties was to bring in the birthday cake, as well as lend adornment to the occasion, which was staged on the 10th May at Grosvenor House in London. Both girls were successes as débutantes, but to Agatha’s regret her divorced status prevented her from being able to present her daughter at Buckingham Palace. Rosalind went with friends of her mother, Marion and Ernest Mackintosh. Ernest was at that time Director of the Science Museum in London and had, as a young man, been rather keen on Agatha’s sister Madge.
Unlike Nan’s daughter Judith, who had turned down the opportunity to take part in a London season, Rosalind enjoyed being a débutante. ‘It did her a great deal of good’, Agatha later recalled, ‘and gave her self-confidence and nice manners. It also cured her of any mad wish to continue the social racket indefinitely.’ Afterwards Rosalind and Susan announced that they wished to take up photography, but Agatha told Rosalind it was out of the question once she discovered that the two girls in fact wanted to take up a career in advertising as bathing-suit models. The two girls filled in time by accompanying Susan’s mother Dorothy to South Africa, where her son was based at Simonstown with the Navy.
In March 1938 Agatha persuaded Rosalind to accompany her and Max to north Syria where he was excavating at Brak. Here Rosalind saw her stepfather in a new light: contrary to his usual laid-back personality in England, at work he was a tireless, disciplined leader who was adept at coercing his colleagues into doing what he wanted with a combination of charm and threats. At Max’s request Rosalind did some drawings of the artefacts that were unearthed, but, unlike her self-confessed ‘slap-happy mother’, Rosalind was a perfectionist and she tore up the ones that did not satisfy her. This led to a furious argument between Max and Rosalind. The situation was made worse because they were both very fond of each other. Max salvaged his stepdaughter’s drawings, and some of them were used in various publi
cations about Tell Brak, although Rosalind was never happy with them.
Also joining the expedition that year was a young, personable architect called Guilford Bell. He was the son of some Australian friends whom Agatha had befriended years earlier on the British Empire tour with Archie and was something of an innocent abroad; the antics of some of the Arabs deeply shocked him. Although he disliked cricket, a sport enjoyed by Rosalind, the pair’s friendship developed sufficiently for them to go horse-riding together. Agatha wondered if she was observing the start of a burgeoning romance.
For several hours each day Agatha shut herself away from the other members of the dig and wrote. By this time she had begun to tire of her public’s insatiable demand for Hercule Poirot. When she had written her first book about him, she had not realized that he would become a millstone around her neck. She alternated between affection and irritation and had gone so far as to admit to her feelings earlier that year in January in her introduction to the Daily Mail’s serialization of Appointment with Death, the setting for which was inspired by a visit she and Max had made to Petra in Jordan.
Despite her ambivalent feelings, the Belgian sleuth took centre-stage once again in her next book, Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, which she dedicated to Nan’s brother Jimmy. Contrary to Agatha’s claim in her autobiography that she never based characters on people she knew, the descriptions she gave two of the murder suspects, Alfred and Lydia Lee, fitted Jimmy and his wife Madge perfectly:
‘Alfred was a squarely built man of middle age with a gentle face and mild brown eyes. His voice when he spoke was quiet and precise with a very clear enunciation. His head was sunk into his shoulders and he gave a curious impression of inertia. Lydia, his wife, was an energetic, lean greyhound of a woman. She was amazingly thin, but her movements had a swift, startled grace about them. There was no beauty in her careless, haggard face, but it had distinction.’
By September 1938 Agatha had completed yet another Poirot tale, Sad Cypress, in which three of the characters were drawn from herself, Archie and Max. Beneath her poised and aloofly attractive exterior Elinor Carlyle is unable to tell her fiancé Roddy Welman how much she loves him, because he has an intense aversion to talking about feelings and is acutely uneasy when others are unhappy or ill. She loses out to him in love but ultimately finds greater peace of mind with her doctor. Agatha sums up her feelings for Archie and Max when she says of Elinor that she loved Roddy unhappily, even desperately, but with Peter she could be happy.
According to Nan’s daughter Judith, around this time nineteen-year-old Rosalind and her stepfather Max, then aged thirty-four, began enjoying a series of ‘long, intimate lunches’ at the Savoy in London. Friends saw them in public and confided their suspicions to Nan, who being a close intimate of Agatha’s acted as a conduit to her friend. Agatha felt excluded from Rosalind’s and Max’s close relationship, and, once again, jealousy flared. Nan and Agatha had a series of talks on the subject. ‘You must find a way to distract Rosalind,’ Nan advised Agatha during their first tête-à-tête. The writer found that having a vivid imagination was an asset in her professional life, but it could lead to nervous preoccupations in her private life that were not always justified. Even so, she remained apprehensive. Nan and Judith, who often discussed Agatha’s problems with each other, were deeply suspicious of the pair. When a father and daughter enjoy an especially close bond, the mother, however jealous, usually does not fear that incest will enter into the relationship. However, in the case of a stepfather and a stepdaughter, the restraints are removed and the possibility of a sexual liaison is a more distinct possibility.
Just how innocent was Rosalind’s and Max’s relationship? There is no doubt that Rosalind was exceptionally fond of her stepfather. She was pessimistic by nature, and, while this often had the effect of rubbing her optimistic mother up the wrong way, Max was not in the least fazed by his stepdaughter’s critical or cynical attitude to life. Unable to forgive Agatha for divorcing her father Archie, Rosalind certainly found it easier to confide in Max, who was closer to her in age than her mother. Max could make Rosalind laugh at the contradictions in her own nature, and the two enjoyed arguing and matching each other’s bluntness of speech. It may well be that if one or both of them had romantic feelings for the other they never openly acknowledged or acted upon them. There is no doubt that Agatha resented the intimacy of their relationship, and her jealousy simmered. During her last talk on the subject with Nan the latter advised her that the best way to keep Rosalind and Max apart was to marry her daughter off.
Judith’s birthday fell on 16 September, the day after Agatha’s, and it was customary for them to enjoy their birthdays together with family and close friends. The last birthday they celebrated at Ashfield was in 1938: Judith was twenty-one and Agatha was forty-eight. Agatha would decorate the dining-room chairs with flowers, and on the appropriate day the one whose birthday it was took her place at the head of the table. ‘Agatha always made our birthdays such special occasions,’ recalls Judith.
Encroaching suburbia was spoiling the tranquillity of Ashfield, and, encouraged by Max, Agatha sold the small estate in 1938 to raise £6,000 to acquire Greenway, a white Georgian house, with over ten bedrooms, set in thirty-three acres of grounds overlooking the River Dart in Devon. Greenway became her summer residence for the rest of her life.
On the advice of Guilford Bell, who spent the summer in Devon with her family, Agatha had the ugly Victorian wing pulled down in order to restore Greenway to its former symmetry. At her request Guilford took charge of the project. A large sitting-room and bedroom was set aside for Rosalind on the second floor, while Agatha’s and Max’s private quarters were situated on the floor below.
Judith recalls that Agatha was especially fond of Guilford, since he was tall and fair and reminded her of Archie. Agatha came to regard him, in her own words, as ‘almost like a son’ and for a while hoped that he and Rosalind might marry. However, this was never on the cards because he was a homosexual. Years later, after her mother’s death, Rosalind would write to him to say: ‘You were one of her favourites.’
Not long after Agatha and Max moved in to Greenway Peter died and was buried in the grounds behind the house, a white cross bearing his name marking the site of his grave. She was greatly saddened because her beloved companion had sustained her through many difficult periods in her life, most notably the weeks before and after her disappearance. Although she was offered another dog, she could not bear to replace him at that time.
Nan’s friendship sustained Agatha; indeed, she was the first to sign Greenway’s visitors’ book: ‘Good luck to Greenway and Agatha and Max, lots of love Nanski.’ Agatha made light of Nan’s illness when she inscribed her 1939 novel, Murder Is Easy: ‘To my old friend B. Hinds from Agatha.’ (‘B. Hinds’ was a play on words following the surgery on Nan’s rectum.) Officially dedicated to Rosalind and Susan North, ‘the first two critics of this book’, Murder Is Easy is an underrated detective story because it does not feature Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple. It was also overshadowed by the release that year of the brilliant tour-de-force Ten Little Niggers, which has since become the world’s best-selling mystery with sales in excess of 100 million copies.
The start of the Second World War in September 1939 heralded the end of a decade that had brought both personal and professional happiness to the writer. It also led indirectly to the disappearance returning to haunt her once more.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Darkened Skies
As the war escalated and the skies over England darkened with enemy planes, Agatha came to rely on Max to provide love and consolation, despite their lengthy separations from each other. The fact that he wrote such loving and tender letters to her reassured her that she had not been a failure in life and that she had succeeded as a wife. She marvelled how she had changed from the forlorn, unhappy person he had met in the Middle East. She told him in a letter that he had done everything for her. For much of the war Max served a
broad as an adviser on Arab affairs.
Agatha longed to join her husband, but official hurdles prevented her from acquiring a position as a wartime correspondent. Unlike some of her compatriots who took flight from England for the duration, she moved to London to dispense medicine at University College Hospital, denying herself the financial advantages she would have gained from living in a foreign tax haven.
In June 1940 Agatha’s daughter Rosalind, then aged twenty, married 33-year-old Captain Hubert Prichard of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers at a register office in Denbigh in Wales. A born soldier with a bent for poetry, Hubert was a friend of Jack Watts, Agatha’s and Nan’s nephew, and had been introduced to Rosalind at Abney Hall. Agatha liked Hubert and hoped he and Rosalind would enjoy many years of lasting happiness together. Their marriage eased Agatha’s worries over Rosalind’s close relationship with Max.
Life was difficult for Agatha’s sister Madge and brother-in-law Jimmy, especially after the Luftwaffe began a series of bombing raids on Manchester’s military and civilian sites that culminated in the Christmas Blitz of 1940. Gone were the affluent pre-war days when there had been an indoor staff of sixteen at Abney Hall. Agatha once described her sister as ‘the most indefatigable woman I have ever known; a human dynamo’. Madge now ran Abney Hall with the help of a former kitchen-maid, who came in to cook the meals each day. When Agatha stayed at Abney Hall she would hear Madge start the housework around half-past five in the morning. She dusted and swept, made up the fires, cleaned the brass and polished the furniture. It was an enormous house with fourteen bedrooms and numerous sitting-rooms. Occasionally Madge would disguise herself as a maid when she brought breakfast to the officers billeted there. By half-past ten in the morning she would have finished all the housework and would turn her attention to the kitchen garden, where a large quantity of vegetables were being cultivated.
