Disappearance of Agatha Christie in 1926 : The End of the Story
The missing of Agatha Christie for 11 days, her car found abandoned in the bushes of a quarry, this is a news story that has caused a lot of ink to flow. More articles, now online, about the case were added every year. Since The Secret of Newlands Corner, on this incredible case the answer appeared with a new theory .
(Part 5)
On Saturday, December 4, 1926 around 5:00–5:30 am, Agatha Christie takes a dirt road along a quarry near Albury. She throws her car against a grassy embankment. She stays a few moments in her car, a Morris Cowley, takes off her fur coat and walks up the hill to Newlands Corner. Then she turns left into Trodds Lane to reach the second car parked 300 meters after the crossroads.
Note that during the police investigation, the Superintendent of Berkshire (the county where the missing person lived) took into account the way the novelist was dressed. It seemed obvious to him that “she could have spent the night comfortably in her car wearing a fur coat, and then when she decided to leave the car, she threw away the coat, which was too heavy to walk in. Underneath the fur coat, she wore warm clothes like the ones women wear on their walks in the country”.
Later, once cyclist Edward McAllister, after several tries, started the second car that had been parked for long hours on the side in Trodds Lane, Agatha Christie set off gently at about 7am towards the north-east of Guilford, then in the direction of Leatherhead and south-west London. In 2000, The Guardian* published “an interview with Nan Watts’ daughter, a close friend and in-laws relative of Christie’s”. In this interview, Nan’s daughter suggests that Agatha was helped in her disappearance by her mother.
According to Nan’s daughter, it was agreed that the novelist could spend the night of Friday 3 to Saturday 4 December with Nan, who had moved to London at Chelsea Park Gardens. On that night her second husband George Kon was absent precisely. This suggestion is made in connection with the idea that the novelist spent the night in Chelsea after returning from Newlands Corner by train.
Back in London
With the theory of the second car, Agatha Christie arrives in London around 9 am, parks the borrowed car, and posts the letter for her brother-in-law Campbell Christie. On Tuesday, December 7, the novelist’s brother-in-law received a letter from Agatha and, according to the postmark, the letter was postmarked December 4 at 9:45 a.m. in the London SW1 postal district. This is therefore an area through which Agatha would have passed before the postmark was postmarked. Unless someone else mailed the letter there is little doubt about this. Nan Kon’s residence is located in the postal zone immediately adjacent to SW1, London SW3.
Once in London, Agatha Christie went to buy clothes including a new coat. Everyone agrees that she then took the train. She took a train at King’s Cross station to go precisely to the area where a few days earlier she had decided to spend the Weekend (Beverley in East Yorkshire) and chose Harrogate, the Spa town in North Yorkshire where she was found 11 days after her departure from Styles. At the Swan Hydropathic Hotel, she is welcomed on her appearance and her statements that her name is Teresa Neele and that she comes from Cape Town, South Africa.
At Harrogate Agatha Christie borrowed Neele’s name from her husband’s golf partner Nancy Neele, with whom Archibald Christie had fallen in love some time before. Her husband wanted to divorce her and leave with his mistress, so the couple quarreled on the morning of Friday 3rd. On December 14, 1926, eleven days after she left Styles, a banjo player at the Harrogate Hotel, Bob Tappin, recognized the novelist and alerted the police. Colonel Christie then came to pick up his wife at the hotel. End of the story.
Matching elements and clues
Surprisingly, the novelist had placed a curious classified ad in the Times asking friends and relatives to contact this Teresa Neele.
On the other side of the Atlantic, and further on in the world, in some newspapers of mid-december, 1926, the name Teresa Neele, certainly through a transcription error, will become Mrs. Trazenell.
Various elements are scattered. In Agatha Christie’s life, such as the presence at her side of her secretary and confidante Charlotte Fisher (known as Carlo), to whom she will dedicate The Mystery of the Blue Train, a novel she was working on with difficulty at the time of her adventure. Then in her books. Was cited The Case of the Missing Lady, a short story published in October 1924 in which there are two villages of the same name, and then The Manhood of Edward Robinson, another short story published by Agatha Christie two years earlier in December, in which it is about two identical cars. We can add The Hollow, a novel in which an artist sculpting and modelling clay, Henrietta Savernake, has both driving qualities and enthusiasm for road shortcuts.
On the other hand, the help provided by her lifelong friend Nan, seems undeniable. The discovery of a play, The Lie created by Agatha Christie, apparently written in the mid 1920s and never performed, showed Nan as the first name of the main character. The play, which historically preceded the novelist famous stage thrillers, remained in the author’s archives for several decades until it was finally found. The theme is that of a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage, caused by her husband’s obsession for her younger sister.
The wife, Nan Gregg, disappears for one night from the family home “with devastating consequences.” The play unfolds on “A series of dramatic revelations (that) will lead to either divorce or reconciliation, but the outcome will depend on Nan’s sister’s willingness to lie to protect her.”
No reconciliation was possible between Agatha and Archibald Christie in the months following this disappearance and they finally divorced.
* Andrew Norman. Agatha Christie: The Disappearing Novelist https://books.google.fr
** http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/surrey/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_9005000/9005502.stm
Read the French version of this text for more documents to see https://www.sofb.fr/2020/12/le-voile-leve-sur-la-disparition-agatha-christie-1926.html
Photo: pixabay.com
(Edited 04/01/21)
