The perplexing 11-day disappearance of Agatha Christie

In her mid-thirties, crime novelist Agatha Christie disappeared without explanation. Her beloved mother had recently passed away and there was growing discord and acrimony in the Christie household. A massive manhunt ensued which bizarrely involved two other authors, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Dorothy Sayers. Agatha was found 11 days after at the Swan Hydro, a luxurious hotel in the spa town of Harrogate. It appeared that she had earlier checked in under the assumed name of the rumoured mistress of her husband, Archibald.  Agatha’s husband would later ascribe the author’s disappearance  to “memory loss”. 

The mystery has persisted even almost a century after Agatha Christie’s disappearance. The “memory loss” explanation strikes one as unimaginative considering that it is the enigmatic Agatha who is involved here. Did the author really enter a psychogenic trance, a condition brought on by trauma or depression? Did she stage her disappearance as a publicity stunt to promote her books? Or did she do it as a comeuppance to her philandering husband?

Kristel Thornell attempts to fill the gaps in her “On the Blue Train” (2016).  We see Agatha’s escape to freedom and carefree days at Harrogate shopping, relaxing, dining, and dancing.  Fans of the author may find it hard to believe, however, that this is all to Agatha’s story. It is diaphanous, and the introduction of the lightweight widower Harry McKenna creates a weakness in Thornell’s narrative. 

Marie Benedict similarly tries her hand in “The Mystery of Mrs. Christie” (2020).  Instead of linearly explaining the disappearance, Benedict constructs her novel like a crime story.  She provides the context of the courtship and heady early days of the Christies couple, the unravelling of the marriage, the recriminations, and the attempt to salvage the family from Agatha’s point of view.  Benedict then cleverly embeds these against the nerve-wracking 11-day search for the missing author from Archibald’s perspective. The ending is so astute and cunning that it is something that the author would likely applaud, even if such had been only tangentially true. 

Nina De Gramont is even more audacious in her “The Christie Affair” (2022). The author creates a story within a story. She takes her readers on a long journey to Ireland in the 1900s with its appalling poverty and shocking orphanages and institutions for unwed mothers. One starts to wonder where Agatha and her privileged life fits in this tale of young love, abandonment, and disgrace. Then De Gramont marvellously ties all these seemingly loose threads in an explosive ending of vengeance, murder, redress, and possibilities.

If you want to do your own sleuthing, the Swan Hotel still exists. My takeaway, whatever the explanation is for Agatha Christie’s disappearance: do not mess with a writer.