Agatha Christie's Strange Disappearance
Amnesia, Media Hype, Revenge-3 Most Popular Theories
Sep 4, 2008
The famous British author known as Agatha Christie, was born May Clairssa Miller. This well-loved author was best known for her eighty detective novels. In 1914, she married Colonel Archibald Christie. In 1926, after twelve years of a troubled marriage, the mystery began.
Agatha’s Disappearance: The Facts
Agatha disappeared while living in Sunningdale in Berkshire on the eight of December in 1926. Her abandoned car was found near a lake in Newland’s Corner, Surrey, causing the start of a police investigation and much speculation on the part of the press.
There were speculations that she had run away or committed suicide, that it was all a publicity hoax, or that she had met with foul play. Agatha was found three weeks later in the Hydropathic spa hotel in Harrowgate, where she had checked in under a different name and stayed during the duration of her disappearance.
She was recognized by another guest as bearing a striking resemblance to Agatha. When Archie Christie came to identify his wife, she did not deny being Agatha Christie, but she claimed to be suffering from amnesia and said she had no idea how she came to be living under an assumed name in a spa in Harrowgate
Was Christie suffering from Amnesia?
Agatha Christie’s marriage to Archie was an unhappy one. Her husband began seeing another woman named Nancy Neele. In 1926, Archie asked for a divorce. Many believe that Agatha, upset by impending divorce and recent death of her mother, may have suffered a nervous breakdown.
The Publicity Hoax Theory
At the time of her disappearance, Agatha was an established mystery writer. Her latest novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd had made her famous and her disappearance became headline news. None could argue that her strange disappearance had all the elements of an Agatha Christie mystery.
A Woman Scorned
There was speculation at the time that Agatha may have staged her disappearance to get back at her husband for having an affair. Many believe she may have disappeared to arouse suspicion against her husband and to embarrass him by making him become a murder suspect.
The speculations that Archie had murdered his famous wife led the police to start an intensive investigation which included tapping his phone and following him. Though there is little substantiation for the belief Christie set her disappearance up to get revenge upon her husband, an interesting fact is that she signed into the health spa as Teresa Neele, using the same surname as her husband’s lover.
The most widely-accepted theory is that Agatha Christie was suffering from a state of amnesia. Biographer Andrew Norman has put forth the theory that Christie was afflicted by a rare form of stress-induced amnesia.
Whatever the cause of her mysterious 11-day drop out from her life, Agatha never spoke of the disappearance again. Was her vanishing due to amnesia, a publicity hoax or revenge against a husband planning to leave her? The answer Agatha Christie, an enigma to the end, took with her to the grave.
Additional Information:
The book Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days by Jared Cade is available on Amazon.
In 1982 a movie was made from the book Agatha, a speculative novel written in 1979 by Kathleen Tynan, about Agatha's disappearance starring Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman.
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