Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie gave the world the characters Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, wrote 66 mystery novels and more than a dozen collections of short stories, and the record setting play The Mousetrap. The Mousetrap has been in continuous production in London’s West End Theatre District since 1952. Christie has sold an estimated 2 billion books worldwide, beginning in the aftermath of the First World War, when she found success with the Belgian detective she created, Hercule Poirot. Agatha married Archibald Christie in the days leading up to the First World War, in which he served in the Royal Flying Corps.
By 1926 Agatha was widely known in the United Kingdom as a mystery writer and her financial success was growing. Archibald, whom she called Archie, had returned from the war and worked in the financial district in London. They had a child, a daughter named Rosalind, and they toured the world promoting the Poirot stories. When Agatha became aware of her husband’s philandering while on the tour she confronted him and he asked her for a divorce. After returning to their London home Archie left to spend a weekend with his mistress. Around 9.30 that same evening – December 3 – Agatha left a note to her secretary which informed her that she was going to Yorkshire. Agatha’s car was later found parked above a quarry.
Agatha’s disappearance on December 3, 1926 was front page news in both the United Kingdom and the United States. The Home Secretary pressured London newspapers to offer rewards for information leading to her recovery. A national search for the writer involved more than 15,000 volunteers, who worked with over 1,000 police officers to locate her. She was found on December 14 at a hotel in Yorkshire, registered under the surname of her husband’s mistress. She was examined by doctors who found her to be in a fugue state, a form of amnesia.
Agatha never discussed her vanishing for ten days, other than with her doctors, and her autobiography does not mention the subject at all. The reasons for her disappearance remain the subject of disagreement among researchers, biographers, and mental health professionals. Several books written over two and a half decades beginning in 1930 by Agatha were published under a pen name. The differences in style between these books and Agatha’s writings under her own name have been purported to tell the story of Agatha’s lost ten days, but they have not been clearly deciphered as yet.
Agatha divorced Archie, later remarried, and went on to her storied success. She lived to the age of 85, dying in 1976. If she knew the answer to the mystery of her disappearance fifty years earlier she took it with her. After the initial furor over her disappearance and dramatic reappearance died down, a backlash claiming that the whole thing had been simply a publicity stunt was inevitable. It remains one mystery Agatha created with no clear solution.
Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
The Winston Churchill Society winstonchurchill.org
Louis XVI: The Silent King and the Estates by John Hardman
Tesla Memorial Society of New York
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson
Stonewall Jackson: Popular Questions. The Virginia Military Institute
Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts
George Washington’s Mount Vernon
