Prologue
Grandfather’s Whiskers

 

When Agatha Christie disappeared in December 1926 she was the toast of literary London with the publication of her sixth novel. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was primarily a connoisseur’s item when it first appeared, quickly selling 4,000 copies, but, as controversy raged over whether she had played fair or tricked her readers over the killer’s identity and further reprints were destined to sell out, what no one realized was that it was set to become one of the most discussed detective stories ever written.

The debates about the novel confirmed Agatha’s place as a rising star in the firmament of crime writers of the time. However, what should have been a happy period in her life was about to become the most traumatic. Shortly before the publication of the book her mother, to whom she was devoted, died. Not long after this her husband, Colonel Archibald Christie, a dashing flying hero of the First World War, told her that he had fallen in love with a young woman called Nancy Neele.

Then the unthinkable happened – Agatha vanished on the night of 3 December and the story became front-page news throughout Great Britain. News of marital discord came swiftly to the attention of the authorities. For a week and a half three police forces in the south of England competed to find her. Innumerable special constables, members of the public and the press assisted in the search. The revelation that the missing woman’s husband had spent the night of the disappearance with his mistress led to whispers of suicide and murder.

The search came to an abrupt end on 14 December when Agatha was officially identified by her husband at a prestigious health hydro in Harrogate. The outcome, although dramatic, never fully explained how and why she had disappeared. Questions were asked about the extravagant lifestyle the missing writer had been leading, and the Colonel’s explanation as to what had happened to her was considered by many to be far from convincing. He responded to public censure by calling in the family doctor and a consultant, and soon a carefully worded statement was released to the effect that she was ‘suffering from an unquestionably genuine loss of memory’. He made a personal appeal to the press to let the matter drop, so that his wife could be restored to health and enjoy their married life out of the media spotlight.

It was, however, the end of the Christies’ marriage, and the rest of the tragic drama that had briefly erupted on the public stage was played out resolutely behind closed doors. It was from this period that Agatha’s revulsion of the press dated; it was later exacerbated by further headlines over her divorce from Archie and his subsequent marriage to Nancy Neele.

The public furore that erupted over the disappearance meant that Agatha went overnight from being a moderately well-known author to being a household name. After she was found she became the target of cartoonists, comedians and bar-room wits. Some members of the public were convinced that she must have experienced some sort of temporary mental breakdown. Others believed that her literary agent had organized the disappearance and spoke of it as a major publicity stunt.

The story soon vanished from the headlines, but a measure of the fame she achieved throughout Great Britain is attested to by a popular song which was sung each summer in the late 1920s on a stage constructed on Bourne-mouth beach by Birchmore and Lindon’s Gay Cadets. ‘Grandfather’s Whiskers’ was altered thus to include their own explanation of the affair:

Grandfather’s whiskers, grandfather’s beard!

Never had it shingled, never had it sheared!

Where did Mrs Christie go when she disappeared?

Into grandfather’s whiskers, grandfather’s beard!

Until the publication of this biography the facts behind the disappearance had remained a mystery, and the incident had never been forgotten, despite the apparently normal and happy life Agatha led afterwards. Sadly, the stability she enjoyed following her second marriage was undermined by further shame and heartbreak which she hid from the public. When in later years she relaxed her guard and allowed the occasional journalist into her presence it was always on the condition that she was not asked questions about her private life or the disappearance. The few interviewers who were privileged to meet her seldom came away better informed: she had her stock answers and seldom deviated from them. The real Agatha was a complex woman who kept herself deliberately hidden from the public.

Despite the reverberations over her disappearance she gained more fans than she lost. An extraordinary example of how popular she became is a letter from a survivor of the German concentration camp at Buchenwald who wrote to her after the war telling her how the inmates had devised and performed a production of her novel Ten Little Niggers. Although it was one of her most macabre stories, in which all the characters are murdered one by one, the suspenseful plot, together with the underlying morality of the tale, had had the effect of lifting the prisoners’ spirits.

Inevitably, there were honours: a CBE in 1956, a Doctorate of Letters in 1961 and a DBE in 1971. By then her readers had come to expect their ‘Christie for Christmas’. When it seemed as if further fame and success were impossible, Sidney Lumet’s faithful 1974 film version of Murder on the Orient Express marked the most successful adaptation of her work for the screen ever and resulted in a major film première. Although she savoured the evening and the widespread accolades, she never forgave the press for having intruded into her private life at a time when she had been at her most vulnerable. The emotional scars caused by the disappearance had never entirely left her. Her death two years later, on 12 January 1976, left such a void in the sphere of crime literature that hers is one of the foremost names by which would-be detective writers are compared.

The posthumous publication of her autobiography in 1977 was awaited eagerly. Would she finally reveal what had really happened during those eleven missing days? Far from comment on the disappearance, however, her memoirs made no reference to it whatsoever. Many of her readers felt cheated. Some commentators even wondered if it was an eccentric act of revenge on the press which had hounded her all those years before.

The tributes she still receives as a writer inevitably mention the disappearance, and so the one incident in her life which she would have preferred not to be dwelt on has continued to invite questions. To understand what happened it is necessary to examine her life from childhood, for it was here, surprisingly, that the seeds of her unhappiness were sown.