Chapter Nine
Persistent Scrutiny

 

Agatha’s continuing absence ensured that Archie’s movements were monitored by the police inside Styles and the press outside. It was abhorrent to him that his friends should have been dragged into the matter: the staff of the James household had described the evening of Friday the 3rd as an unofficial engagement party for Archie and Nancy. A more remarkable aspect of the gathering that emerged during police inquiries was that Sam and Madge James had presumed the Colonel was definitely estranged or living apart from his wife.

Nancy, whose liaison with Archie cast her in a less than respectable light, was viewed by the police as a naïve young woman who had been misled by an older man. While she was loyal to Archie throughout, her parents, who were shielding her from the public gaze at their home at Croxley Green, Rickmansworth, were an added complication. Charles Neele, an electrical engineer, and his wife Mabel had been horrified to learn of their daughter’s affair and of the illicit weekend, and they applied intense pressure on Nancy to have nothing more to do with the Colonel.

Sam James, their host on the evening of the disappearance, did his utmost to defend Archie by insisting that the only car at Hurtmore Cottage that night had been shut in a garage and the household would have been alerted to any departure by the barking of the family dog.

Deputy Chief Constable Kenward was not so sure. If Archie had murdered his wife it was possible he might have arranged an assignation with her at Newlands Corner after the James household had retired for the night. While there was no direct evidence of a scuffle by husband and wife on the plateau, the possibility of murder could not be ruled out. The police officer found Archie ‘vague and defensive’ when questioned about his private life and his movements on the night of the disappearance, and this had the effect of drawing the policeman’s suspicions to him like a magnet.

With the threat of public scandal Archie stood on the brink of losing everything: his business reputation, his social standing and the woman he loved. He was no longer under any illusion that Agatha was dead; after the discovery of the letter to his brother, Archie was convinced she was alive and playing games with him.

Campbell’s disclosure of the letter his sister-in-law had posted to him did not diminish police and press scrutiny of Archie’s private life, since it was deemed possible that someone might have posted the letter on Agatha’s behalf or that she might have doubled back to Newlands Corner after posting it herself.

In a bid to curtail the inquisition into his affairs Archie urged the Berkshire police to issue a missing persons poster, and, as an incentive, he said he was prepared to foot the bill.

Sebastian Earl, who worked in the office next to Archie’s in the city, broke a lifetime’s silence years later to recall how, while Agatha was missing, the two men had found themselves sharing a lift as they rode up to the sixth floor of the Rio Tinto Company building in London where the offices of Austral Ltd were situated.

‘He was in a terribly nervous state and told me the police had followed him up Broad Street and all the way to the office and were now waiting outside. “They think I’ve murdered my wife,” he said. He went into his office and though I saw him several times during the week when he looked progressively worse he never referred to it again – and of course I didn’t either.’

By Wednesday the 8th the press was aware that Archie was suspected by the police of having murdered Agatha, and speculation was rife, in particular, regarding the catalyst for Agatha’s departure from Styles on the night of Friday the 3rd.

Jim Barnes of the Daily News was convinced that the first intimation that the author had of Archie’s plans for the weekend with Nancy was when Charlotte had rung her employer at Styles shortly after six o’clock on the evening of the disappearance. What the journalists did not realize was that Agatha had learned of Archie’s plans that morning. Barnes mistakenly believed that Charlotte had rung Archie at the Jameses’ home near Godalming that evening to warn him that Agatha was on her way there to confront him. This led Barnes’s colleague Ritchie Calder to speculate whether Archie might not have muttered his excuses and left the Jameses’ house to drive to Newlands Corner to waylay and perhaps silence his wife. The fact that both Archie and the police denied this far-fetched scenario made the press all the more suspicious, not least because he was already the police’s prime suspect; they still thought he might have left the house after the others had retired for the night.

Stanley Bishop, the Daily Express’s leading reporter, was so convinced that Archie was implicated in Agatha’s disappearance that he repeatedly exhorted Deputy Chief Constable Kenward to call in Scotland Yard to assist in the combing of the Surrey Downs. The police officer was unable to consider such a move, despite his belief that Archie was a murderer, because his Chief Constable, Captain Sant, was vehemently opposed to the idea.

Although the police were permanently stationed at the front and back doors of Styles to prevent the press from mobbing Archie and the other inhabitants, they were unable to prevent him from being accosted away from his home. The Colonel began to crack and, in attempting to run the gauntlet on the night of Wednesday the 8th, he made a series of ill-advised remarks which appeared in the London Evening News the following day:

‘I cannot account for her disappearance save that her nerves have completely gone, and that she went away for no real purpose whatever.

I left home on Friday to spend the week-end with friends. Where I stayed I am not prepared to state. I have told the police. I do not want my friends dragged into this. It is my business alone. I have been badgered and pestered like a criminal, and all I want is to be left alone. My telephone is constantly ringing. All manner of people are asking about my wife. Why, I even get clairvoyants ringing me up and telling me the only hope I have of finding her is by holding a séance.

I am worried to death. When I heard that she had disappeared I at once went to Newlands Corner, where I was told the car had been found. That was on Saturday, and I have been here ever since.

My wife was going to spend the week-end away. I usually spend the week-end away.’

On Thursday the 9th the Daily Express was one of several newspapers to criticize the Berkshire and Surrey police forces for their failure to call in Scotland Yard. The reporters believed there was rivalry between the two constabularies, and their conviction was reinforced by the fact that the Berkshire police were not helping in the search of the Surrey Downs. What the journalists were not aware of was that Scotland Yard was already actively involved in investigating a large number of suspected sightings by people who thought they had seen Agatha.

The report of a suspected sighting of Agatha on an omnibus in London failed to take the heat off Archie. A Miss Bishop had contacted the Wokingham police in Berkshire to inform them that the woman in question had worn a curiously spotted sealskin coat. After hearing details of the incident Superintendent Goddard said: ‘I’m afraid that not much importance can be attached to her statement, but personally I think Mrs Christie is still alive.’

Two distinct avenues of investigation became evident on Thursday the 9th. The Berkshire police circulated a missing persons poster with a full-length composite photograph of Agatha showing what she had been wearing on the night of her disappearance, while Deputy Chief Constable Kenward instigated another search of the Surrey Downs. The press speculated that the reason for this was because a member of the public had found a shoe on the lower slopes of Albury the previous day, but as the officer explained in his report to the Home Office:

‘The lady disappeared under circumstances which opened out all sorts of possibilities; she might have been wandering with loss of memory over that vast open country around Newlands Corner, or she might have fallen down one of the numerous gravel pits that abound there and are covered in most instances with undergrowth and lying in helpless agony, or she might have been, as was strongly suggested to the police, the victim of a serious crime.’

The intensified search, the largest yet, saw parties dispatched in a northerly direction from Newlands Corner, others to Albury and Chilworth and still another as far as Peaslake. That afternoon the chief suspect drove to Newlands Corner with his wife’s dog and accompanied Deputy Chief Constable Kenward for three hours to no avail. Archie’s agitation was growing hourly, for the one thing he had dreaded all along had finally become a reality: Nancy’s name had found its way into the morning newspapers as ‘a friend’ of the Jameses.

On Thursday evening Archie lost his nerve completely. He gave an exclusive interview to his wife’s favourite newspaper, which, contrary to his intention, made it obvious that his marriage had disintegrated and set tongues wagging more energetically than ever.