Chapter Sixteen
Her Heels Dug Up

 

The reports in the daily papers on Wednesday the 15th should have provided a warning to the inhabitants of Abney Hall of the prolonged press siege they were to endure. During the night many reporters, refusing to admit defeat, slept outside the main entrances to the estate in chartered taxi cabs. The nation was agog to discover the reasons for Agatha’s extraordinary conduct, and the press were determined to get to the bottom of the mystery.

After the Christies and the Wattses had retreated behind closed doors the united front they had presented in public almost immediately dissolved into recriminations, and their agitation was not helped by mounting public pressure. Although the ground staff were instructed by Jimmy to keep a sharp eye out for trespassing journalists, Agatha was advised not to leave the house in case she was spotted. She had no desire to do so and retired to her room in an attempt to avoid the inevitable recriminations.

The Daily News sent her a bluntly worded telegram: ‘In view of widespread criticisms of your disappearance strongly urge desirability of authentic explanation from yourself to thousands of the public who joined in costly search and shared anxiety and who cannot understand loss of memory in view of reports of your normal life at Harrogate and assumption of name of real person Neele.’

Anxious to avoid further scandal, Archie telegraphed a response to the newspaper on her behalf: ‘Wife suffering from loss of memory and probably concussion. She has no recollection of events on Friday or Saturday before arrival Harrogate. Has only recollected her true identity today. Remaining quietly under doctor’s orders.’

The suggestion that Agatha had concussion failed to convince the press. Noise is anathema to someone who is concussed, and journalists knew that on the night of her arrival at the hotel in Harrogate she had energetically danced the Charleston to the accompaniment of a five-piece band. Journalists, reluctant to believe Archie’s excuses of amnesia and concussion to explain his wife’s strange behaviour, reported that during her stay she had regularly entertained guests by playing the piano and singing in English, French, German and Italian.

It became apparent that something else had to be done to silence press doubts about the novelist’s mental state. Madge and Jimmy persuaded Agatha to agree to a consultation with the family doctor. Her claim to Henry Wilson on the morning of Thursday the 16th to be unable to remember anything of her past was supported by her sister and brother-in-law, and Archie too played his part, emphasizing how upset his wife had been earlier in the year at her mother’s death. Dr Wilson had signed Clarissa’s death certificate, and what he was told about Agatha’s grief was consistent with what he knew of her close relationship with her mother. The family impressed on him that newspaper reports of the ‘normality’ of her behaviour at the hotel could not be relied on and claimed that staff had told them that at times she had appeared distressed and disoriented.

Agatha was advised to rest by Dr Wilson in order to recover from her stressful ordeal. It was with some trepidation that her three co-conspirators fell in with the doctor’s suggestion of calling in a second expert to confirm his diagnosis of amnesia.

Outside, the press refused to disperse from the main gates. Several ground staff on their way to work were forced to climb over the wall, and the baker was unable to deliver his order. During the night a rumour had gained currency among the press to the effect that Agatha might have given them the slip and driven off to her brother’s home near Crewe. The story was false; the sole member of Agatha’s family who resided near there at Haslington Hall was Nan’s brother Humphrey. Sidney Campion, the Daily News’s late-night reporter, has since recalled what prompted Archie to yield to journalists’ demand for an interview:

‘I came into the story quite fortuitously. I happened to be one of the late duty men at the Daily News, and I was rushed off to Harrogate because I happened to be a barrister in the making, the editor thinking that Agatha Christie would be amused to have a chap like me on her trail. Had it been Margery Allingham it might have been more appropriate for me to go, because her principal character was Inspector Campion [sic]. I grant that I was in an exciting part of the story. I refer to the chase from Harrogate to Cheadle, Cheshire, where Colonel Christie blatantly demonstrated that the passport to success is the old school tie!’

The journalists’ waiting game outside Abney Hall finally paid off on the morning of Thursday 16 December, because by then Archie had realized they were determined to stay put. ‘We shall stay here till we get news!’ was their taunt, and at last Archie agreed to give an interview to one reporter to pass on to the rest. He scrutinized the fifty or sixty journalists and told John Young of the London Evening News he could have an interview – because the reporter was wearing the Colonel’s old school tie.

Archie spent three-quarters of an hour on the terrace of Abney Hall unsuccessfully trying to convince him that Agatha could not remember the past three years nor recall details of her present life, including the fact she lived in Sunningdale in a house called Styles. John Young was asked to believe that Agatha had no recollection of leaving home or how she got to Harrogate. He was told that Agatha now recognized Archie and her sister but had been unable to remember their daughter when shown a picture of Rosalind. Archie confirmed that Agatha had been examined by a doctor and that a specialist in nervous disorders was coming to see her that afternoon.

Being an unimaginative man, he was ill-equipped to lie persuasively to an experienced journalist, and his responses to John Young’s astute interrogation were defensive and unconvincing. Archie kept repeating it was a terrible tragedy and that all they wanted was to be left in peace.

However, medical experts consulted by the Evening News had emphasized that loss of memory was a distressing condition and that Agatha could not have had amnesia as she would not have been able to talk calmly and dance with strangers, sing and play the piano and buy clothes and consistently maintain a false identity while staying in Harrogate. John Young emerged from the grounds of the mansion convinced that the writer had never lost her memory. He told colleagues what Archie had said and expressed his doubts as to the veracity of the Colonel’s statements.

Press speculation was far from ended. Archie’s failure to account for the reason why Agatha had used the surname Neele resulted in reporters harassing the Neele family. Nancy’s father, Charles, released a statement denying any relationship between his daughter and Archie. Reporters were given to believe that it had just been coincidence that Nancy had been at the home of the Jameses together with Colonel Christie on the night of his wife’s disappearance and, in a particularly tactless remark, Nancy’s father added that it might have been any other girl present. In fact Charles and Mabel Neele were appalled by their daughter’s affair with Archie and were determined to put an end to it in order to salvage what was left of the family’s reputation.

Sam James, Archie’s host on the night of Agatha’s disappearance, was having an equally hard time fending off the press. Sam stuck resolutely to his story, claiming that Archie and Nancy had previously been unacquainted with each other and that when he had heard Agatha was going to Beverley in Yorkshire he had invited Archie down for the weekend, unaware that his own wife, Madge, had invited Nancy. Disclosures in the newspapers that Nancy knew Agatha and had been a guest of the Christies at Styles could not have come at a worst time.

When Agatha was seen on Thursday afternoon by Donald Core, a Manchester specialist in nervous disorders, the consultation she had already had with Dr Wilson proved a satisfactory dress rehearsal. She maintained her story that she could not remember anything, and the two doctors were happy to accede to the family’s request that they sign a brief statement to this effect; significantly this document did not endorse Archie’s claim that Agatha had been suffering from concussion.

If the doctors had known what was really going on they would have been far from willing to back up the family’s claim of amnesia. When Nan’s eighteen-year-old niece Eleanor Watts (daughter of Nan’s brother Humphrey and later to be Lady Campbell-Orde) came to tea that afternoon she was baffled to find Agatha reading one of her stories to Madge’s and Jimmy’s son Jack. Agatha and her nephew had always been close, and the normality of the scene could not have been at greater variance to the widespread reports of Agatha’s distressed and confused mental state.

Although Archie could have had one of the servants deliver the signed medical bulletin to the journalists camped outside Abney Hall’s gates on Thursday night, he preferred to do so himself, partly because he wished to project an image of someone who had nothing to hide and also because there was a danger that staff might say something indiscreet or allow themselves to be bribed by the press. He was accompanied by Dr Wilson, who had agreed to be present on the understanding that he would not be expected to speak to the press. The medical bulletin read as follows:

‘December 16, 1926. – After careful examination of Mrs Agatha Christie this afternoon, we have formed the opinion that she is suffering from an unquestionably genuine loss of memory and that for her future welfare she should be spared all anxiety and excitement.’

(Signed) Donald Core, MD

Henry Wilson, MRCS

Although Archie had no desire to say anything else to the pack of journalists, the medical statement left a number of questions unanswered, and he was heckled into further discussion. When asked to account for his wife’s choice of name in Harrogate, he insisted, to the reporters’ derision, that he and Agatha had a friend named Nancy Neele and that his wife had accidentally combined her surname with the Christian name of several of her relatives. Archie persisted in his claim that Agatha was suffering from probable concussion. When reporters asked Dr Wilson for confirmation of this, he said he was not prepared to comment.

In a stinging attack on the press Archie denied his intention of paying for the cost of the Surrey Constabulary’s search, claiming that the police had felt the searches to be necessary to fend off newspaper accusations of negligence. Earlier that day he had been happy to read inaccurate reports in some of the newspapers that the only expense incurred by the Surrey police was the provision of tea and buns for the special constables. He tactlessly berated the reporters for suggesting that his wife was faking amnesia and concussion and he categorically denied that her disappearance had been a stunt for increasing sales of her books or stage-managed in any way. He said he hoped that all publicity would cease so that ‘my wife might be restored to normal health once more and be my companion throughout life’.

Shortly after he had performed his last public charade, nearly all pretence at family unity broke down, since Madge and Jimmy made it known that they thought that his disgraceful behaviour had been responsible for what had happened. Everyone at Abney Hall hoped that the press coverage on Friday the 17th would signal the end to an unfortunate drama that had dominated the front pages for nearly two weeks. Archie left Abney Hall early that morning to avoid further family recriminations.

Given that around 15,000 people went missing in Britain that year, why did Agatha’s disappearance cause such a sensation? It was not just the fact that she was a mystery writer involved in her own real-life mystery. The answer perhaps lies in the fact that it was an unfolding drama whose resolution was both elusive and anxiously sought.

Despite the issuing of the medical bulletin, further embarrassing disclosures appeared in the newspapers on Friday the 17th. Although revelations concerning the diamond ring that had been posted to the novelist at the hotel were not wholly accurate, it coloured the public’s perception of events. On the morning of Saturday the 4th Agatha had left the ring for repair at Harrods in London and had asked the store to send it on to her in the name of Mrs Teresa Neele at the Harrogate Hydro. The store had duly carried out these instructions, and Agatha had received it on Tuesday the 7th. Journalists were aware that the ring had been posted to Mrs Teresa Neele, but wrongly stated it had been lost while she was shopping in a department store on the Saturday. At any rate it was obvious to readers that Agatha had been shopping in the West End on the morning after her disappearance and had evidently had a clear plan of her future movements.

The disclosure reinforced the public’s perception of her as a shallow, publicity-seeking woman who had cleverly orchestrated her disappearance as a stunt for increasing book sales. The public’s belief that it had been a publicity stunt was reinforced over the next three months by the Liverpool Weekly Post’s and Reynolds’s Illustrated News’s continuing serializations of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and The Murder on the Links. But publicity for her books had been the last thing on Agatha’s mind when she staged her disappearance; at the time she was bogged down half-way through The Mystery of the Blue Train and certainly not seeking the spotlight.

Vastly exaggerated estimates of the cost of the search appeared in the newspapers, ranging from £1,000 to £25,000. Letters from the public were published demanding to know whether Mrs Christie was prepared to reimburse the expenses incurred in the search. One indignant correspondent even suggested that no future book should be published under her name in order to discourage others from disappearing as a publicity stunt. Agatha was also criticized for diverting attention from those who genuinely went missing.

A number of cartoons appeared, some more hurtful than others. ‘Some People May Disappear for All We Care – And There Will Be No Search Parties,’ declared the Sunday Express’s cartoonist, depicting a rogues’ gallery of characters lining up to catch the ‘Disappearance Express’. The Bulletin and Scots Pictorial depicted ‘A Jacket for the Book All About It’, on which Agatha was caricatured, elegantly dressed, dancing in the arms of a shadowy male companion, while beneath their feet was pictured the Surrey Downs being extensively searched by police, volunteers, bloodhounds and aeroplanes. The title on the cover of the proposed book was ‘My Pretty Dance by Agatha Christie’.

Trevor Allen of the Westminster Gazette, recalling how enthusiastically the public had responded to the Daily News’s offer of a £100 reward for the discovery of the novelist, suggested that if no one famous went missing why not challenge the public to unmask someone paid to disappear? A series of individuals were employed by the Westminster Gazette to play the part of Mr Lobby Ludd whose photograph, together with a general timetable of his movements around the country, was published in advance and the first person to rush up with a copy of his newspaper picture and say ‘You are Mr Lobby Ludd, and I hereby claim my £10 pounds!’ was rewarded on the spot. Those who missed out could read news reports of the chases, many of which led the latest Mr Lobby Ludd to be mobbed. When the Westminster Gazette amalgamated in 1931 with the Daily News to become the News Chronicle, this popular tradition continued for many years.

Although the story began to die down after Friday the 17th, it did not mean the worst was over for Agatha and her family, whose lives had been splashed across newspapers throughout the country. Now they had to assess the damage and begin to rebuild their lives, and these tasks would not be made easier by reminders of the past.