Chapter Twenty-Eight
Confusing the Messenger With the Bad News

 

Despite the differences that had existed between them Rosalind Hicks was determined to honour her mother’s memory and literary reputation. Following Agatha’s death in January 1976, Rosalind and other members of the board of Agatha Christie Ltd feared that sales of her work would drop off dramatically without any new products to fuel the Christie phenomenon. A series of leaked memos from the UK and US offices of Agatha’s literary agents gives insight into how seriously the threat of diminishing sales and the potential dinting of her image were being taken by her minders. Two unauthorized books had appeared in America in 1975, The Mysterious World of Agatha Christie by Jeffrey Feinman and The Agatha Christie Quiz Book by Andy East, and this led to anger and apprehension that they might also be published in England. Agatha’s representatives wondered whether or not it would be possible to ‘kill’ these books in Britain and legal opinion was sought. Given the two books were innocuous and contained no damaging personal revelations, the tone of the correspondence between her advisers came close to paranoia, an indication of the tight hold the Christie estate was keeping on her business affairs. While it was acknowledged that the final say in all such matters was down to Rosalind and her son Mathew, it was also agreed at meetings that a tough line should be taken in future on all ‘piracy publications’. This became a frequently used term by executives alluding to publications that had not been artfully manipulated by Agatha Christie Ltd’s publicity machine.

A week after Agatha’s death the American publishers Doubleday and Company commissioned Gwen Robyns to write a biography about Agatha’s life. When Rosalind found out she urged family and friends to ostracize the biographer. Without hesitation they all but one complied with Rosalind’s wishes.

Gwen Robyns was shocked by the Christie family’s hostile response and refusal to cooperate with her. She had a proven track record of producing sympathetic biographies, and her discretion could be relied on, for she had written authorized accounts of the lives of Princess Grace of Monaco and Dame Barbara Cartland with her subjects’ permission and gratitude, later becoming friends with them. She had also assisted Margaret Rutherford in the writing of her memoirs at a time when the actress was suffering from severe depression and was not well enough to commit her thoughts to paper, but no one would have guessed this from the charming autobiography Gwen Robyns ghosted on the actress’s behalf.

Gwen Robyns told me: ‘I think you are very brave tackling Agatha Christie. I could not get an English publisher to touch my book. Publishers were frightened off by the family bringing an injunction. The Christies did everything to thwart people speaking to me.’

The only member of Agatha’s family who agreed to speak to Gwen Robyns was Agatha’s husband Max Mallowan. Her initial request for an interview was turned down, and it was only after a mutual friend intervened on her behalf that Max reluctantly changed his mind on condition she did not ask him any questions about his late wife’s private life.

‘The interview was a waste of time,’ Gwen Robyns recalls. ‘I was only allowed to ask him how Agatha wrote her books. He was rude and refused to answer the most simple questions. The dog Bingo barked throughout. In the end I said, “This is no good”, terminated the interview and left. I said in my book I had a delightful time interviewing him, but it wasn’t true. It never occurred to me until later that he was covering up his affair with Barbara Parker.’

Agatha’s daughter Rosalind was furious when she read Gwen Robyns’s account of her mother’s disappearance. Although the biographer was unable to account for what happened in the first twenty-four hours, she made it clear that she thought Agatha had set out to punish her unfaithful husband. ‘In her modesty she could not possibly have foreseen that once the powerful press got hold of such a story, an incident that ought to have remained private would be fanned up into a sensation. She had only one recourse and that was to sit tight until she was found and stick to her story of amnesia.’

In November 1977 Rosalind received a letter from Alexander Pettleson’s daughter explaining how he had befriended the writer at the Harrogate Hydro. He claimed to have sung ‘Angels Guard Thee’ while she accompanied him on the piano and later, as Mrs Neele, signed his sheet music. The letter provided Rosalind with an unpleasant jolt since it appeared to confirm her mother had been very much in possession of her mental faculties during her disappearance. Mr Pettleson’s daughter had previously offered the sheet music to Agatha’s publishers Collins, who turned it down on her behalf.

Agatha’s heirs were horrified when they heard that Kathleen Tynan had scripted a film about the disappearance. The original owners of the film, the Rank Organisation, dropped the property after serious objections were made about the fictional aspects of the film by Agatha Christie Ltd. It was also pointed out to them that since the writer’s first husband Colonel Christie had been a long-serving member of Rank’s board of directors it might very well show him and the estate in a bad light if the film went ahead. Rosalind’s satisfaction at killing off the film was short-lived because soon afterwards First Artists took up the project. Rosalind was furious at this unexpected development. In a letter she fired off to The Times, which was published in its 14 October 1977 edition, she objected to the film on the grounds that it attempted to capitalize commercially on her mother’s name, was being made without the consent of her family and was likely to cause them ‘great distress’.

What made the situation more fraught with anxiety for Rosalind and her family were the confusing reports that reached them while the film was being made. Agatha’s grandson Mathew Prichard vented his spleen by releasing several statements to the press. ‘We were never asked about this film, whether we minded if it was done or not. I think frankly it’s an imposition. I’m her grandson and even I don’t know the truth about the disappearance mystery.’

In a bid to prevent the film from being distributed, Agatha’s daughter Rosalind and Nan’s daughter Judith, under the auspices of Agatha Christie Ltd and with the support of the publishers Collins, fought two unsuccessful court cases in America. When Warner Brothers eventually released Agatha in 1979, there was a disclaimer in the opening credits stating that what follows in the film is ‘an imaginary solution to an authentic mystery’.

The lurid story-line suggests Agatha went to Harrogate following a car accident because she knew Archie’s mistress Nancy Neele would be there on holiday, when, in fact, Nancy spent the duration of the disappearance being sheltered from the press by her parents at the family home at Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire. The role of the American reporter Wally Stanton was especially created for the actor Dustin Hoffman after he expressed interest in working on a project in Europe. The film shows Agatha planning a dastardly revenge and contriving to commit suicide in such a way that her rival Nancy Neele will be framed for her murder. After Wally Stanton thwarts Agatha’s plot and saves her life, they have a brief affair before she goes back to her husband in order to divorce him and begin a new life for herself.

The film alleges Archie spent the night of Agatha’s disappearance with a fictitious friend, Captain Rankin, when, in fact, he was at Godalming Cottage with Nancy Neele and their hosts Sam and Madge James. The producers altered the story-line after learning from their attorneys that Madge James was prepared to swear under oath that this had not been the case and that the pair had never been under her roof together at any one time, despite the fact that Archie had been Sam’s friend just as Nancy had been hers. Madge James’s allegiance to Agatha’s daughter and the memory of Archie and Nancy boosted Rosalind’s confidence during her protracted legal battles with the film’s producer, but the lie was to no avail.

What the producers of the film did not appreciate when they invented the name of Captain Rankin is that the Christies had a Canadian friend who shared the same surname. Air Commodore Archibald James Rankin, who was called Jay by his friends, knew the Christies quite well in the 1920s, staying with them on several occasions. He liked both of them but realized it was not a happy marriage.

A little known fact is that Albert Whiteley, formerly of the Harry Codd Dance Band, had a cameo role in the film; some fifty-odd years after the novelist disappeared he recreated his real-life role by playing in the band and watching Vanessa Redgrave as Agatha Christie dancing in the ballroom of the Harrogate Hydro.

The release of Agatha was a bitter pill for Rosalind to swallow, and she never forgave those who were associated with it. The film struggled to find an audience and disappeared swiftly from cinema screens. This was no consolation to Rosalind, whose one wish had been to safeguard her parents’ private life and prevent their memory from being ridiculed.

The publicity from the film led to increased interest in Agatha’s private life and Rosalind was inundated with offers to write a first-hand account of her own life as Agatha’s daughter. Every single one was turned down. Contrary to Rosalind’s fears, the film did not damage Agatha’s literary reputation or discourage film and television producers from taking an interest in her mother’s work.

Throughout the 1980s faithful film and television adaptations of Agatha’s stories became the norm under Rosalind’s vigilant eye. She was helped by literary agent Edmund Cork’s successor Brian Stone, who was also related to her husband Anthony Hicks. She was determined to prevent her mother’s books from being trivialized or turned into travesties like the series of four Miss Marple films starring Margaret Rutherford that had appeared in the 1960s. Hardened film and television producers were unnerved by Rosalind because she demanded script approval and got it.

Anthony Martin, one of Brian Stone’s closest friends, was a brilliant source of information for this book. ‘Rosalind is a gorgon,’ Anthony Martin told me. ‘Producers are frightened of her. Normally authors are frightened of producers.’

When Rosalind disliked any alterations producers made to her mother’s original stories, even minors ones, she strongly objected. Her uncompromising stance led to quality dramas being broadcast which drew huge television audiences.

When BBC television made an offer to film the Hercule Poirot books, Rosalind turned it down because in her opinion the financial remuneration was not sufficient. The BBC rebounded with an offer to film all twelve Miss Marple novels. The role of the elderly spinster sleuth only went to the accomplished actress Joan Hickson after Rosalind had given her consent in the matter. Towards the end of the 1980s she also gave her blessing for the distinguished actor David Suchet to play the title role in the London Weekend Television series of Agatha Christie’s Poirot.

In 1988, Brian Stone urged Agatha Christie Ltd to hire Anthony Martin to organize the forthcoming centenary events scheduled for 1990. Anthony Martin has stated he found Rosalind and her son Mathew ridiculously conservative and old-fashioned when it came to public relations. At Agatha Christie Ltd there were numerous arguments across the boardroom table between mother and son; Rosalind’s foremost concern was to protect her mother’s writing legacy, while Mathew was focused on how best to financially exploit interest in his grandmother’s work.

‘Rosalind and Mathew had their own ideas on how I ought to go about running the centenary,’ Anthony Martin told me. ‘Meetings could be very tense when they were in disagreement. When in doubt I followed Brian Stone’s advice since he was used to dealing with them. Part of my brief was to discourage interest in the disappearance. The family didn’t want it mentioned. Agatha’s marriage to Max wasn’t as happy as people think because he was having an affair with one of his archaeological assistants, a woman called Barbara Parker. As a publicist hired by the Christie estate, it was my job to keep it quiet.’

In 1990 the publicity alone from the centenary celebrations of Agatha’s birth generated an extra £2.3 million for the Christie coffers. The week-long celebrations, which included an unveiling by Rosalind of a statue of her mother, climaxed on 15 September with the Orient Express running from London to Agatha’s home town of Torquay. On board were Rosalind and her husband Anthony, Judith and Graham Gardner, as well as the actor David Suchet, who was in full Hercule Poirot costume. Waiting to meet him at Torquay Station was the actress Joan Hickson, who was attired as Miss Marple. The police predicted that a hundred or so people might turn out to witness this historic meeting of Agatha’s two most famous sleuths, something she never permitted in her fiction, but David Suchet and Joan Hickson were mobbed by almost three thousands fans. The English Riviera Centre hosted a lavish celebratory dinner that night attended by over 400 guests, including the Hickses, the Gardners and the stars of the Miss Marple and Poirot series. Each table was named after a title of one of Agatha’s books and afterwards there was a fireworks display for guests to enjoy.

It was Rosalind’s wish that nothing else should be written about the disappearance, but the publicity from the centenary celebrations ought to have forewarned her that interest in Agatha was stronger than ever. Given that Rosalind was such a staunch defender of her mother’s literary reputation and private life, some wondered if there was a falling out between her and Judith and Graham Gardner in 1998 following the publication of the first edition of my own biography, Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days.

However, Rosalind and Judith no more fell out over the fiasco of the disappearance than their mothers. Both daughters had been through too much together over the years to wage war over their parents’ troubled past. As young children Rosalind and Judith had played together often at Ashfield and Abney Hall, and much later at Styles, where they had tumbled out of the wardrobe, aged seven and ten, respectively, just before the disappearance. The two girls were practically raised together because of their mothers’ close friendship and had shared numerous Christmases, birthdays and other family events. A special affinity had developed between Rosalind and Judith arising from the fall-out of the disappearance, the hardship of their parents’ divorces, being abandoned by their fathers and raised by their mothers. As women they had shared good and bad times, which had strengthened the bond between them. Judith had lost out in love to her Austrian fiancée and Rosalind’s first husband had been killed in enemy action, yet both women had survived the Second World War and their friendship was stronger for it. Rosalind’s Aunt Madge had married Judith’s Uncle Jimmy and there were always Wattses and Christies at Abney Hall and Greenway. Agatha and Rosalind had moved to London after the disappearance to be closer to Nan and Judith, and Nan and Judith had settled permanently in Devon after the Second World War to be closer to Agatha and her family. Rosalind and Judith were part of the fabric of each other’s lives: when they were not seeing each other, they were inevitably hearing about each other’s activities from family and friends.

When Rosalind heard that a film was being made about her mother’s disappearance the first person she turned to for help in her ill-fated legal bid to block the release of Agatha was her old childhood friend Judith. The Gardners hated the film as much as Rosalind when they saw it and have never had a kind word to say about it. Rosalind also relied on Judith’s support when it came to organizing her mother’s centenary, and the two women, along with their husbands, Anthony and Graham, contributed generously to the Torquay Museum’s exhibition on Agatha’s life.

Judith and Graham have stated they would never have dreamed of disclosing the truth about the disappearance at this time since the centenary was a celebration of Agatha’s life and literary legacy. It became clear to them afterwards that there would always be speculation about the disappearance unless they spoke out about it. When the Gardners met me in 1997 they decided it was time for the truth to be told, especially as Judith’s mother Nan had been directly involved. I was the first writer they had met who had read all of Agatha’s books; they were astonished by the fact I already knew so much about her life and had visited Abney Hall.

Following the publication of Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days, Agatha Christie Ltd’s publicity machine went in to damage control mode in order to assuage Rosalind’s and Mathew’s fury over the embarrassing disclosures contained in the book. This took the form of an exhibition called Agatha Christie and Archaeology: Mystery in Mesopotamia, which ran from 8 November 2001 to 24 March 2002 at the British Museum in London. While the exhibition provided the public with an evocative insight into Agatha’s and Max’s life in the Middle East, the real purpose behind it was to promote the view that the Mallowans’ marriage had been a happy one.

Two books were published in 2001 to coincide with the exhibition, Agatha Christie and Archaeology, edited by Charlotte Trümpler, and Henrietta McCall’s The Life and Times of Max Mallowan: Archaeology and Agatha Christie. The former featured articles written by various archaeological experts that illuminated Max’s work and the experiences that had influenced several of Agatha’s books. There was a chapter by Janet Morgan affirming the family’s official stance of amnesia where the disappearance was concerned and the view that Agatha’s marriage to Max had been blissful happy. Henrietta McCall’s biography, the first to be published about the archaeologist, some twenty-three years after Max’s death, summed up Agatha’s disappearance in a single word, ‘inexplicable’, and also adhered to the view of a happy second marriage. Both books met Rosalind’s approval, and she allowed precious photographs from the Christie family’s archives to be published in them.

Rosalind also gave Wall to Wall productions permission to dramatize her mother’s autobiography. Agatha Christie: A Life in Pictures was televised in 2004 and claimed to be ‘based on the actual words of Agatha Christie’. However, this was only partly true: although Agatha’s autobiography makes no reference to the disappearance, the script included imaginary scenes between her and a psychiatrist depicting her trying to regain her memory. The film avoided any suggestion that she might have tried to kill herself on the night of the disappearance and instead took the more seemly view that she had a car accident, yet rather oddly quoted part of Agatha’s 1928 interview to the Daily Mail in which she claimed she tried to commit suicide. The producers inserted a disclaimer at the end of the film stating the identity of the alleged psychiatrist ‘remains unknown’. Agatha was also shown at the tenth anniversary celebrations of The Mousetrap giving a series of highly personal and in-depth interviews to journalists; these interviews never took place in real life. Rosalind was unhappy with the production, which she felt gave too much coverage to the breakdown of her parents’ marriage and the disappearance.

As part of Agatha Christie Ltd’s ongoing damage control programme against Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days, Rosalind decided to commission yet another biography about her mother. Mathew Prichard is alleged to have suggested that the best way of covering up the truth was to release contradictory accounts of the disappearance, which would result in the public becoming confused and uninterested. Rosalind was adamant the official amnesia story should still stand. By now, she was complacent in her belief that any writer receiving the support of her family would be malleable to her censorship and influence.

Shortly after Laura Thompson was hired for the job Rosalind died in October 2004 and her husband Anthony passed away in April of the following year. It was always her wish that the amnesia explanation should stand as the official verdict on her mother’s disappearance and that Agatha’s second marriage should be seen to have been perfect, even though she knew this had not been the case.

On 13 November 2004, in a lengthy obituary that appeared two weeks after Rosalind’s death, the Daily Telegraph said she had been furious at the publication of Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days and that, at the annual meeting of the Agatha Christie Society in 1998, her son Mathew Prichard had launched a ‘virulent attack’ on the book, advising members of the society not to buy it.

Laura Thompson subsequently stated in her 2007 biography, Agatha Christie: An English Mystery, that Rosalind had viewed Judith Gardner’s official endorsement of Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days as some kind of ‘personal vendetta’, but this claim is not supported by the facts.

Until their deaths Rosalind and her husband Anthony remained friends with Judith and Graham. The Gardners continued to lunch regularly at Greenway with Rosalind and Anthony. The couple also visited the Gardners at their home. The last Christmas card Judith and Graham received from Rosalind a year before her death, dated 1 December 2003, is a friendly and chatty missive in which she said how pleased she was to get their letter for her birthday with all their news. Rosalind recalled a voyage she made at the age of eighteen when she accompanied her friend Susan North’s family to South Africa. She added that, despite a good summer, the last week had been nothing but rain and the National Trust still hadn’t done much in the grounds of Greenway. The greenhouses were all covered over and little had been done to the pools, but perhaps it was just as well because when the National Trust did something they were ‘fairly ruthless’. Rosalind went on to say that she and Anthony were happy living at Greenway. They were well looked after and it was a beautiful place. She admitted they were both pretty feeble and she got about the garden in a golf buggy. Anthony walked a bit, but they no longer went out to see people. ‘We are proper recluses,’ Rosalind said, although people did come to visit them from time to time. Her Christmas card was signed ‘love from Rosalind and Anthony’.

When Laura Thompson’s biography was published her version of the disappearance flatly contradicted that of Janet Morgan’s, although they had both been given access to the Christie family papers. Contrary to Janet Morgan’s claim that Agatha took a train from Guildford Railway Station to London, Laura Thompson states that on the morning of Saturday 4 December Agatha abandoned her car and instead walked to Chilworth Railway Station where she took the ‘seven-thirty’ train up to London, which, according to Laura Thompson, ‘reached Waterloo at nine o’clock’. Railway records show that no trains destined for Waterloo left Chilworth Station at that time.

Contrary to Janet Morgan, Laura Thompson insists Agatha did not have amnesia. ‘It is understandable, laudable indeed, that Rosalind should have clung for so long, and so obstinately, to the “official” theory . . . But the official theory has never held water.’ Laura Thompson suggests Agatha ‘absconded in the belief that giving Archie a weekend of agony, making him fear that she was dead, awakening his buried feelings, might restore him to her’.

Laura Thompson’s description of the landscape contradicts her own version of events. ‘Newlands Corner on a December night is a fearful place. To stand there alone, in the silence, under the black winter skies, and look out over the vast empty slopes, is a terrifying thing to do. No woman, especially a woman of imagination, could do such a thing out of malice, or revenge, or any such petty motive.’

What Laura Thompson’s explanation does not take into account is that numerous individuals searched for Agatha throughout the period she was missing until it became too dark to continue without the use of lanterns. The landscape failed to have a terrifying effect on them, and they all returned safely to civilization. Moreover, malice and revenge are powerful motives that have destroyed lives, and it is absurd to allude to them as petty.

In the chapter entitled ‘The Quarry’, Laura Thompson’s 30-page fictionalized account of the disappearance begins with the words ‘Time now for a new story.’ According to Laura Thompson, Agatha ‘wrote a letter to Carlo, then a letter to Archie. As she did so the black windows seemed to watch her. Perhaps Archie was outside one of them. It was the long narrow one beside the front door that she had always feared. It had a sly, malevolent look, like a goat’s eyes.’ No one, including the police, was ever able to verify in what order Agatha wrote her three letters, which were addressed to her brother-in-law Campbell Christie, her husband Archie and her secretary Charlotte. Laura Thompson’s description of Agatha’s departure from Styles is even more lurid.

Laura Thompson describes the centre of the house as ‘silent’ while beyond are the ‘discreet sounds of the servants and the soft breaths of Peter’. The stairs are ‘striped with shadow’ as Agatha climbs them to her bedroom, which is ‘chilly and flooded with moonlight’. She collects her dressing-case from the bed, dons a fur coat and a hat, then slips into Rosalind’s room and watches her daughter sleeping. The child’s face reminds her of Archie. Rosalind’s favourite teddy is falling out of bed. Agatha tucks it in again before going back downstairs. Peter wags his tail. She loves him, but she cannot stay. The house is ‘sending her out into the blackness’. She tells the maid, ‘whose white face has appeared in the hall’, that she is going to London. She kisses Peter, who ‘looks baffled’ because she is leaving without him. His body is warm as she hugs him, so tightly that he gives ‘a brief whine’. Then she goes outside to her car, ‘feet crunching’ as she pushes her way through the night, ‘moving fast now to escape the terror’.

No one – apart from Laura Thompson who has taken facts and twisted them into romanticized fiction like the film Agatha – can say where Agatha donned her coat and hat. We only have the biographer’s word that the stairs were striped in shadows and moonlight flooded Agatha’s bedroom. If there was a full moon, how was the house sending Agatha out into the ‘blackness’?

For the sky to have been totally black and starless it would have to have been covered in heavy rain clouds. It strains credibility that Laura Thompson should know that the expression on Peter’s face was puzzled or that he whined. Nor does Laura Thompson identify the precise nature of the ‘terror’ that allegedly prompted Agatha to move faster through the night.

After Agatha has driven away from Styles and is passing through Surrey, Laura Thompson states ‘the black sky dipped upon her’. What had become of the moonlight? A short while later readers are told that she got out of the car and, above her, the sky was ‘a pure vast starless black . . . She found a rutted path. It led to a quarry, a round bowl of chalk, white and faceless beneath the moon . . . By lifting her left wrist to the sky she could see that it was ten past two’.

In this fictionalized version of events the moon disappears and reappears more often than Agatha. So what were the weather conditions really like at Sunningdale and Newlands Corner on the night of Friday 3 December 1926? Records held at the British National Meteorology Library and Archive disclose ‘a quarter of the sky had been covered in cloud at 6 p.m.’ and by midnight ‘the sky had completely cleared of cloud cover’. According to the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, ‘the moon would only have been visible as a very slim arc’ during the day of Friday 3rd and would have set before the sun, so in effect there was no moon in the sky over the south of England that night because it was on the other side of the world.

Over the course of the next twenty-four pages Laura Thompson becomes so caught up in her fantasy that further discrepancies creep into her account. She gives her readers to understand that Agatha dreamed up the plots and words from her 1928 short story ‘Harlequin’s Lane’ and her 1954 book Destination Unknown by the side of the chalk pit before she abandoned her car; that she conceived the plots of her novels, Death on the Nile (1937), Sad Cypress (1940) and Five Little Pigs (1943) and the short story ‘The Edge’ (1927) while she was in Harrogate. She even claims that Agatha wrote chunks of these stories in her mind and later recalled every line she had composed in her head when it came time to commit them to paper prior to their UK publication. In fact, what Laura Thompson has done is take quotes from these stories and incorporate them into her account of what Agatha did in Harrogate.

When ‘The Edge’ was published in Pearson’s Magazine in February 1927 an editorial note stated it was ‘a story that was written just before this author’s recent illness and mysterious disappearance’, which negates Laura Thompson’s suggestion that the story was conceived and written by Agatha while she was in Harrogate.

The biographer states that Agatha took room five on the first floor of the Harrogate Hydro, but this is factually incorrect. Agatha’s handwritten entry as Mrs Neele in the hotel register shows her room was 105. According to the chambermaid Rosie Asher, during Agatha’s visit room 105 was not situated on the first floor but on the third floor because the numbering of the rooms conformed at that time to continental standards: ‘They had a funny system in those days. The best rooms were at the front of the hotel with a nice view. They were all numbered one and the rooms in the back, near the kitchen, were numbered two and three.’

Many readers will have assumed that Laura Thompson had accurate knowledge of Agatha’s time in Harrogate since the blurb for the biography states that it was ‘written with unique access to her diaries, letters and family’. But this is not so. After reviewing the Christie family papers, Janet Morgan stated: ‘Gaps remain in the story. No one knows why Agatha fled from Styles late on the night of December 3rd . . . We simply do not know what Agatha planned to do, if indeed she had any plans at all.’ By writing a romantic fictionalized account of the disappearance Laura Thompson avoids the main issues and trivializes what remains a serious subject for many of the crime-writer’s staunch fans.

Laura Thompson also claims it was wrong of me to allege that Agatha called her secretary Carlotta. But Agatha dedicated The Mystery of the Blue Train ‘To the two distinguished members of the O.F.D. Carlotta and Peter.’ While some paperback versions have since dropped the dedication to her secretary and dog it can be found in both the first hardback English editions and 2007 facsimile editions of the novel released by Harper-Collins.

Moreover, Edith Butler has stated unequivocally that Agatha had called her secretary Carlotta. The reason she is so sure of this is because her father, Inspector Sidney Butler, discussed the case with her and her mother over the breakfast table at the time of the disappearance. Edith Butler also recalls seeing Archie, dressed in plus-fours, arriving at Ascot Police Station to report his wife’s disappearance to her father and clearly being very unhappy at having to do so.

Laura Thompson employs faulty logic to refute the Gardners’ version of events pertaining to the night of the disappearance. The police established that Agatha left Styles at 9.45 p.m. Laura Thompson envisages it would have taken her between ‘thirty and forty minutes’ to drive from Styles to Newlands Corner and concludes she would have reached there at ‘ten-thirty’. But if Agatha had taken thirty minutes’ driving time she would have reached Newlands Corner by 10.15; or if she had taken forty minutes driving time her arrival would have been at 10.25, not 10.30. The biographer argues it would have taken Agatha ‘no more than five minutes’ to push the car off the plateau of Newlands Corner before walking to West Clandon Railway Station. On the basis of these timings, she argues that Agatha would not have arrived there in time to catch the 10.52 train up to London.

The distance between Styles, Sunningdale, and Newlands Corner is 14.7 miles and not ‘just under twenty miles’ as maintained by Laura Thompson. During the 1920s the makers of the model of Agatha’s Morris Cowley car advertised it could average 45 m.p.h., but according to Philip Garnons-Williams, the author of Morris Cars, 1913–1930, it was capable of comfortably attaining higher speeds of 55 m.p.h. A Morris Cowley driven at a steady 50 m.p.h. would have taken twenty minutes to reach Newlands Corner and would have arrived there at 10.05 p.m.

Contrary to Laura Thompson’s hypothesis, Agatha’s car rolled off the edge of the plateau within seconds because she had left the gears in neutral and released the handbrake – no sensible person would have spent five minutes pushing the car off the plateau with the handbrake on. The distance from Newlands Corner to West Clandon Railway Station is 2.3 miles. This would have given Agatha plenty of time, forty-seven minutes to be precise, in which to walk down the sloping road, which flattened out at the bottom of the hill, to West Clandon Station and catch the 10.52 train.

The average speed of a normal, healthy person walking at a reasonable steady pace is about four miles an hour or fifteen minutes per mile; it would take about thirty-five minutes to complete the walk, bringing the time to 10.40 pm, with twelve minutes to spare before the train arrived. Laura Thompson’s theory does not take into account that if, for any reason, Agatha’s car journey had taken longer than she had predicted she could have turned round at Newlands Corner and driven back part of the way she had come, then abandoned the vehicle and walked the remaining mile or so to West Clandon Station, thus ensuring she caught her train on time. All this is, of course, purely speculative since it is clear from Nan’s conversation with Graham Gardner that she believed Agatha might have got a lift part of the way to the station.

After I restaged Agatha’s journey one night in 1996 by getting Philip Garnons-Williams to drive me in his vintage Morris Cowley from Styles to Newlands Corner, then walking to West Clandon Station, it became apparent that the main reason she left her fur coat on the back seat of her car is because it would have been too hot for walking in – just as Superintendent Goddard had guessed after she was found alive.

It is Laura Thompson’s contention that Agatha was wearing shoes with high heels and would have found it difficult to walk along ‘unfamiliar roads’ in the dark to the station. But the composite photograph of Agatha on the missing person’s poster issued by the Berkshire police shows her in sensible walking shoes. Agatha was familiar with the location of West Clandon Station because it was on the same stretch of road between Sunningdale and Newlands Corner that she had travelled along on the many occasions when she had driven to mother-in-law’s house at Dorking.

Laura Thompson goes on to say that even if one accepts Agatha arrived at the station in time to catch the 10.52 train, why didn’t she leave home earlier in the night – perhaps around nine o’clock – to make things easier on herself? Agatha could have left sooner, of course, but she wanted to give Archie every opportunity to come home. When he didn’t she was determined to teach her philandering husband a lesson he would never forget. It would have made no sense for Agatha to abandon her car by the Silent Pool, which is a quarter of a mile away from Newlands Corner, down the steeply embanked A25 Dorking Road, as this would have made her walk to the station a longer one, although Laura Thompson obliquely suggests to the contrary. Also the narrow lane leading to the Silent Pool might have proved difficult to find in the dark compared to the wide open space of Newlands Corner. Moreover, the Silent Pool is surrounded by a thick belt of trees, and the vehicle might have gone unnoticed for several days.

Laura Thompson also contends that in early 1927 Agatha went to an unnamed psychiatrist in Harley Street ‘in order to maintain the fiction that she had lost her memory and needed to regain it’. Agatha was, in fact, in the Canary Islands completing The Mystery of the Blue Train.

Critical of anyone whose opinions or theories do not coincide with her own, Laura Thompson does not hesitate to airbrush Agatha’s image when it suits her. On 23 April 1947 Officer Fris, a survivor of the German concentration camp at Buchenwald during the Second World War, wrote to Agatha via her literary agent explaining how he became the author of a three-act play based on her splendid thriller Ten Little Niggers after it was smuggled into his camp from the other side of the barbed wire. The prisoners’ performance of the play was a great success thanks to the cunning plotting of her novel. He asked Agatha’s permission to stage his play for a forthcoming reunion of the Dutch prisoners of war on 20 May 1947.

Laura Thompson states that Agatha gave her permission for the play to be performed since it ‘was clearly a very special request’. But this is incorrect. Agatha’s agent Edmund Cork instead dealt with the matter on her behalf, and permission was refused. In a letter dated 2 May 1947 Edmund Cork advised Officer Fris that rights had been granted that would preclude any professional performance of Ten Little Niggers in Holland based on his dramatic version of Mrs Christie’s play and that no exception could be taken to the planned performance on 20 May.

According to Anthony Martin, director of the centenary celebrations, throughout her career, Agatha’s literary advisers were of the opinion that if they granted free favours where her copyrighted material was concerned others might seek to take financial advantage of her work without first acquiring permission to use it and paying the appropriate fees. It might seem harsh in the case of Officer Fris, but it was an entirely consistent line from their point of view.

Laura Thompson’s attempt to diminish the importance of Nan and Judith in Agatha’s life is strange. Quite early on in her biography she states that Nan ‘remained close’ to Agatha ‘all her life’ and that ‘Judith, too, was close to both Agatha and Rosalind.’ However, the biographer later contradicts herself when she alleges, ‘although Agatha wrote to Judith “I shall miss her very much” after Nan’s death in 1959, there is no sense that she was an intimate friend’. This, of course, is absurd.

At no time did Laura Thompson approach the Gardners or anyone else connected with my own book for assistance in her research. The fact that Agatha always gave Nan signed copies of her Mary Westmacott books, years before her pseudonym was publicly exposed, as well as copies of all her detective novels, is irrefutable proof of their long and enduring friendship for those outside their family circle.

During my research many reliable sources stated that Nan and Judith were great friends of Agatha’s all her life, including Rosalind herself during my visit to Greenway in 1994, Anthony Martin, Humphrey Watts’s daughter Dame Felicity Peake and his granddaughter Jane Davies, as well as Mathew Prichard, who confided as much to me over lunch at his home in Wales in 1995. Moreover, Janet Morgan acknowledged in her biography that the relationship Agatha described in A Daughter’s a Daughter had nothing to do with herself and Rosalind, but to those who knew them ‘there were touches of Agatha’s old friend from Abney, Nan, and her daughter Judith’.

Other aspects of Laura Thompson’s book betray a degree of censorship, such as Max Mallowan’s relationship with his mistress Barbara Parker. Laura Thompson takes the view that Agatha’s and Max’s marriage was unblemished by adultery. Even so, she admits that one friend of the couple came close to admitting to the affair and said of those who deny it: ‘What people say may be the truth in their eyes. Which may have involved a certain amount of turning a blind eye.’

In a bid to persuade her readers that the Mallowans’ marriage was happy and monogamous until Agatha died in 1976 Laura Thompson quotes from the letter Max wrote to Agatha forty years earlier, some two days prior to their sixth wedding anniversary. This is one in which Max said he thought that sometimes, but not very often, two people find real love together as they had, and then it was something that lay deep and intangible, not to be shaken by the wind. The document was found after Agatha died in a secret drawer of a little desk at Greenway. Laura Thompson intimates that this is proof that Max was a faithful husband throughout the couple’s marriage, but of course the letter is dated 9 September 1936 and Max’s liaison with Barbara did not start until the early 1950s. While the affair might have been considered explosive back then, it seems oddly quaint and unnecessary to continue hushing it up.

Encouraged by the Christie family, Laura Thompson’s biography also takes a somewhat naïve view of the crime writer’s financial affairs and, in particular, Agatha’s testamentary dispositions, claiming ‘the fact that she left only £1,000,600 was in fact no mystery at all. Everything else had been taken from her.’ However, after Agatha’s battles with the Inland Revenue had been resolved in the 1960s she was a very rich woman. The reason she left just over £1 million in her will is because the bulk of her fortune had been disposed of in elaborate tax avoidance schemes in the form of family trusts.

Anthony Martin has stated, after consultation with the literary agent Brian Stone, that Rosalind’s wealth from her mother’s writings was estimated in 1990 to be in excess of £600 million. Greenway was evaluated at £6 million, and around this time she bought Lower Greenway Farm, which consisted of 270 acres. The Christie family have always been secretive about their financial affairs, so Laura Thompson’s wholly unrealistic appraisal of Agatha’s legacy is hardly surprising.

A source close to Agatha’s grandson Mathew Prichard alleges that he was greatly offended by Laura Thompson’s claim that his step-grandfather Max Mallowan ‘found it easier and more congenial to fall in love for the first time with a man’ called Esme Howard prior to becoming Agatha’s second husband.

Laura Thompson alleges that the affair between Max and Esme Howard was not consummated, although, in the absence of proof, her opinions amount to speculation. Mathew Prichard and Laura Thompson allegedly had a crisis meeting in which he asked her to make certain alterations to her manuscript, but she declined, and he is said to have retaliated by refusing to grant her permission to publish in her book any precious photographs of his grandmother from the Christie family’s private albums. Its original title The Fully Authorized Biography of Agatha Christie was changed before publication to the more prosaic Agatha Christie: An English Mystery. All the photographs of Agatha that appear between the covers of Laura Thompson’s biography are well-known publicity shots from press agencies which are readily available upon the payment of reproduction fees.

Despite disagreeing with Mathew Prichard over certain aspects of her biography, Laura Thompson has never acknowledged the fact in public or fully explained the reasons why. Instead she gave thanks to Mathew Prichard for his ‘infinitely generous support’ and ‘permission’ to reproduce the photograph of Agatha on the dust jacket. In fact the photograph in question is a well-known publicity shot; it first appeared on the back covers of the English first editions of Death in the Clouds and The ABC Murders during the 1930s. Since then Laura Thompson’s and Mathew Prichard’s professional association in public has been one of guarded neutrality.

In order to promote Laura Thompson’s biography, which was commissioned as damage control in the wake of my book Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days, Agatha Christie Ltd’s publicity machine went into overdrive, citing her as a lifelong addict of crime fiction and, in particular, of Agatha Christie’s work. Laura Thompson was a guest speaker at the Dorothy L. Sayers annual convention in 2008. She confessed to having no knowledge of detective fiction before she began work on her biography and to knowing precious little about Agatha Christie before this. When a member of the audience made an unflattering remark about Mathew Prichard, instead of defending him she maintained a diplomatic silence and, in the words of someone present, ‘it was not hard to see that she agreed’. Asked about relations with the Christie family, Laura Thompson replied that ‘like all things’ this came down to ‘big money’ and the family were doing their best ‘to cash in on the Christie legacy’.

If Rosalind Hicks had lived to see the publication of Agatha Christie: An English Mystery she would have perceived Laura Thompson as a loose cannon, since her main reason for commissioning the biography in the first place was to reinforce the amnesia explanation of the disappearance. Given her fondness for Max, Rosalind would also have been furious at Laura Thompson’s claim that he had had an unconsummated homosexual love affair and would doubtlessly have refused to give the biographer permission to reproduce any precious photographs of her mother from the Christie family albums. In short, Rosalind would have hated Laura Thompson’s biography.