The “lady” Agatha Christie has renewed the detective story of the twentieth century and has imposed her talent throughout the world.
In this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of History", Jean des Cars tells the story of the talented British novelist.
Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple ... The characters in “The Queen of Crime” have left their mark on generations of readers. In this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of history", Jean des Cars looks back on the life and the breathless works of novelist Agatha Christie.
On Monday December 6, 1926, Agatha Christie made the headlines of every newspaper in the United Kingdom.
But that's not because of her talents as a novelist.
She only published two detective novels which made her a best-selling author “The Mysterious Business of Styles” in 1920 and in the spring of 1926 “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd”.
No, it's much more serious: Agatha Christie has disappeared!
The United Kingdom is in turmoil, the United States too.
The New-York Times writes: “Novelist Agatha Christie disappears from her house in a strange way”.
Two days earlier, on Saturday morning, police found his car, a beautiful Morris Cowley, near Guildford, Surrey, 30 km from his home, halfway up a hill.
The hood was sunk into a thicket on the edge of a deep chalk quarry.
The brakes were released and the headlights were now off, due to a lack of charged battery, in the “on” position.
In the back seat, a fur coat, a small suitcase containing personal effects including two pairs of shoes and a driver's license in the name of Agatha Christie.
But the novelist remains untraceable.
Was it an accident?
From a suicide attempt?
Did she go astray while looking for her way in the night?
Is it a publicity stunt by his publisher to increase his sales?
A masterful staging to test the plot of his new book?
Tom Roberts, a 21-year-old police officer, says that only the thickets the car sank into kept it from crashing into the quarry.
Want to listen to the other episodes of this podcast?
>> Find them on our Europe1.fr site and on Apple Podcasts, Google podcasts, Deezer, Dailymotion and YouTube, or your usual listening platforms.
>> Find here the user manual to listen to all the podcasts of Europe 1
Agatha Christie is missing!
Immediately, her husband, Colonel Archibald Christie, attended the scene.
He agrees with Commissioner Kenward: it is an accident.
At this time of year, night falls at 4 p.m. and fog is everywhere.
The two men believe that after abandoning her car, the novelist may have gotten lost in the dark, frozen, and drowned after slipping into one of the many ponds in the region.
A fight is immediately organized.
The search continues the next day, Sunday.
A crowd of curious people rushed to the scene.
The beat gives nothing.
Agatha Christie has vanished!
Colonel Christie brought Peter, his wife's darling fox terrier in the hope that he would sniff his mistress's trail.
But the dog is only interested in chasing mice!
Convinced that it was a drowning, Superintendent Kenward summons a pump to dredge the pond near the accident, named “the Silent Pool”, ”the silent pool” which is said to be haunted!
Kenward's colleague, Commissioner Goddard, is investigating in Berkshire, the county where Styles is located, the home of the Christie couple.
The trash cans are searched, the check books peeled, but without revealing the slightest clue.
The testimonies of the cook, her husband and the maid agree: after the dinner she had alone, Mrs. Christie abruptly left the house around 9.45 pm The servants also heard loud voices from the two. husband during the morning breakfast.
The investigation is stalling, probably also because it takes place straddling two counties, with two different teams and two police officers with strong personalities and diametrically opposed opinions.
A staged disappearance?
Kenward, the Surrey police officer, is convinced it was an accident.
Goddard, the older Berkshire cop, who has dealt with complicated cases before, is convinced Agatha Christie is alive and staged her disappearance.
Journalists are also investigating.
As the days go by, readers find that the Christies' married life was in crisis.
The argument, heard by staff on the morning of December 3, was the result of a conflict that had lasted for five months.
We begin to think that the husband could be involved in the disappearance of his wife.
This war hero, abandoned alone in his luxurious house with their little girl, is perhaps no stranger to the tragedy ...
At the beginning of August, Archibald Christie had announced to his wife that he wanted a divorce.
He had left and then returned to Styles, promising Agatha not to see Nancy Neele with whom he had fallen in love.
On the morning of the tragic Friday, he confessed to Agatha that he had seen the young woman again and that he would spend the weekend with her at friends' house, the Sam James, one of his colleagues in the City.
The colonel had, in fact, become a banker.
Archibald only learned of his wife's disappearance on Saturday morning, by a phone call from their daughter's Scottish nanny, Carlo Fischer.
On her return to Styles, the nurse gave the husband a letter written by Agatha;
he immediately burned it… Why didn't he show it to the police?
The only one who really knows the origins of the drama is Carlo Fisher.
Agatha Christie had hired her a year earlier to type her manuscripts and take care of her baby girl Rosalind.
The secretary knows that Agatha refuses a divorce, that she is exhausted, that she sleeps very badly.
The called doctor asked Carlo to put a bed in Mrs Christie's room and not to leave her.
But on the evening of December 3, Carlo Fisher was not there, she was in London.
It was while walking back from the station at 11 p.m. that the terrified Scottish woman discovered the garage doors wide open and the servants paralyzed.
On Saturday, December 11, the Daily News published three photos on the front page.
In the center, the real Agatha, on the right disguised with a brown wig, on the left with a pair of glasses.
It is a call for witnesses.
It will take twelve days for the police to find Agatha Christie in Harrogate, an elegant Yorkshire spa.
It is two musicians of the orchestra who play every evening in the large ballroom of the Hôtel des Thermes, the largest in Harrogate, who recognized her.
She had registered under a false name, Theresa Neel (the name of her husband's mistress).
She claimed to come from South Africa and specified that her luggage would follow her.
The maid who brought the breakfast trays found her very tired.
And she noticed that this traveler without luggage, after going out shopping, had hats, clothes, shoes and toiletries delivered that she did not have when she arrived.
The young woman seemed traumatized, claiming to have lost a child.
Yorkshire Police Chief Commissioner Macdowell is investigating.
Colonel Christie arrives by the evening train to check if this Mrs. Neel is indeed his wife.
At 7:30 p.m., he arrives and confirms that it is his wife.
They dine at the same table then Agatha Christie returns alone to her room.
Archibald phoned Agatha's older sister Madge Watts, who immediately arrives from Manchester with her husband.
It is at their home, in Abney Hall, an imposing Victorian mansion, that the novelist will rest until the Christmas holidays.
Agatha is found but the mystery remains.
The public is hungry for more!
It was only on February 7, 1928, ulcerated by all the horrors that have been invented about her disappearance, that she decides to explain herself in the Daily Mail.
She says she left her home in a severe state of depression, with the intention of killing herself.
She drove to the crest of the hill and let the car descend below.
The car crashes, the shock is violent.
Agatha is thrown against the steering wheel, injured in the head and chest.
She then loses her memory.
She wandered all night and then all day before finding herself in Harrogate, in the shoes of another woman.
She explains that her troubles had started after the death of her mother in the spring of 1926. It had affected her a lot, she had lost sleep over it.
It took him several days to gradually find his own identity.
She gives no details of the private reasons that pushed her to suicide.
Agatha was deeply hurt by her husband's affair and her desire for a divorce.
It was jealousy that drove her to consider the worst.
She says she was stupid.
Now her divorce from Colonel Christie is inevitable.
But who is this desperate novelist?
Happy childhood
Agatha was born on September 15, 1890 in a large and beautiful home, Ashfield, located in the upscale seaside resort of Torquay, Devon.
Her mother, Clara, had bought her shortly after her marriage.
She fell in love with this house overlooking the sea. Her father, Frédéric Miller, is American.
He is rich, only son, orphan.
He inherited a large real estate fortune in New York.
Clara is from Manchester, the English cotton town, shy, with very original ideas.
It is, in fact, a great melancholy.
The couple, who married in 1878, are happy.
They live mainly in Torquay where their first daughter, Madge, will be born in 1879. They travel regularly to the United States where Frédéric has his business;
their son Monty will be born in New York.
Agatha was born in Ashfield, ten years after her sister and brother.
She is a pretty blonde.
She obviously has a nanny she adores and to whom her mother has made some strange recommendations.
While her eldest daughter is a boarder in a chic institution in Brighton, she now believes that children should not go to school, that you should not tire your brain and that we should especially not teach him to read !
It was not knowing Agatha well.
Her wonderful storyteller sister Madge reads her stories whenever she can.
Agatha picks up the books again, turns the pages with delight and one evening, the nurse, dumbfounded, hears her read several paragraphs.
She is forced to piteously announce to Clara that she is sorry, that her little girl has learned to read on her own, when she is not yet 5 years old!
She devours books, her sister makes her read “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” and those of “Rouletabille”.
The house is very well attended.
Rudyard Kipling arrives as a neighbor on a tandem with his American wife.
Henry James is also a regular.
In 1897, the family attended in London, from the stands of White Hall, the magnificent parade organized for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.
Agatha is 7 years old.
Ashamed, she will admit later to having kept no memory of it ...
The following year, on his return from New York, his father was worried.
His associates do not properly manage his fortune, the income deteriorates.
They will rent Ashfield for a year and go to France.
Frédéric Miller was advised to take a cure in Pau.
For Agatha, this trip is a real celebration.
After crossing the Channel and a short passage through Paris, she takes a night train to Pau.
She discovers her passion for sleeping cars.
Later, she will be a loyal client of “sleepings”.
After Pau, we reach the spa resort of Cauterets, in the Hautes-Pyrénées.
Agatha admires the snow-capped Pic du Midi and loves to slide between the pines on her panties.
Then, direction Brittany, to Paramé, to the Grand Hôtel des Bains, on the Emerald Coast.
A woman with many hobbies
Agatha then discovers another passion, she will have it all her life: swimming.
She was enchanted when she attended the operetta “Les cloches de Corneville”.
This year of vacation in France comes to an end on the Anglo-Norman island of Guernsey.
Agatha devours the books of the Comtesse de Ségur and “Sans famille” by Hector Malot.
The family returned to Ashfield in 1899. Monty, Agatha's 19-year-old brother, was in the military.
He leaves for South Africa to fight against the Boers.
For his part, Agatha's father is not doing well.
Financial worries plague him.
He goes to London to try to find a job in the bank with the Pierpont Morgan.
It does not work.
And then he catches a cold.
On his return to Ashfield, his cold degenerated into double pneumonia.
He died on November 26, 1901. Agatha adored her father, she will never forget him.
Her sister having married, she finds herself alone with her mother who takes her to Paris, enrolls her in a serious school on avenue du Bois where actors from the Comédie-Française teach dramatic art and where big names from Conservatory give singing lessons as well as a solid musical education.
She works her voice with one of the best teachers in Paris, the baritone Jacques Bouhy.
She is gifted and is considering, very seriously, a career as an opera singer.
At the same time, she grew up and went to spend a long time in Cairo with her mother.
While discovering the treasures of Egypt (we know that she will come back there…), she has fun madly because social life in Cairo is intense and there are balls every evening.
On her return to London, she tests her powers of seduction.
In 1908, Agatha was 18 and had many suitors.
She continues to take singing lessons.
She hopes to become a singer and it is a real cold shower when an American friend of her mother's says to her: “Your voice is not strong enough for opera and never will be.
On the other hand, you can become a good concert singer, and you have enough to make a name for yourself. ”
His big dream collapses.
She was brought up in the cult of excellence.
It was “prima donna” to the opera or nothing!
Agatha becomes Madame Archibald Christie
On October 12, 1912, Lady Clifford, a friend of her mother's, gave a grand ball in honor of the artillery officers of Exeter, in her magnificent castle.
Agatha, more or less engaged to a young man who does not convince her, Major Lucy, is invited.
A friend of hers told her that there would be a wonderful dancer, Second Lieutenant Archibald Christie, at this ball and that she had to try to meet him.
As soon as she arrived, she was presented to the famous Archibald.
He is handsome, charming, he has a lot of confidence.
That evening, she will only dance with him.
Troubled, she confesses to him that she is already engaged and that she does not intend to see him again.
But Archibald hangs on.
He arrives in Ashfield by motorcycle and invites himself to dinner!
Before leaving, he offers Agatha to take him to a concert a few days later.
She falls head over heels in love with him.
She broke up without regret with Major Lucy, whom she saw very little anyway.
It was at the same time that, disappointed by her lyrical failure, she considered writing.
She wrote, with difficulty, a first novel inspired by her stay in Cairo “Snow on the Desert”.
She gets an appointment with a London publisher.
He refuses his book and encourages him to start another novel.
It was at this time that the First World War broke out.
Second Lieutenant Christie is sent to the front.
Agatha had time to see him before he left.
She became a nurse at Torquay Town Hall transformed into a Red Cross hospital.
Three days before the first Christmas war, Archibald has his first leave.
Agatha and her mother rush to London to welcome the hero.
The young girl had the idea that they could get married very quickly, as many couples then did.
The young man has lived through so many horrors on the front lines, has taken so many risks during his missions, that he thinks only of taking advantage of these few days of leave.
He wants to get married right away.
It's a war marriage.
Agatha does not have a white dress, just a coat and a very ordinary little hat.
Two witnesses were called at the last minute.
They get married in Bristol on Christmas Eve 1914. Her mother doesn't even know about it!
Her sister Madge, whom she warns by phone, is mad with rage.
The bride and groom spend their wedding night at the Grand Hotel in Torquay.
The next day the big Christmas lunch at Ashfield is wonderful.
Her sister becomes affectionate again and her mother is deeply happy with the happiness of the newlyweds.
Then Archibald leaves for the front.
Agatha bids him farewell without knowing if she will see him again ...
Nurse Agatha is doing her classes
At Torquay Hospital, Agatha, now Christie, is the physician's assistant who runs the pharmacy lab.
After a few months, she works to obtain her diploma as a pharmacy assistant.
She became an expert in the manufacture of ointments, in the detection of arsenic and other dangerous substances.
On Sundays, she works in one of the big pharmacies in the city.
The pharmacist shows him a small brownish tube which he takes out of his pocket.
He explains to her that it is curare and what the Indigenous people of the Amazon do with it.
All dangerous substances in the laboratory are stored in a locked cabinet.
There are arsenic, digitalis, thallium.
In short, the future queen of crime is doing her pharmaceutical education… At the same time, she begins to write because times are hard and she must earn money.
It will be a detective story.
She is going to invent her equivalent of Sherlock Holmes.
He will be called Hercule Poirot.
She imagines it this way: “A neat little man who likes things going in pairs, square rather than round.
He would be very intelligent, he would "work his little gray cells", an expression to remember. "
This detective will be of Belgian nationality because in Torquay, during the war, boats filled with Belgians fleeing their ruined villages were welcomed and Agatha, who spoke French with them, laughs at some of their funny expressions.
She is going to invent her egg-shaped skull and her extravagant black mustache that is a little ridiculous.
He will be manic and attentive to disorders, revealing, according to him, many clues.
For the reader, it will be comical and reassuring, with a name that makes you laugh a little.
As with Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, you need an equivalent of Doctor Watson.
At the hospital, a wounded officer was named Hastings.
Agatha will make it the British foil of Hercule Poirot.
To this partner, he will have to explain everything during the outcome.
In the meantime, the war has ended.
Major Christie and his wife moved to London and on August 8, 1919, Agatha gave birth to a lovely baby girl named Rosalind.
His first book, “The Mysterious Affair of Styles”, was released in bookstores and was a great success.
Poirot made his first appearance there.
Colonel Christie is then in charge of taking care of the great exhibition on the British Empire which is due to open in two years.
He will tour the Dominions, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Canada.
The couple left London on January 20, 1922. Rosalind was entrusted to her aunt and her grandmother.
This world tour allows Agatha to find new ideas for her next novel.
Before her departure, she had already given two manuscripts to her editor “Mr.
Brown ”and“ The Crime of Golf ”.
His career begins.
When the couple returned in 1923, “Le crime du golf” was a new success.
The following year, a collection of eleven short stories entitled “The investigations of Hercule Poirot” was released in bookstores.
The finances of the Christie couple are doing well.
They move into a large house in Sunningdale, which they call Styles.
At the beginning of 1926, Agatha Christie publishes a book which gains enormous success “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd”.
But a small controversy arises.
A critic finds it indecent to deceive the reader until the end of the book when we discover that the murderer is none other than ... the narrator!
To make matters worse, Agatha's mother died on April 5.
She sinks into depression before learning that her husband is having an affair and wants a divorce, as I told you at the beginning of this story.
Separation is inevitable.
Agatha Christie is going to have to start a new life.
Bibliographic resources:
Jean des Cars, Portrait in L'Éventail, Brussels (November 1976)
Béatrix de l'Aulnoit, The Thousand Lives of Agatha Christie (Tallandier, 2020)
Marie-Hélène Baylac, Agatha Christie, the mysteries of a life (Perrin, 2019)
“At the heart of History” is a Europe 1 Studio podcast
Author and presentation: Jean des Cars
Production: Timothée Magot
Director: Jean-François Bussière
Distribution and editing: Salomé Journo
Graphic design: Karelle Villais