A Lady Vanishes: The Mysterious Disappearance of Agatha Christie

On a chilly December evening, the 36-year-old Christie vanished from her English estate in Sunningdale, Berkshire. While the famed author reportedly left a note that claimed she had gone on holiday, the discovery of her car suggested otherwise. The car was found at the edge of a mine not far from her home, abandoned with its hood up and lights on. Inside sat Christie’s fur coat, her old driving license, and a bag of clothes. There was no sign of the woman herself. Authorities suspected murder. News of Christie’s disappearance spread quickly, and a massive manhunt commenced. Over a thousand officers and 15,000 volunteers combed the countryside, while dredge teams searched the surrounding lakes and streams. Many small planes searched from the skies – the first air search in England’s history for a missing person case. By the end of the week, Christie’s disappearance had become a national obsession.

Just who could have murdered the Queen of Crime? Many suspected Christie’s husband, Colonel Archie Christie. The old Colonel was having an affair with a younger woman named Nancy Neele, and didn’t hide his affair from his wife. On the day of Christie’s disappearance, the couple reportedly argued after Archie announced that he planned to spend the weekend with his mistress. 

Agatha Christie remained missing for 11 days. Then, on December 14th, she was finally found hiding out at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, England. Oddly, Agatha had signed in to the spa as Theresa Neele from Cape Town, borrowing the last name of her husband’s lover. Christie said very little about the disappearance. She rarely discussed the matter in interviews and the bizarre episode does not appear in her autobiography. In the days after her return, the author blamed her vanishing on a mysterious dream state, in which she took on an entirely new identity: “For 24 hours I wandered in a dream, and then found myself in Harrogate as a well-contented and perfectly happy woman who believed she had just come from South Africa.”

Adapted from an article by Matthew Thompson on the-line-up.com