True Crime Collection

Agatha Christie

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on 15th September 1890 into a wealthy upper middle class family in Torquay, Devon. She was the youngest of 3 children born to Fred Miller and his wife Clarissa Miller. She described her childhood as "very happy". The Millers lived mainly in Devon but often visited her step-grandmother/great-aunt Margaret Miller in Ealing and maternal grandmother Mary Boehmer in Bayswater. A year was spent abroad with her family, in the French Pyrenees, Paris, Dinard, and Guernsey. Agatha spent much of her time playing alone with her pets and imaginary companions. She eventually made friends with other girls in Torquay, noting that "one of the highlights of my existence" was her appearance with them in a youth production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard, in which she played the hero, Colonel Fairfax. 

According to Agatha, Clarissa believed she should not learn to read until she was 8; thanks to her curiosity, she was reading by 4. Her sister had been sent to a boarding school, but their mother insisted that Agatha receive a home education. As a result, her parents and sister supervised her studies in reading, writing, and basic arithmetic, a subject she particularly enjoyed. They also taught her music, and she learned to play the piano and the mandolin. 

Agatha was a voracious reader from an early age. Among her earliest memories were reading children's books by Mrs Molesworth and Edith Nesbit. When a little older, she moved on to the surreal verse of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. As an adolescent, she enjoyed works by Anthony Hope, Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, and Alexandre Dumas. In April 1901, aged 10, she wrote her first poem, "The Cowslip".

By 1901, her father's health had deteriorated, because of what he believed were heart problems. Fred died in November 1901 from pneumonia and chronic kidney disease. Agatha later said that her father's death when she was 11 marked the end of her childhood. 

The family's financial situation had by this time worsened. Both Agatha's siblings had moved from the home. Agatha now lived alone at Ashfield with her mother. In 1902, she began attending Miss Guyer's Girls' School in Torquay but found it difficult to adjust to the disciplined atmosphere. In 1905, her mother sent her to Paris, where she was educated in a series of boarding schools, focusing on voice training and piano playing. Deciding she lacked the temperament and talent, she gave up her goal of performing professionally as a concert pianist or an opera singer. 

After completing her education, Agatha returned to England to find her mother ailing. They decided to spend the northern winter of 1907-1908 in the warm climate of Egypt, which was then a regular tourist destination for wealthy Britons. They stayed for 3 months at the Gezirah Palace Hotel in Cairo. Agatha attended many dances and other social functions; she particularly enjoyed watching amateur polo matches. While they visited some ancient Egyptian monuments such as the Great Pyramid of Giza, she did not exhibit the great interest in archaeology and Egyptology that developed in her later years. Returning to Britain, she continued her social activities, writing and performing in amateur theatricals. 

At 18, Agatha wrote her first short story, "The House of Beauty", while recovering in bed from an illness. It consisted of about 6,000 words on "madness and dreams", a subject of fascination for her. 

Around the same time, Agatha began work on her first normal, Snow Upon the Desert. Writing under the pseudonym Monosyllaba, she set the book in Cairo and drew upon her recent experiences there. She was disappointed when the 6 publishers she contacted declined the work. Clarissa suggested that her daughter ask for advice from the successful novelist Eden Phillpotts, a family friend and neighbour, who responded to her enquiry, encouraged her writing, and sent her an introduction to his own literary agent, Hughes Massie, who also rejected Snow Upon the Desert but suggested a second novel. 

Meanwhile, Agatha's social activities expanded, with country house parties, horseback riding, hunting, dances, and rolling skating. She had short lived relationships with 4 men and an engagement to another. In October 1912, she was introduced to Archibald "Archie" Christie at a dance given by Lord and Lady Clifford at Ugbrooke, about 12 miles from Torquay. The sone of a barrister in the Indian Civil Service, Archie was an army officer who was seconded to the Royal Flying Corps in April 1913. The couple quickly fell in love. 3 months after their first meeting, Archie proposed marriage, and Agatha accepted. They married on Christmas Eve 1914 at Emmanuel Church, Clifton, Bristol. 

Agatha settled into married life, giving birth to her only child, Rosalind Margaret Clarissa, in August 1919 at Ashfield. Archie left the Air Force at the end of the war and began working in the city financial sector at a relatively low salary. They still employed a maid. Agatha's mother died in April 1926. They had been exceptionally close, and the loss sent Agatha into a deep depression. In August 1926, reports appeared in the press that Agatha had gone to a village near Biarritz to recuperate from a "breakdown" caused by "overwork".

In August 1926, Archie asked Agatha for a divorce. He had fallen in love with Nancy Neele, a friend of Major Belcher. On 3rd December 1926, the pair quarrelled after Archie announced his plan to spend the weekend with friends, unaccompanied by his wife. Late that evening, Agatha disappeared from their home. The following morning, her car, a Morris Cowley, was discovered at Newlands Corner, parked above a chalk quarry with an expired driving licence and clothes inside. 

The disappearance quickly became a news story, as the press sought to satisfy their readers' "hunger for sensation, disaster, and scandal". Home secretary William Joynson-Hicks pressured police, and a newspaper offered a £100 reward. More than 1,000 police officers, 15,000 volunteers, and several aeroplanes searched the rural landscape. Agatha's disappearance was featured on the front page of The New York Times. Despite the extensive manhunt, she was not found for another 10 days. On 14th December 1926, she was located at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire, registered as Mrs Tressa Neele from "Capetown S.A." The next day, Agatha left for her sister's residence at Abney Hall, Cheadle, where she was sequestered "in guarded hall, gates locked, telephone cut off, and callers turned away". 

Agatha's autobiography makes no reference to the disappearance. 2 doctors diagnosed her as suffering from "an unquestionable genuine loss of memory", yet opinion remains divided over the reason for her disappearance. Some, including her biographer Morgan, believe she disappeared during a fugue state. The author Jared Cade concluded that Agatha planned the event to embarrass her husband but did not anticipate the resulting public melodrama. Agatha biographer Laura Thompson provides an alternative view that Agatha disappeared during a nervous breakdown, conscious of her actions but not in emotional control of herself. Public reaction at the time was largely negative, supposing a publicity stunt or an attempt to frame her husband for murder.