Agatha Christie: Mystery, Murder, and Marple

Act I: The Early Years

Agatha Miller was born on September 15th, 1890, in Torquay, England. Her family was affluent, but when Agatha was five, their fortune took a nosedive. With their money dwindling, they rented out their family home in the summer and spent months abroad in France, living as frugally as possible. This was the start of a lifelong love of travel.

Agatha had a lonely childhood, made lonelier still by the death of her much-loved father when she was just eleven years old. In her teens, bedridden with influenza, Agatha first picked up her pen and began writing in earnest. Inspired by her strange fever dreams, she began writing short stories full of madness and the paranormal.

In 1914, at twenty-four years old, Agatha married Archibald Christie. But the outbreak of World War I soon separated the newlyweds. Archibald was posted in France, while Agatha worked as a nurse in a hospital in Torquay. During this phase of her life, Christie developed her most famous character of all time: Hercule Poirot, a detective with an elaborate waxed moustache, egg-shaped head, and strong Belgian accent, inspired by a Belgian refugee she met during her time as a nurse.

Act II: Pen to paper

1919 was a big year for Agatha. With the war over, she and her husband moved to London. She gave birth to a daughter, Rosalind, and the first of her Poirot novels, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was accepted by a publishing house. This book propelled her into the literary spotlight, and she promptly signed a deal to write five more (though it was not a good deal, involving a lot of work for little remuneration).

In 1922, Agatha and Archie left three-year-old Rosalind behind and spent ten months travelling the world as part of “The Grand Tour," a trade mission to promote the forthcoming British Empire Exhibition in London. She visited Portugal, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, various parts of the United States, and Africa. But it wasn’t all work. Enamoured with Hawaii, the couple extended their stay and took up surfing. Despite days spent riding the waves, Agatha still managed to maintain her prolific writing pace, completing a book a year until her demanding contract was fulfilled.

As soon as her contract ended, Christie flexed her literary muscles to write an audacious new novel called The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It was snapped up by the publisher William Collins on more favourable terms, beginning a partnership that would continue for the rest of her career.

Act III: Agatha Goes Missing

In 1926, despite her literary success, Agatha Christie experienced a year of unbelievable sadness. Her mother died, and soon after, Archie, her beloved husband, broke the news that he was in love with another woman and filed for divorce.

On the evening of December 3rd, 1926, Agatha Christie left her daughter in the care of her maids and drove off. Twelve hours later, just as morning was breaking, her car was found a couple of miles away at an abandoned quarry. Agatha Christie had disappeared… The case of the missing author sparked one of the biggest manhunts in British history. It involved dogs, motorbikes, and aircraft. The press dedicated yards of column inches to the story. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the infamous Sherlock Holmes, even consulted a psychic in the hunt for his missing friend.

The medium was not needed in the end. On Monday, December 13th, a waitress at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate studied one of the guests in the dining room. Though she had given her name as Theresa Neele (the surname of Archie’s new lover), the waitress was convinced the woman was actually Agatha Christie. In private, she made a call to the police. The next day, Archie entered the hotel and locked eyes with his wife. Though many believed it was a mere publicity stunt, others suggested her disappearance was a desperate attempt to revive a failing marriage or a psychiatric disorder—a “fugue state” brought on by deep depression.

Although Christie recovered and started writing fiction again soon after, she never shed light on those missing eleven days. She barely mentioned her disappearance, even in her autobiography.

In 1930, Agatha met a trainee archaeologist named Max Mallowan. They took several trips abroad together, visiting digs in far-flung places. The couple were married by the end of the year. Their life together took on a rhythm—summers in Torquay, Christmas in Cheshire, digs in the Middle East in spring. The influence of these exotic locations can be seen in her work—books like Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, and They Came to Baghdad, to name a few.

Epilogue: Curtain

Agatha Christie didn't stop at creating just one iconic detective. After Hercule Poirot, she introduced the world to Miss Jane Marple, another unforgettable sleuth who would captivate readers for generations. The first of eleven Marple novels, Murder at the Vicarage, debuted in 1930 and was an instant success.

In 1946, the BBC asked the then Queen Mother what she would like as an 80th birthday gift—a new Agatha Christie play was her answer. In response, Agatha wrote a short radio play called Three Blind Mice, broadcast in 1947. Five years later, it was turned into a stage show called The Mousetrap. It opened in the Ambassadors Theatre on November 25th, 1952. Over 70 years later, it is still showing in the West End.

Agatha Christie wrote her last novel in 1973, at the age of 82. By then, her health was waning. After a heart attack left her frail, she retreated to her home in Wallingford, Oxfordshire. The conclusion she wrote for Hercule Poirot was published under the fitting name Curtain in 1975. Agatha Christie passed away just a few months later, on January 12th, 1976. But she had saved a final twist for her own denouement.

Her fans were thrilled by rumours of unpublished novels and stories. Later in the year, a book she had written almost thirty years earlier—when she feared for her life during World War Two—was published as Sleeping Murder. It was to be Miss Marple's final case.

Agatha Christie expanded the boundaries of what the crime novel could be and do. She kept testing, story after story, extending the limits of the genre and being super ambitious as to what a crime novel could achieve.

Sophie Hannah, best-selling crime writer