The famous 11-day disappearance of writer Agatha Christie in the 1920s has long bamboozled biographers, but the mystery may now finally be solved.
BBC historian Lucy Worsley thinks she knows why the famous crime author vanished in 1926 before turning up at a hotel in Yorkshire, miles away from her home in Berkshire, more than a week later.
Christie had entered a “fugue state”, according to the historian, in which she would have experienced amnesia, a loss of sense of self, and been more prone to making journeys to random locations.
This could have been triggered by two emotional traumas, the first being the death of her mother.
Worsley told BBC History magazine: “By 1926 Agatha was a successful novelist, and she was under a lot of pressure to keep producing books. But her mother died that year, and she went into an episode of what today would be described as a depression.
“She reported forgetfulness, tearfulness, insomnia, an inability to cope with normal life. Her mental state became so bad that she considered suicide. She then entered, I believe, into a fugue state.”
The second major event that could have contributed to her “fugue state” was that she discovered her husband, Colonel Archie Christie, had been having an affair with a younger woman.
Shortly after these events in December 1926, the author’s car was found abandoned, prompting an extensive manhunt that could have involved more than 15,000 volunteers.
She eventually turned up at a hotel in Harrogate, which she had booked in under the name “Mrs Teresa Neele” – the surname of her husband’s mistress.
The use of “Neele” has led to speculation the incident was a stunt by Christie, but Worsley is not convinced by this theory.
She said: “That's not framing your cheating husband for murder, that is living with a really serious mental health condition.
“And yet the narrative is that she was somehow a bad person who was playing some sort of trick on the world; to frame her husband or get attention to sell novels.”
