on Saturday morning by a cow-man moving a herd of cattle was subsequently disproved, since the informant stated after being questioned a second time that the car he had seen had a square radiator. Agatha’s Morris Cowley, like all the older models of this car, had a round radiator; the distinctive square radiators appeared for the first time in 1926.
By Saturday night Archie was growing increasingly agitated. He was filled with dread at the possible consequences of Agatha’s disappearance. A minor accident, in which she had wandered away from her car alive and well, seemed increasingly improbable to the Colonel, and he began to worry that he might have driven her to suicide by telling her that their trial reconciliation was over. The two letters Agatha had left behind at Styles had not given any clue to her proposed movements, and Archie reassured their daughter by telling Rosalind that her mother had gone to Ashfield to do some writing. Inquiries by the Torquay police, however, had revealed that Ashfield was uninhabited. What concerned the Colonel the most was the fact that the longer Agatha remained missing the more likely it was that his relationship with Nancy would come out into the open.
On Sunday the 5th Deputy Chief Constable Kenward mounted an all-day search around Newlands Corner, unaware that a third letter, written by Agatha before she left Styles on the Friday night, had since been delivered by post to the London workplace of Archie’s brother, Campbell Christie, an instructor at the Royal Woolwich Military Academy. The letter had been posted in London on the morning her car had been found abandoned. Campbell did not immediately pass on the information because he had yet to learn that his sister-in-law was missing.
One of the civilian helpers during the search on Sunday was eighteen-year-old Jack Boxall, a local gardener in Guildford. He vividly recalls the feeling of community spirit that prompted him, together with his father and a number of friends, to walk several miles from his home to Newlands Corner. He told me the police search parties were working in the direction of the Silent Pool and the village of Shere in the south-east, while his own party undertook to search that area in the north-west between Newlands Corner and Merrow known as the Roughs. It was an area very familiar to his father, a house painter, who in his spare time played golf in the open spaces on the Roughs. Despite their diligent efforts to locate Agatha, there was no sign of the missing woman as dusk fell, and the group was forced to admit defeat. Jack Boxall recalls that this did not discourage a veritable posse of police officers from continuing the search by lamplight.
On Sunday night the police visited the village of Albury on receiving a report from a hotel that a woman had been seen who answered the description of the novelist. They searched the wood at the back of Albury, but drew a blank. Later that evening a missing persons notice was circulated to the fifty police stations nearest the village:
Missing from her home, Styles, Sunningdale, Berkshire, Mrs Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, age 35 [she was actually 36]; height 5 feet 7 inches; hair, red, shingled part grey; complexion, fair, build slight; dressed in grey stockinette skirt, green jumper, grey and dark grey cardigan and small velour hat; wearing a platinum ring with one pearl; no wedding ring; black handbag with purse containing perhaps £5 or £10. Left home by car at 9.45 p.m. Friday leaving note saying that she was going for a drive.
The failure of the police to locate Agatha, and the fact that they received no word from her by the end of the weekend, led to the forfeiting of her privacy. What might have remained a private incident in the life of an intensely private woman instead rapidly fell under the harsh glare of the media spotlight.
Chapter Eight
The Search Widens
Where Agatha had gone after vanishing from Styles on Friday 3 December was the focus
By Saturday night Archie was growing increasingly agitated. He was filled with dread at the possible consequences of Agatha’s disappearance. A minor accident, in which she had wandered away from her car alive and well, seemed increasingly improbable to the Colonel, and he began to worry that he might have driven her to suicide by telling her that their trial reconciliation was over. The two letters Agatha had left behind at Styles had not given any clue to her proposed movements, and Archie reassured their daughter by telling Rosalind that her mother had gone to Ashfield to do some writing. Inquiries by the Torquay police, however, had revealed that Ashfield was uninhabited. What concerned the Colonel the most was the fact that the longer Agatha remained missing the more likely it was that his relationship with Nancy would come out into the open.
On Sunday the 5th Deputy Chief Constable Kenward mounted an all-day search around Newlands Corner, unaware that a third letter, written by Agatha before she left Styles on the Friday night, had since been delivered by post to the London workplace of Archie’s brother, Campbell Christie, an instructor at the Royal Woolwich Military Academy. The letter had been posted in London on the morning her car had been found abandoned. Campbell did not immediately pass on the information because he had yet to learn that his sister-in-law was missing.
One of the civilian helpers during the search on Sunday was eighteen-year-old Jack Boxall, a local gardener in Guildford. He vividly recalls the feeling of community spirit that prompted him, together with his father and a number of friends, to walk several miles from his home to Newlands Corner. He told me the police search parties were working in the direction of the Silent Pool and the village of Shere in the south-east, while his own party undertook to search that area in the north-west between Newlands Corner and Merrow known as the Roughs. It was an area very familiar to his father, a house painter, who in his spare time played golf in the open spaces on the Roughs. Despite their diligent efforts to locate Agatha, there was no sign of the missing woman as dusk fell, and the group was forced to admit defeat. Jack Boxall recalls that this did not discourage a veritable posse of police officers from continuing the search by lamplight.
On Sunday night the police visited the village of Albury on receiving a report from a hotel that a woman had been seen who answered the description of the novelist. They searched the wood at the back of Albury, but drew a blank. Later that evening a missing persons notice was circulated to the fifty police stations nearest the village:
Missing from her home, Styles, Sunningdale, Berkshire, Mrs Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, age 35 [she was actually 36]; height 5 feet 7 inches; hair, red, shingled part grey; complexion, fair, build slight; dressed in grey stockinette skirt, green jumper, grey and dark grey cardigan and small velour hat; wearing a platinum ring with one pearl; no wedding ring; black handbag with purse containing perhaps £5 or £10. Left home by car at 9.45 p.m. Friday leaving note saying that she was going for a drive.
The failure of the police to locate Agatha, and the fact that they received no word from her by the end of the weekend, led to the forfeiting of her privacy. What might have remained a private incident in the life of an intensely private woman instead rapidly fell under the harsh glare of the media spotlight.
Chapter Eight
The Search Widens
Where Agatha had gone after vanishing from Styles on Friday 3 December was the focus
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