On December 4, 1926, Agatha Christie vanished for ten days. She was already a well-known author and her disappearance was extremely controversial, captivating worldwide public attention.
Her mother had recently died, causing her great grief. Not long after, her husband demanded that she file for divorce from him so he could marry his friend Nancy Neele. Divorce was terribly scandalous and shocking in those days; it was also complicated. Her husband couldn't file for divorce without compromising Nancy's social standing. Also, Mrs. Christie had been doing her best to reconcile with him and find a way for him to feel like they could stay together, especially since the couple had a daughter whom they both cherished.
An enormous amount of publicity and police energy were devoted to finding her. The circumstances of her disappearance were so much like something out of one of her books that some suspected she'd set it up for promotional purposes (two of her new books were being serialized in newspapers). Her husband was investigated, more with the idea that he might have driven her to suicide than that he killed her himself. Arthur Conan Doyle became involvednote he consulted a psychic reader who said Mrs. Christie was alive and would be located in a few days. She was. as did Dorothy L. Sayersnote who pointed out immediately that the police weren't asking the right questions. However, she turned up alive and well at a popular health spa / hotel in Yorkshire, having registered as Teresa Neele.note Agatha wasn't Catholic, but she liked St. Teresa of Avila, a great writer and reorganizer of convents and the first woman Patron Saint to receive the title "Doctor of the Church".
Speculations have run rampant for generations as to Mrs. Christie's state of mind and reasoning at the time. She had initially pretended to be confused and having trouble with her memory, but had been relaxing and having fun in a normal way at the hotel. After she was found, her husband played up the amnesia angle to the press to cover his own conduct.
The media portrayed her as having set up a cynical publicity stunt. Recent research has uncovered proof that while she certainly was distraught and stressed, she consciously staged the disappearance to get back at her husband by making it look as if he'd murdered her or driven her mad; her beloved sister-in-law helped her with the scheme and coverup. She had never meant for it to become a worldwide phenomenon. She never mentioned it and left it out of her autobiography, but it forever haunted both her writing and her daily life.
Christie's genius as an author was so great that it once saved an infant's life. Doctors in a hospital were stumped by a baby who was growing continually worse despite all their best efforts. A nurse in the same hospital happened to be reading Christie's novel The Pale Horse at the time; the solution to that book involves people secretly being dosed with thallium, a toxic chemical. Christie, an expert in poisons and medicine, had detailed the symptoms of thallium poisoning so accurately the the nurse was able to recognize them in the infant by comparing them to the novel's descriptions. She told the doctors her suspicions, and sure enough, trace amounts of thallium were discovered in the baby's body. They quickly made adjustments, and the baby lived. And the best part? Christie had died the previous year! Her works truly lived on after her.
The 1979 British thriller Agatha wraps a mystery thriller around her famous disappearance, when a reporter suspects that Agatha Christie is using her crime-writing skills to plan the murder of her husband's mistress.
In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: JoJolion, Rai Mamezuku references "A Pocket Full of Rye" written by Agatha Christie when utilizing yew seeds against an opponent after discussing how poisonous they are.
Yellowjackets: in episode "Old Wounds" Amateur Sleuth Misty registers at a bed-and-breakfast as "Lady Mallowan". Christie's second husband, Max Mallowan, was knighted for his achievements in archeology, allowing her to use the style "Lady Mallowan".
The "Wagatha Christie" libel case of 2022 is named after her. This will take some unpacking for readers unfamiliar with British popular culture (or even those who are familiar with it and have been trying to forget about this particular episode ever since it happened). From the mid-2000s onwards, the England football team were accompanied to international by their Wives And Girlfriends — the WAGs, or Wags, for short. In whom the celebrity-obsessed tabloid press were often more interested than they were in what was occurring on the pitch. Later, we got the singular form "Wag" for a sportsman's other half. In the late 2010s, Wag A (Colleen Rooney) suspected that Wag B (Rebekah Vardy) was the source of unflattering stories about Ms Rooney that had appeared in the tabloid press, and publicly accused her after doing some amateur detective work. Wags + detection? Wagatha Christie! Ms. Vardy sued for libel, and the case came to trial in May 2022.
In the Cabin Pressure episode "Paris", when Arthur wants to compare Martin (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) to a great detective, he naturally decides on Miss Marple.
The Red Dwarf episode "Timeslides" has Holly, bored after reading every book in existence, get Lister to delete all of Agatha Christie's works from his memory so that he can read them again. Later, when asked what's happening, he says "Well, Hercule Poirot has just got on the train, and personally, I reckon they all did it."
The Ogden Nash poem "The Trouble with Shakespeare - You Remember Him" claims that a single Agatha Christie book is all you need on a desert island, because you will never remember who the murderer is on a re-read.
By the time you close it, murmuring "Splendid!" You've already forgotten how it ended. Whoever is fingered by Hercule Poirot, Is out of your head by this time tomorrow.
The Doctor Who episode "The Unicorn and the Wasp" is set arround her disappearance, which, this being Doctor Who, is due to aliens. Said alien resembles a giant wasp, due to Gareth Roberts' disappointment that one appears on the Fontana paperback cover of Death in the Clouds, but not in the actual story.
