We have much to learn from the Golden Age detective novel, but perhaps these days there’s something more to be said for a mystery that is not quite solved. In an unsolved mystery, questions linger. It’s fascinating until that very last piece, then satisfying, but also complete. Solving a mystery reduces it to a puzzle, one that can be answered correctly and then put away. Even her Autobiography, published posthumously, skips over this period as quickly and dismissively as the famous ellipsis in Roger Ackroyd (published, as it happens, that very year.) When she was discovered 11 days later in a hotel in Harrogate, she claimed amnesia and then never spoke of the incident again. In all cases, when the “truth” is finally revealed, order is restored and chaos neatly packed away.īut Christie’s real life mystery has never been fully unlocked. One Christie fan I know read every one of her 66 books in his teens and in only one of them did he spot the killer. The murderer, it turns out, is the person you least suspected, even if, in hindsight, they are the most obvious. A detective or detective figure gathers together a community disrupted by crime and suspicion chins are stroked eyes are beady the culprit is eventually pinned. Denouements often take place in drawing rooms.
But for me, the most compelling part is not the parallels with her stories but, rather, the opposite.Ĭhristie’s fictional mysteries are always solved.
Had her husband, who was having an affair, bumped her off? Had she drowned herself in the nearby reservoir and framed him as revenge? Was it an elaborate publicity stunt for her latest novel?įor Christie fans, the story is a familiar one. Headlines around the world revelled at Life imitating Art a giant manhunt was launched and as the days passed, famous crime writers were quick to offer their theories. The following morning, her Morris Cowley was discovered crashed on the edge of a chalk pit, headlamps still blazing, her coat and a bottle labelled “poison lead and opium” abandoned on the back seat.įor the press, it was a gift: a famous murder-mystery writer had gone missing in highly suspicious circumstances. Agatha Christie, having been overheard arguing with her husband, kissed her sleeping daughter goodbye and, with a crunch of gravel, drove off into the night.
Like many good stories, it started on a cold, dark night.
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