Agatha Christie is the best selling novelist of all time, like still. She has sold an estimated 2 billion copies of her books which have been translated into 103 different languages. This puts her just below the bible and William Shakespeare. During her long career as an author, she wrote 66 novels, 14 short story collections, and 20 plays. One of her plays, “The Mouse Trap,” is the longest running, uninterrupted show, of any kind, in the world, ever. Agatha perfected the murder mystery genre. Her sharp wit, devious plot twists, and impressive ability to unpack the human psyche, capture the very essence of evil while still maintaining an easy, almost lighthearted readability has captivated readers for over 100 years and earned her the title the “Queen of Crime.” But did you know, in 1926, Agatha became the subject of a real life murder mystery case that had the whole world playing detective? Let’s fix that. 

 

Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I discuss lesser known true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. So, before we get into Agatha Christie, I have to talk about Thanksgiving for a second, or the Thanksgiving episode rather. Every time I release a new episode, I create a Reel for Instagram that’s like a teaser/trailer for the episode. Something to hook people, right, make them want to know more. Some of you listening right now probably found History Fix through Instagram (or TikTok, cause I repost them there). So I posted a Reel for the Thanksgiving episode, didn’t think much about it. It wasn’t, like my favorite Reel or anything, it was meh. You guys. The response I got, the backlash from that Reel was truly terrifying. Like, the worst sort of folks were coming out of the woodwork to comment on that Reel. We’re talking confederate flag profile pictures and black trench coats. I was accused of quote “spewing anti-American propaganda” and quote “ruining traditional holidays by telling half truths and negativity.” I was told to quote “get over yourself” and was referred to as a quote “radical liberal influencer.” And I had to delete some of the comments, honestly, because they were way way worse than that.

 

So. I’ve clearly struck a chord with these people who decided to crawl out of the underbelly muck of the internet to post such things. And I was a little blown away. I couldn’t understand why they were so upset, so mad at what I was saying, that I wanted people to know the full story of Thanksgiving so we wouldn’t continue to trivialize traumatic experiences out of ignorance. That’s all. But I think it’s a natural human response to become angry and defensive when your long held beliefs, your worldview are challenged. People don’t want to accept painful truths like that and so, instead of being open minded and willing to adapt and grow with that new information, they shut the door even more and they attack anyone trying to open it, almost out of self defense, self preservation. So, rather than discourage me, those comments have honestly spurred me on. It seems more important than ever to get these stories out there because ignorance is not always bliss. There are some truly terrible, some truly evil people in this world. And few people knew that better than Agatha Christie. Haha, see how I did that?

 

For real though, Agatha understood the human mind, what drives people, what makes people do the things that they do, better than most. It’s the only way she could have crafted the absolute masterpiece stories that she wrote. And in recording these evil acts and diabolical characters, she made it digestible. I think it’s why I like listening to true crime podcasts, huge Crime Junkie fan. The stories are horrific, but I can’t get enough. It’s like by hearing this stuff, letting it sink in and flow through me, I can process it, come to terms with the horrible things people do, make sense of it, then let it go. It’s like therapy somehow. And I think that’s what Agatha’s books did for people during really terrifying times, we’re talking two World Wars, unbelievable loss of life, air raids, bombs dropped nightly on civilians in London. Can you even imagine? These stories Agatha wrote were more than a distraction, they were therapeutic for people, helped them process and make sense of the real life tragedies they were witnessing every day. 

 

But let’s back up. The future “Queen of Crime” was born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller in 1890. She was the youngest child in a relatively well off, upper class family in southwest England. Her father was an American socialite who was basically just living off his inheritance. I think he dabbled in the stock market but he didn’t work. In her autobiography, Agatha wrote of her father quote “by modern standards my father would probably not be approved of. He was a lazy man. It was the days of independent incomes, and if you had an independent income you didn’t work. You weren’t expected to. I strongly suspect that my father would not have been particularly good at working anyway.” end quote. 

 

She had a brother and a sister but they were almost 10 years older than her and off at boarding school so she grew up as, essentially an only child. She didn’t go to school. She had almost no formal education, which is surprising. Her mother tutored her at home and she had very little contact with other children. But Agatha described her childhood as happy in the opening lines of her autobiography, saying quote “One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is to have a happy childhood. I had a very happy childhood.” end quote

 

But, that all started to crumble when Agatha was 11 years old. The family finances fell apart and these financial problems put a strain on Agatha’s father, who remember didn’t work and was just used to having money in the bank. In 1901 he suffered a heart attack, likely exacerbated by stress, and died. Agatha later wrote that this was the moment her childhood ended. Desperation to hold on to wealth and status and privilege would became a common theme in her books later on. 

 

When she was a teenager, Agatha got really sick and was bedridden for a time. She started having strange fever dreams and writing short stories inspired by them, many with paranormal elements. She submitted some of these short stories to a magazine to be published, using a man’s name, but was rejected. 

 

In 1914 she married Lieutenant Archibald Christie, who was called Archie. Archie was a military pilot and Agatha was very into him. She actually broke off an engagement with another man to marry Archie. 

 

When Agatha is 23, World War I breaks out. She volunteered at the local hospital during the war, working in the operating room where they were mostly doing amputations. One of her jobs was actually to carry the amputated limbs from the operating room down to the incinerator. So, you know, that’s pretty morbid. It’s likely her interest in psychology and the evilness of humans was sparked during WWI. She seems to have been affected by the complete depravity of that whole situation. 

 

After that she worked as an apothecary’s assistant and she learns all about poison. She learns that a lot of poisons can be found disguised as common household products, cleaners and pesticides, rat poison. These deadly poisons were surprisingly accessible back in those days. This phase of her life clearly had some impact on her future career as an author as 41 of her 66 novels involve poison in some way, including her first ever novel which was called “The Mysterious Affair at Styles.” 

 

She actually wrote this first novel because her sister challenged her to write a story with a twist so clever that it couldn’t be guessed. Her sister bet she couldn’t do it. So she gave it a go and the result was “The Mysterious Affair at Styles.” In this book, a retired detective named Hercule Poirot solves the murder of a wealthy widow who had been poisoned. Poirot would become a recurring character, appearing in 33 novels, 2 plays, and 51 short stories. The official Agatha Christie website describes Poirot as quote “the world-renowned, mustachioed Belgian private detective, unsurpassed in his intelligence and understanding of the criminal mind, respected and admired by police forces and heads of state across the globe… Standing at a diminutive 5’4” … Poirot’s described in writing as having an egg-shaped head, often tilted to one side, and eyes that shine green when he’s excited. He dresses very precisely, and takes the utmost pride in his appearance. Perhaps even more famous than the man himself, is his mustache. Luxurious, magnificent, immense, and dedicatedly groomed, the mustache precedes Poirot into a room; it’s a unique talking point, it’s provocative, and it has a character all of its own.” end quote. So, Poirot is a brilliant detective, but there’s also a tiny hint of comic relief there. There’s something lighthearted about Poirot. And, fun fact, his appearance was inspired by a Belgian refugee she spotted during the war. 

 

From the very start, this book establishes Agatha’s style as a murder mystery writer, what will later be referred to as “Christie tricks.” Just think of the board game Clue. That’s basically Christie tricks in a nutshell - a remote but fancy country estate setting, a closed pool of suspects, red herrings, a final clever solution and a big reveal in front of a captive audience. She sort of invented this formula for writing mystery novels. A Times Literary Supplement review of The Mysterious Affair at Styles declared quote “The only fault of this story is that it is almost too ingenious.” end quote. 

 

So Agatha’s career as a writer is beginning to bloom, thanks to that dare from her sister. In 1922, Agatha and Archie leave their 3 year old daughter Rosalind behind and travel the world for almost a year. Which, I cannot imagine. I’m supposed to go to New Orleans in January for 2 nights for my sister's bachelorette and I’m already feeling panicky about leaving my kids for that. For 2 nights. But Archie is part of a delegation sent around to all the British colonies and territories and whatnot to try to persuade them to join the British Empire Exhibition. So I had to Google this cause I didn’t really get what it was. According to the UK national archives it was an exhibition, an event, to quote “celebrate the British Empire and its economic achievements and potential. It took place at a time when the empire was at its largest, and it was also a time when anti-colonial sentiment was growing…Britain was dependent economically on its empire and was desperate to keep it stable and unified.” end quote. So, they’re grasping at straws basically trying to hold their empire together, and Archie is part of the task force that goes to all these different colonies to try to get them to participate.

 

So Archie and Agatha are traveling all over the world. Agatha takes up surfing while in South Africa which she called quote “swimming with planks.” They actually extended their trip to spend some extra time in Hawaii so that they could practice surfing more. Despite being a young mother and also traveling all over the world, Agatha manages to write a book a year.

 

In 1926 she writes a novel called “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” which is an absolute masterpiece. In 2013, the British Crime Writers Association voted it the best crime novel ever written. So things are seeming pretty great for Agatha. She has this charmed life of luxury and travel with her husband who she loves, she’s surfing in Hawaii, she’s writing smash hit books. But the same year “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” was written, 1926, will prove to be a complete disaster. All of that will come screeching to a halt.

 

This downward spiral starts with the death of Agatha’s beloved mother Clarissa. When Agatha hears that her mother is on her deathbed, she rushes to her side. But, by the time she arrives, her mother has just passed away. She just missed her. She spends 6 weeks at her mother’s home, going through all her stuff, clearing it out. She’s alone and grief stricken and she starts suffering from insomnia. Realizing that her mental health is in a precarious state, she returns home and suggests to Archie that they take a vacation to the Pyrenese to recuperate, a little R and R. I’m assuming they aren’t taking Rosalind with them because vacations with kids are the opposite of R and R. That’s the one thing sure to make your mental state even worse. But, whatever, they left her for almost a year when she was 3, I’m sure they can pull off a weekend away. Buuuut, Archie’s response to this idea is completely unexpected. Not only does he not want to go to the Pyrenees with her, he informs her that he is in love with another woman and he wants a divorce. 

 

Like, are you freaking kidding me dude? This other woman is named Nancy Neele and she was a friend of the family. She also happened to be 10 years younger than Agatha and quite beautiful. Not that Agatha wasn’t, she was. But this just makes my blood boil. This whole situation, I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’ve been in a similar one, it strikes a nerve. And it obviously strikes a nerve with Agatha as well. She is devastated. 

 

And here is where this biography of Agatha Christie turns into a real life murder-mystery story. Here’s a timeline of the next several days, pieced together by police detectives. Okay, here’s what we know, December 3rd, 1926, Archie heads off for a long weekend of quote “golf.” But Agatha knows this is more than golf. She knows Archie will be with Nancy Neele and she’s probably a little sick to her stomach over this, I would be. She takes Rosalind to go visit her mother-in-law and they talk about taking a trip to Yorkshire. Then she heads home and arrives around 6 pm. She hands Rosalind over to the servants and retires to her study. At about 9:30, a maid reports seeing Agatha go upstairs to say goodnight to Rosalind. When she comes back down, she leaves 2 letters she has written, one to Archie and one to a friend. Then she gets in her car and drives away at about 9:45 pm. 

 

The next morning, December 4th just before dawn, a farm worker finds a car abandoned in a field overlooking a chalk quarry. It’s more than overlooking it though, it’s kind of dangling off the edge, almost falling into it, stopped only by a bush it managed to careen into as it hurtled towards the cliff. So the guy calls the police. When they arrive, they search the car. There’s some blood on the steering wheel, some clothing, and a driver's license. The officer did a double take, I’m sure, when he read the name Agatha Christie on the license, she’s already quite famous at this point. Agatha herself is nowhere to be found. 

 

Superintendent William Kenwood is put in charge of the case. They search the quarry, they go door to door looking for Agatha. Kenwood makes up his mind pretty quickly that Agatha has met with foul play, maybe suicide, possibly murder. He’s looking for a body. A search party sets out. They drag a nearby lake. A local pilot looks for her from the air - the first time an airplane was ever used in a police investigation. 

 

Back at the Christie house, which is called Styles after the manor house in Agatha’s first novel, Superintendent Charles Goddard knocks on the door. She crashed her car in a different county so two different police forces are involved in looking for her. Archie is still off on his golf trip which is actually not a golf trip at all, just as Agatha suspected. In reality he’s off enjoying an engagement party with Nancy Neele and their friends. Because he’s now engaged to Nancy Neele even though he’s still married to Agatha. No comment. So a servant opens the door and gives Goddard the letter that Agatha had left for a friend. He reads it and it’s all over the place. She’s rambling. She says quote “my head is bursting.” He begins to worry about her mental state. She was obviously not in a good place when she left in her car the night before. 

 

The servant does not give the officer the letter she wrote for Archie though. That one is waiting for him when he gets home from his little rendezvous with Nancy. And whatever she has written in it has him shook. None of this looks good for Archie. His wife is missing, presumed dead. Foul play is suspected. The police don’t know about Nancy Neele or the impending divorce. The letter she wrote him is particularly damning, lays it all bare, the infidelity, the trouble in paradise. He throws it into the fire. Archie has no idea where Agatha is but he’s certainly looking suspicious. Plus, it’s always the husband right? 

 

Agatha has officially been missing for 3 days. The first 48 window is gone. Agatha’s face is plastered on every newspaper, her disappearance has sparked the biggest manhunt in British history. Archie has an interview with the Daily Mail. He’s desperate to get the suspicion off of himself because he genuinely wasn’t involved but the details are just sketch. In the interview, he twists the narrative, saying quote “my wife had discussed the possibility of disappearing at will… engineering a disappearance had been running through her mind, probably for the purpose of her work. Personally, I feel that is what happened.” end quote. He also adamantly maintained that there was no marital strife between them saying quote “It is absolutely untrue to suggest that there was anything in the nature of a row or a tiff between my wife and myself on Friday morning … I strongly depreciate introducing any tittle-tattle into this matter … ” end quote. Which, “tiff” seems like an understatement but whatever. 

 

So Archie kind of created this alternate narrative that Agatha may have disappeared willingly, intentionally as some sort of publicity stunt. People also start considering the possibility that she hit her head when she wrecked her car and may be suffering from memory loss, amnesia. Newspapers start publishing images of Agatha in all different sorts of disguises, hoping someone will spot her alive somewhere, possibly with a new identity. 

 

There’s a break in the case on Sunday, December 12th, 9 days after Agatha disappeared. Archie’s brother has gotten a letter in the mail. Agatha wrote to him that she may go to Yorkshire. And of course Archie’s mother had also reported her conversation with Agatha about Yorkshire to the police. So they start focusing their search there. 

 

Over in Yorkshire, in a resort area known as Harrogate, two musicians from the house band at the Hyrdropathic hotel and spa are on their way to the police station. They tell the police that there’s a woman staying at the hotel, a Mrs. Neele, that they believe to be the missing Agatha Christie. 

 

It’s now December 14, 11 days after Agatha crashed her car and disappeared. The police summon Archie. They’re like “okay we think your wife is at the Hydropathic hotel in Harrogate. We don’t know what kind of mental state she’s in. She’s pretending to be someone named Mrs. Neele” at which point Archie’s palms are sweating, I’m sure. It wasn’t lost on him that Agatha had assumed the name of his lover whom he’s desperately trying to hide from police. They’re like “you gotta go over there and get her. We don’t do crazy wives. That’s a domestic thing. That’s all you.” Like, for real, the police won’t go investigate themselves after, the biggest manhunt in British history, the first aerial search for a missing person, dragging a lake, she’s all over the papers, they won’t even go look into it to verify that it’s her. They’re like, “yeah let’s get the husband on this” and they send Archie to the hotel to see if this Mrs. Neele woman is actually Agatha. 

 

He gets there just before dinner time and waits for her in the dining room. She steps out of the elevator, waves to some fellow guests, and then locks eyes with Archie. They just stare at each other for a minute, then she breaks her gaze like nothing’s up and makes her way to her regular table for dinner. Archie lets the manager know that Mrs. Neele is, in fact, his missing wife. The manager informs the police waiting outside and they just go home. They’re like dusting off their hands like “cool, that one’s over, dodged the crazy wife, great.” Archie goes to Agatha’s table and she invites him to sit down and join her for dinner. After that, Agatha just goes home with Archie. She’s like, alright the jig is up, and she goes home. 

 

But it’s obviously a huge scandal when Archie’s claims to the Daily Mail are confirmed, that Agatha did, in fact, disappear willingly. People start seeing it as a publicity stunt. Maybe she thought she could sell more books afterwards. Maybe she was trying to frame Archie for murder to get revenge for his affair with Nancy Neele. It really tarnishes her reputation. 

 

But historian Lucy Worsley sheds some light on all this in her book “Agatha Christie: a Very Elusive Woman” and points to a mental health crisis as opposed to a deliberate and deceitful ploy for attention as the reason Agatha disappeared from her car that night. Worsley writes quote “It has often been claimed that Christie went into hiding in order to frame her husband for her murder… It’s also frequently said that Christie remained silent about this notorious incident for the rest of her life. But that’s incorrect, and I’ve pieced together the surprising number of statements she did in fact make about it.” end quote. The statements Worsley pieces together in her book do shed a lot of light on what actually happened in December of 1926. 

 

According to Worsley, Agatha explained later quote “I just wanted my life to end. All that night I drove aimlessly about … In my mind there was the vague idea of ending everything. I drove automatically down roads I knew … to Maidenhead, where I looked at the river. I thought about jumping in, but realized that I could swim too well to drown … then back to London again, and then on to Sunningdale. From there I went to Newlands Corner. When I reached a point in the road which I thought was near the quarry I had seen in the afternoon, I turned the car off the road down the hill towards it. I left the wheel and let the car run. The car struck something with a jerk and pulled up suddenly. I was flung against the steering wheel and my head hit something.” Agatha then got out of the car and made her way to a train station where she was quote “surprised to learn it was Waterloo.” She went on to say quote “It is strange [that] the railway authorities there did not recall me, as I was covered with mud and I had smeared blood on my face from a cut on my hand. I had now become in my mind Mrs. Teresa Neele of South Africa.” end quote. Which is an interesting choice. Neele, of course being the last name of Archie’s lover Nancy Neele. And South Africa was one of the stops on that trip she had taken with Archie for the exhibition back in 1922, where they had learned to surf. Where they had been happy together. According to Agatha, she had temporarily lost her memory. 

 

Worsley pieces together the rest of those 11 days based on reports from those who worked at the Hydropathic hotel where Agatha stayed. She arrived without any luggage and claimed to have recently arrived from South Africa and left her things with friends. The manager Mr. W. Taylor stated that she took a quote “good room on the first floor, fitted with hot and cold water” and that she “seemed to have as much money as she wanted.” Hotel staff noted that Agatha, or Mrs. Neele as she was known to them, seemed determined to maintain a normal routine while at the hotel. She had dinner in the dining room every night, she danced the Charleston, she played billiards, she read the newspaper, and shopped for a new wardrobe. 

 

A few days in, people at the hotel, especially staff, began to recognize Agatha. Her picture was all over the front page of the newspapers, after all. But this was a very high end hotel that catered to powerful aristocrats and they expected privacy and discretion. The staff, the manager, they were hesitant to make those claims. But they did see some signs of mental distress. A fellow guest reported that she would quote “press her hand to her forehead and say: ‘It is my head. I cannot remember.’” end quote. 

 

So after all of this, when Agatha gathered her things and went home with Archie, the news broke as a complete scandal. According to Worsley in an article by Joe Middleotn for the Independent, quote “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.” end quote. But Worsley doesn’t believe that. She goes on to say quote “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.” end quote. 

 

So what is a fugue state? According to the Cleveland Clinic, “a dissociative fugue is a temporary state where a person has memory loss (also called amnesia) and ends up in an unexpected place. People with this symptom can't remember who they are or details about their past.”

 

And Archie did report to a newspaper just a few days after she was found, quote “She has suffered from the most complete loss of memory, and I do not think she knows who she is. She does not know me, and she does not know where she is. I am hoping that rest and quiet will restore her. I am hoping to take her to London tomorrow to see a doctor and specialist.” end quote.

 

Sergio Della Sala and Stephania de Vito wrote in an article for Scientific American quote “Christie may have experienced psychogenic amnesia secondary to trauma. This memory disorder, also called dissociative amnesia, generally lasts for a few hours, days or even months and affects primarily memories of those events that occurred immediately before the traumatic experience. Such amnesia may be triggered by catastrophic news, a fight, financial ruin or war.” They go on to say quote “Given the many questions that are unresolved 90 years after Christie’s disappearance, it remains a mystery… With regard to human memory, in which reality and fiction so easily become intermingled in an inextricable mélange, matters are never as straightforward as Christie, speaking of her mysteries, would have you believe: “The simplest explanation is usually the right one.” end quote.

 

So, you know, I don’t know, was it a mental health crisis combined with actual head trauma that caused her to go into a temporary dissociative fugue state and forget her identity or was she well aware of what she was doing and intentionally disappeared to get revenge on her husband for his infidelity and boost sales of her books. What’s the simplest explanation? They both seem incredibly complex. 

 

But, despite the hit to her reputation, Agatha’s career as a writer continued to take off after the whole disappearance thing was resolved. So if it was a publicity stunt, it worked. She and Archie did eventually divorce and he married Nancy Neele a week later. They would go on to have several children together and remained married for the rest of their lives. 

 

Agatha continued writing books, she goes overseas to Baghdad and starts working on archaeological digs. It’s there that she meets an archaeologist named Max Mallowan who she would go on to marry. She was later quoted as saying “An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have, the older she gets, the more interested he is in her.” Unlike Archie, who, you know, dropped her for a younger woman. She’s still writing a novel a year and she’s incredibly successful. She’s making a ton of money. She buys a bunch of houses. Some of her most successful stories are based on her archeological travels, “Murder on the Orient Express, “Death on the Nile.” She adds a character named Ms. Marple in “Murder at the Vicarage” who becomes a hit. She even writes herself into her books in the form of Ariadne Oliver, a regular minor character who writes mystery novels and pops in now and then to help, or sometimes hinder Poirot. 

 

During World War II she volunteers in hospitals once again and, as Germany drops bombs on London nightly during the blitz, Agatha worries about the possibility that she’ll never get to finish the stories of her most loved characters, Hercule Poirot and Ms. Marple. This was a time when simply being alive was not something people took for granted. She writes 2 novels that are the final appearances of Poirot and Ms. Marple and puts them into storage, just in case something happens to her. 

 

By 1950 she’s making the equivalent of 2.5 million pounds (roughly 3.2 million dollars) a year from her book sales. But she does come under scrutiny for some of her more insensitive language including derogatory remarks about Jewish people and the original title of her biggest selling novel “And Then There Were None.” Love that book, by the way you should totally read it. But “And Then There Were None” is just the American title, taken from the last line of a rhyme called Ten Little Indians that is a crucial part of the plot. The British version is still called “Ten Little Indians,” but even that is not the original title. The original title was “Ten Little N-words,” yeah, which was the name of an 1869 minstrel song and the basis for the rhyme. Soon after the book was first published in 1939, the US council against intolerance was like “yeah, you gotta change the title. We can’t sell that here.” But the UK actually kept the original title “Ten Little N-words” until 1985, yikes. But, you know, we have to keep Agatha within the context of her time. Although, I don’t know, that title may have been more 1869 appropriate, not so much 1939. On the flip side, she was ahead of her time with the portrayals of LGBTQ and disabled characters in her books. I mean, they were slightly stereotyped but just including them at all was ahead of her time.

 

Agatha wrote her final book in 1973 at the age of 82 and died of a heart attack a few years later in 1976. And then, of course, after her death, those two books she put in storage back during WWII were published, delighting fans. The conclusion to the Ms. Marple series was called “Sleeping Murder,” and Hercule Poirot, who had been with her since the very beginning, ended his story with a novel appropriately titled simply “Curtain.” 

 

So when I look at Agatha Christie, I see a prolific writer who tested the boundaries of the murder mystery genre, helped to invent it really. But her story is not without scandal and controversy. I’m amazed that she managed to survive 1926, when her life fell apart just as it was taking off. And whether you believe she staged her disappearance to get revenge on her cheating husband or gain publicity and boost book sales, or you think she hit her head and lost her memory, stumbled into a  train station in a fugue state and genuinely believed herself to be Mrs. Teresa Neele of South Africa, you have to admit, Agatha Christie could weave a darn good mystery, fictional or real life. Her ability to captivate an audience - readers, detectives, newspapers, search parties, aerial search pilots as they scanned the landscape for her lifeless body, is unmatched. Agatha Christie was truly the “Queen of Crime.” 

 

Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix. I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow this podcast on whatever app you’re using to listen, that’ll make it much easier to get your next fix.  

Information used in this episode was sourced from a Short History Of podcast episode about Agatha Christie, biography.com, wordsrated, agathachristie.com, history.com, Scientific American, the UK National Archives, the Guardian, the Cleveland Clinic, The Independent, Agatha’s Christie an autobiography, and Agatha Christie: a Very Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.