The.

Hello and welcome to The Swinging Christies, the Christie Time podcast of our Agatha Christie in the Swinging 60s.

I'm Mark Aldridge, and I've written a lot about Agatha Christie, including in my books about Poirot and Miss Marple.

And I'm Grey Robert Brown.

I'm a writer and a Christie fan.

Christie fan.

Christie fan.

Christie fan.

Oh my goodness, what happened there?

It's like I could hear it again and again.

It.

Was an echo mark because of course, today's episode is called Echoes of the Disappearance.

How are you?

I'm very good.

I'm, I'm well.

Should I say where I am?

Yes.

And where we are, I was going to say, it's not just you.

I am so.

We are, Yeah, we are on on a balcony in Tenerife, in.

Tenerife Yeah, yes.

At the marvellous Agatha Christie International Festival that's held here in Puerto de la Cruz.

Yes, why?

Why would it be held in Puerto de la Cruz?

So grey of of anywhere, which is the most frequent thing I've been asked when I say to people I'm off to the Agustin in Tenerife and they said to me, uh huh.

Yeah, someone said to me it, it felt like like a random generator of connection.

Like it was like, we're going for Ray.

Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh.

The Christian festival at Tenerife.

Yeah, like yes, but yes.

Next year's Muriel Spark in Brazil.

Yeah.

Well, sign me up.

Yeah, She famously visited here today in 1927 and wrote a couple of things set here.

And on that note, this is not the only episode we will be recording here, but we will keep tight lipped about what exactly we mean by that for the time being.

Unless you meet us in person, in which case we'll.

Oh, I'll take, give us a drink.

We'll tell anyone.

Yeah, absolutely.

But yeah, it's an incredible view.

We've got we've got palm trees and cacti in the vicinity.

Yeah, I can see the sea.

Can you see the sea Mark?

I can see the sea, the sea, you can see me.

We're very good.

Does the sea know who you are?

Well, I mean, I've been coming here for sort of six years or something now.

Yeah.

But yes, yeah, we should say that the festival, by the way, it's every other year here in November.

It went to the cruise.

So do keep an eye out.

For it, definitely.

It's 2027 which I'm sure will will be advertised closer to the time I hope.

Yeah, yeah, No, it's such a brilliant crowd, Anna in particular.

Who?

Who?

Yeah.

Is all the work for it is, yeah, phenomenal.

And we can see mount this sort of Black Rock of the mountains, which very volcanic.

Agatha talks about in The Man from the Sea, the Black.

Yes, yes, because the sea in front of us is an unpredictable elements, certainly.

And So what Agatha remembers is digging her hands in deep into the sand, I think.

And so, although not quite sandy, it's sort of very fine rock because it's it's really strong.

But we haven't ventured too closely to it so far.

No, which is wise because there is in fact a weather warning out today.

So we've taken the opportunity to hunker down and speak to you all.

So what are we looking to cover today then?

You said Echoes.

I did.

I won't do it again.

I won't do the echo again.

I'm not that much of a hand.

No, we.

So as we sort of alluded to, so Agatha came here in 27, so after her Anise Maribilis of 1926 when she had a breakdown and her marriage broke down and her mother passed away.

And we're going to be talking about all the ways in which that seismic event in Agatha's life, creative ripples, if you like, if you if you're tired of the echo metaphor already that cast through the swinging texts, the the books and the films and everything else that we look at between 59 and 71.

So let's get on with.

It.

So I think it's fair to say it wasn't an easy decision for us to cover the disappearance, because it's not.

It's a sensitive topic all these years later because essentially what we're talking about is a really dark moment in Chris's life.

It also, you know, happens 40 years before the the point at which we're telling Christie's story.

And as we'll discuss in a minute, the way that it's been spoken about hasn't always been particularly kind or particularly fair, I think.

But I said to you, I remember I'm a firm believer that in any creative endeavour, sometimes the thing that you say we're not going to do is the very thing that you should then try and do actually to kind of challenge yourself.

Because this was one of the early things that we discussed about why we wanted to do the Swinging Christies was because we were so sick of people talking about the same few things, including the disappearance.

But I think we've definitely found organically found a way that we actually do want to talk about it because it is something that we have detected in these texts.

Yeah, a way that it can be relevant to our particular lens, absolutely.

And also it's almost like you've earned your stripes by that point by going.

We've dedicated enough time to the lesser known stuff.

We've put those lesser loved books on the map in a way that, you know, we intended to.

And now maybe it's it's OK to to talk about the slightly more commonplace stuff.

But yeah, so let's so let's tell the story of the disappearance for for those who don't know.

But we're quite keen to use to be led by Agatha's own words and own account as much as possible because it's always said that she doesn't talk about it in her autobiography.

But there is a that meant there is a fleeting extract.

As yes, there is and obviously as we're always saying, the autobiography was finished in the mid 60s in 65.

And so this is, this is again relevant to our our era.

That it's clearly something that she had sort of thought about briefly because it's such an important part, but but it clearly decided she didn't want to dwell on it.

And she says, so.

This is as she wrote in the autobiography.

Many years later, someone going through a period of unhappiness said to me, you know, I don't know what is the matter with me.

I cry for nothing at all.

The other day the laundry didn't come and I cried.

And the next day the car wouldn't start.

Something stirred in me then.

And I said, I think you'd better be very careful.

It is probably the beginning of a nervous breakdown.

You ought to go and see someone about it.

I had no such knowledge in those days.

I knew I was desperately tired, and that the sorrow of losing my mother was still there.

Deep down, though, I tried perhaps too much to put it out of my mind.

If only Archie would come, or Punky, or someone to be with me.

Then Archie came.

I think the nearest I can get to describing what I felt in that moment is to recall that old nightmare of mine.

The horror of sitting at a tea table, looking across at my best loved friend and suddenly realising that the person sitting there was a stranger.

That, I think describes best what Archie was like when he came.

I had admired his ruthlessness before.

Now I saw the other side of it.

So after illness came sorrow, despair and heartbreak.

There is no need to dwell on it.

I stood out for a year hoping he would change, but he did not.

So ended my first married life.

And then that's it.

She moves on that that tale about being emotional just because the car won't start.

She actually recounts that same thing to a letter to Christiana Brand a few years later, which makes me wonder whether that's actually Agatha Who's who.

No, it's not somebody talking to Agatha.

That might have been her own recollection.

As in a few years after the autobiography.

Yeah, yeah.

She writes to Christiana Brand and says, oh, I know.

It's like when suddenly you cry and the car won't start or just because the car won't start or whatever.

And so perhaps there's at least a conflation there of what actually had happened.

Yeah.

Interesting.

I think, yeah, it's, it's, it's quite a raw extractor.

And I think there's more in there than people maybe think because she doesn't go blow by blow.

What happens on the night in question, which is what you know, which is what tabloid journalists have been clamouring for over the years, doesn't mean that it's not revealing in its own kind of quiet, heartbreaking way.

Yeah, and there's there's a few things in the 1970s when Agatha starts to be in in nest good health and when it's clear that he's not going to be able to write much more, if anything, then actually talk does turn to what's going to happen with the autobiography within Collins, the publisher.

And it's very early on.

There's a very brief conversation, but where somebody says, oh, very few people have read it.

I mean, it still needed to be edited and everything, but at that point it was understood that she didn't really talk about the disappearance.

So the publisher knew even before they had read it that they understood.

I think it means that probably that had been communicated perhaps as part of the deal or the understanding, so that there were no raised expectations.

This isn't a big tell all.

I'm not giving you the salacious Yeah, I can imagine her saying that defensively in a letter to to her agent.

Yes, that's it.

And I think that's probably what happened.

Yeah, so interestingly, so you you made the point accurately that the she's likely writing about this event from 26 in the 60s because that's when most of the autobiography was composed.

We talked about on the podcast before, but there's the book by GC Ramsay, which is remarkable.

You've made this point several times about how it's it stands out as something that was unusually endorsed right by as in Christie read it and went through the draft and gave notes on.

So although it's not autobiography, and although it's not directly coming from her, we can at least deduce and be confident that she red Ramseys account of the disappearance, and presumably if there was anything too egregious in it, then she.

Would disrupt it, Yes, definitely.

So the fact that she left all of this, let all of this through is quite incredible really, because it's, it's a bit of a long extract, but I'll read it now.

So Ramsay writes, Agatha Christie's mother died, and Agatha Christie sense the impending breakup of her own marriage.

These two pressures, together with the strain of constant work, became too much for her inventive mind to absorb all at once, and it revolted in one of the curious ways that minds have to relieve anxiety.

Agatha Christie suffered an attack of amnesia and simply walked out of her life one afternoon in 1926, abandoning her car in a field.

The amnesia has since BeenVerified beyond any shadow of a doubt as genuine, but at the time there were doubts indeed among the general public.

An anonymous tip LED police to a hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire, where a young lady was staying under an assumed name.

The young lady who was reported as being eager to play piano in trios with the orchestra there turned out to be Agatha Christie, registered under the name of the woman who later became Colonel Christie's second wife.

What stung Mrs Christie most about the whole unfortunate incident was that the press had accused her of disappearing as a publicity stunt to advertise her books.

Although why in the name of heaven she would have registered under the name she did if it were a publicity stunt never seemed to occur to people at the time.

So this is the bit where Ramsay sort of comes to her defence.

I.

Think very much so See.

Why she would have let it go through It is a sad fact of life that the British press has been known upon occasion to be very cruel to famous people.

To a certain extent, Mrs Christie's desire for privacy has only fanned the flames of curiosity since 1926.

For many years, she sought to avoid any publicity whatsoever and would not even let her publishers print her portrait with her books.

And goes on.

He goes on to sort of, yeah, more closely link that event with her desire, obsession, you might even say with privacy, which which again, we can at least infer that she didn't think he was massively wide of the mark.

Yeah.

I think that she would have struck it all.

Yeah, We might, you know, say that there are specific details there that that Pacific Ocean, there are specific details there like, you know, leaving the car whether it was in the field or not.

Yes, but yeah, I thought that.

But then also like we know that Agatha is actually a quite unreliable.

Absolutely.

And she was in a few states.

Well, like that.

So so as in the the the sense of it, the motivation behind it.

Yes, from.

From Marcus's perspective.

We're not going to go through every biographical account of the disappearance because we'd be here all day, but I thought it was important to bring out Lucy Worsley's perspective on the disappearance as a Christie's most recent biographer.

But also she has a particular take on it, I think.

Yeah, she calls these these accusations of wrongdoing, the great injustice of Agatha Christie's life.

And Lucy Worsley goes on to say, unfortunately for Agatha's lasting reputation, many of her biographers, notably her male biographers, have been as heavily invested in this narrative.

So this is the narrative of sort of it being a publicity stunt or deceptive in some way as the male police officers and journalists who made it into such a sensation at the time.

It's time to do something radical, to listen to what Agatha says, to understand she had a range of experiences unhelpfully labelled as loss of memory and, perhaps most importantly, when she said she was suffering to believe her.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I think we're both in agreement with that.

Worsley's biography does take a very particular both feminist and mental health approach to life writing.

And I think that's something that's kind of her, her raison d'etre really is, is the is the stuff about the disappearance.

Yeah, but she very much calls attention to things that like, you know, the counselling or psychiatry that I guess I had after the disappearance stuff which I think has been under under examined before.

And I know that that Lucy found some new things there that mentioned, you know, we recorded this documentary together in the car on the way there, or I was, you know, small part of it.

But on the car on the way to filming, she was telling me how excited she was that she just had a new lead from like, like a friend of a friend or someone had mentioned in the past thing that they'd known the psychiatrist for who Agatha perhaps went to.

And so she she really explored this properly in a way that I think has just been, oh, and she had to break down.

Let's move on.

Or she said she had to break down And but can we trust her?

Which is the way that's been explored before.

Not by everybody, it's worth saying, but clearly you know, Lucy was looking to really unpack it.

In a little way more.

Like you say with this mental health approach and just take it more seriously and to listen to her.

Yeah, well, it coalesces, I guess, with just a 21st century sensibility about a greater vocabulary and a greater, more holistic understanding of mental health issues.

So it very much feels like a perspective of Christie that makes sense to publish in 2020, whatever it was.

Yeah, it makes absolutely no sense.

If you actually pay attention to Agatha Christie's life, the idea that would be publicity stunt.

I mean, because like, well, where where were her earlier ones?

Like when she did her Grand Tour, she didn't like make sure she got loads of publicity for absolute everything.

She did the odd interview.

But that's exactly sort of where you might do a publicity stunt.

You know that you might.

I was, you know, Miss Christie, Mrs Christie comes to solve a murder in South Africa or something, and she didn't do any of that up to that point and she certainly didn't do it afterwards.

So even from a basic who is Agatha Christie perspective, it makes no sense.

Yeah.

Oh, absolutely.

Laura Thompson's biography is very strong on the disappearance as well.

But we won't go into, like I said, we really want to be led by Agatha's words in particular, and we won't go into it in depth.

One thing I did pull out from it, though, because I've not seen it in other accounts, or certainly not all of them, is that so, Thompson writes in some reports.

Door this door Frederick the man who saw Agatha's car during the disappearance night quote also made reference to a gypsy girl who he met nearby on Saturday morning who said that she had heard a car at about midnight being driven along the top of Newlands corner and.

Which is where the car was found.

Yes, yeah.

But I immediately went, that is so endless night.

Yes, The Endless Night is a stand alone psychological thriller in which young couple Michael and Ellie are menaced by unusual happenings from 1967.

So, you know, we're talking about the ways in which this story has echoes through the the 60s works.

Well, that's a huge one.

I think for those who haven't yet read it, there's a sort of bystander character who is very much important of warnings and foreshadowings in a similarly kind of rural landscape in that book.

Even 30-40 years later, when our swinging period begins, the the kind of spectre of this new story of Agatha's disappearance was still coming up right?

Oh, yes, yeah.

I mean, it's, it's sort of seems to disappear a little bit throughout the sort of 40s and, and earlier 50s as in it, it's not always a first type of conversation in a way that perhaps things like the success of the Mousetrap started to be, you know, once it got past a year or so, but also the success of her 1930s books.

But yeah, there there were things towards the end of the 50s that indicated that it was coming round again.

And Laura Thompson again gives gives a really nice summary of some of the correspondence about this.

So she points out how in February 1957, Rosalind Hicks, Agatha's daughter, wrote to Edmund Cork, Agatha's agent, about an article that had appeared in the Daily Mail.

I was most upset to see a reference to her disappearance, it's said, of a missing woman.

I'm not sure she's not doing an Agatha Christie on us.

I don't know whether you can make some complaint about this.

It makes me very angry and I know it will not please my mother.

I really do feel very strongly about it.

Thompson goes on to say the events of 1926 were always extremely sensitive for Rosalind, for mixed reasons.

Of course.

She herself had much to forgive about the behaviour of both her parents, and she was also obliged to maintain the semi fiction of the official theory.

At the same time, her instinctive reaction when the subject arose was to rise to her mother's defence.

She could not bear Agatha to be defamed or ridiculed.

She knew something of the agony that her mother had endured at that time and it literally pained her to have this belittled.

The unspoken subject, as Joan Oates called it, was a test to be passed in order to be admitted over Rosalind's personal threshold.

Anyone who regarded Agatha's behaviour is deceitful or attention seeking which has the door shut upon them.

Agatha herself had learned in 1960 that the journalist Richie Calder was preparing to write a book containing his memories of Agatha's discovery at Harrogate.

Her reaction, as expressed to Edmund Cork, was sanguine.

You may worry it's coming to my ears, she wrote.

But after all, it's only what crops up from time to time, every few years.

And what does it matter after all this time?

This may, of course, have been bravura.

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?

There are a few instances where it feels like it's struck a particular nerve with either Rosalind or Agatha, and then others where they are slightly more.

I feel Rosalind is much more sensitive about.

It, which I guess makes sense as it's kind of as Thompson was saying there, it's kind of her legacy, right?

And she's very, she's inherently very much involved in it because she is the child of Agatha and Archie Christie, the the first husband that all this kind of happens around.

She's also the child, the seven-year old child who's being left by, you know, her mother like she's going off.

And we know that this is all, you know, this is a mental health crisis that she's going through.

But this was not always a straightforward relationship in in the family for all sorts of reasons.

And so there there may be a bit of resentment from herself there about no matter what, you might know that nevertheless, her mother did choose to leave her that evening, even though she was in very good care.

So I think that might be a part of it as well, that it's it's something that is painful for both of them.

Worsley picks up the same the same story that that Thompson talks about there with Richie Calder.

Who did eventually write that article, by the way?

It did come out in the 70s in the magazine and there's nothing much to be learned about it.

It actually is mostly him talking about the experience and and what he saw of other people basically making up stories to try and keep it in the on the front page of the newspaper.

Yes, yeah.

But anyway, so Christie said to Cork whilst talking about this Richie Calder attempt.

One of the advantages of being 70 is that you really don't care any longer what anyone says about you.

It's a thing that can't be helped.

Just slightly annoying.

And I don't know, it just I love that quote because it it feels very much like that is the Christie that we see in this project, right.

That is the Christie that we've been kind of examining up close in the last how many episodes?

And I've never really written about it very much, but I do have a quote from me, as in something that I I.

Mark, I told you only go for reputable sources.

So this is in my Poirot book where I say how following the abduction of Muriel Mackay in December 1969, this was an apparent case of mistaken identity in an attempt to extort money from media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose wife was the intended target.

The press quickly turned to Christie to comment on the mystery, which goes back to that other thing that Rosalind just over 10 years earlier.

Or like someone doing in Agatha Christie in in quotation remarks yes so so Agatha wrote to Edmund Cork to say BBC rang me up so did a lot of newspapers to suggest I would like to comment on disappearance of Mrs McKay quote as disappearing tricks are right up your street, aren't they End Quote and Chrissy then said that he was a very brash and impersonal young man.

I refused and was rude to him.

I can't exactly, I can't tell you how often I reread because it's in her handwriting.

That bit, that bit to say, is that definitely what she he says?

I don't know.

It definitely is what she says, like in person.

And I was rude to him.

But yeah.

Well done, Agatha.

I'm proud of you.

OK, so let's go through then the references and illusions in our swinging texts that may put reader in mind of Agatha's disappearance.

And shall we say before we start that this is an absolutely typical case of us of going.

I think there's a couple of things there to build an episode around.

By the time we get to the end of the list, we're like, Oh my God, there's so much stuff.

Oh.

Well, absolutely.

I think it's worth saying I don't think it's particular to 59 to 70 either.

Like, I think you could do a similar study of the books in the 40s and find just as many illusions because that's the way that creative minds work.

That's the way that these things come to the fore.

And so, yeah, so in particular we're sort of looking at, you know, things like instances of running away and disappearing missing persons, because some people have inferred that it could have been a suicide attempt.

So looking at that, the kind of intrusion of the press, which is a big one, and the setting, you know, quarries and cars abandoning quarries and things like that.

So.

So let's start with disappearing.

So I guess our most literal is the disappearance of Mr Davenham.

Hercule Poirot, The Disappearance of Mr Davenham is a television pilot for a potential Poirot series starring Martin Gable, shown on CBS in 1962.

Which is now available to view on YouTube.

You know, funny enough, Kaleidoscope, we can say the archive TV organisation, they've shown it now.

They just showed it as well because about two or three months ago they sent me a message to say, did you know this existed and blah, blah, blah.

And I said, oh, yes, I did.

I did.

And I've, I've seen it and I've got it and, and they're, oh, we want to show it at our screening.

I said, oh, that would be lovely.

And not two weeks before their screening, hoping to make it a nice exclusive, someone just stuck it up on YouTube.

So clearly some, some a print had done the rounds somewhere.

But but it's lovely to see.

So do stick it out.

You can find it on YouTube.

It's brilliant.

It's really well worth watching.

You can you could imagine a series coming out of it.

Absolutely.

And it's yeah, it's a shame that that didn't happen.

But clearly this is the source material for this is pre disappearance.

And I guess you can see people thinking about, oh, is it all just a big trick at the time when Agatha did only a few years earlier write a story in which somebody does fake their own disappearance, which is what happens in this.

Well, and not not just this story, there are several instances of, I mean, that's kind of her whole MO.

That is where those theories came from.

Not to say that they're that we believe them, that they're right.

But yeah, I, I rewatched it the other day for this episode.

And I mean, it's it's right there at the beginning.

One of the very first shots is kind of over the shoulder over Poirot's shoulder at the front page of the newspaper the Boston News and the headline is vanished money man police hunt slows.

I mean hold that next to the daily mirrors mystery of woman novelist disappearance from page about Agatha Christie and they're very similar absolutely difference with it.

So even just in the in the kind of visual, and this is an adaptation after all, you know, in the visual storytelling and similarly in the Clocks.

The Clocks is a Poirot novel about espionage and an unidentified body from 1963.

Now The Clocks is quite interesting because right at the start, the body that's found right at the start with all these, with this confusing array of clocks around it, you almost have to reverse engineer this one, right?

Which is like, it's not that the disappearance is up top.

It's like if a body is there, that means somewhere else someone has disappeared.

Do you see what it means?

And when Inspector Hardcastle is trying to put it together, he says we've made enquiries about a missing person, but it isn't easy to get much information.

It turns out that the the identity of the person that he changed his name fairly often.

So again, we've got the this idea like Agatha signing into the to the Harrogate hotel under a different name and potentially either even kind of forget, you know, forgetting her name.

And he he lists off Henry Castleton, Raymond Blair, Lawrence Dalton, Roger Byron are all aliases from this character.

And again, I was put in mind of it and you can see it in our episode Art for this special designed by Tom Double, which is that famous image, you know, the composite image that one of the papers makes of Agatha in different.

Disguises, yes, with glasses and then slightly different glasses and her hair back and in a hat, Yeah.

Or new new wig isn't.

It I was gonna say.

Yeah.

It's like it's about, isn't it?

Yeah, actually, yes.

Roger Byron, say, would disappear from South End, and a man called Lawrence Dalton would commence operations in Newcastle on Tyne.

He was shy of being photographed.

Sounds familiar.

Hmm.

So there's definitely something to dig in there.

And also, I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a more tenuous point, but a point I thought maybe worth raising nevertheless, which is the story of Mr and Mrs Ramsey and Mr Ramsey's political defection.

Is it in a way it's like this sort of Cold War version of a disappearance, You know what I mean?

And there's a lot of page time dedicated to that later, later in the book.

There is in by the pricking of my thumbs.

By the Pricking of My Thumbs sees Tommy and Tuppence return to investigate a mystery at a nursing home from 1968.

There's Mrs Lancaster.

Her disappearance drives the plot.

It does.

This is this is our intrigue at the beginning.

And it's funny, I was thinking about how what keeps you interested in the story in a mystery?

And I was because we've just had a book club here about the moving finger.

And I was saying about how because it's not necessarily the case of the person who writes these poison pen letters is the murderer.

I would I find that really interesting as a reader.

And there's a bit about that here about that the disappearance is not necessarily leading to the identity of a murderer, but you can be pretty sure there's going to be a murder involved somewhere.

And I love that.

I love that that that intrigue of like, is this even a real disappearance or is it as we have in this quote?

You mean her people have taken her away?

That's not a disappearance.

It's quite natural.

It's a disappearance.

No traceable address, no answer to letters.

It's a planned disappearance.

I'm more and more sure of it.

So this is Tommy and Tuppence with their sort of detecting hats on going well, come on.

Whereas, you know, in the real world, Can you imagine going to to go a care home or something and people are like, oh, yes, yes, lots of the people seem to disappear.

And you'd be like, yes, this does happen again.

It's Tommy and Tubbins going, but we're in a Tommy and Tuppence, so it must be some sort of crime to solve and and that it does one of those things that I love in late career Christie, but it does several times where it's almost like they're grappling around for the case that they're going to investigate at all, you know?

Just to get there must be something here, must be to get us through this.

Novel, but there was there was.

They were right.

But yeah, we should say so.

Mrs Lancaster.

Yeah.

She's, she's sort of spirited away from from the care home at which they're visiting Tommy's aunt Ada and Mrs Lancaster has had this slightly strange encounter with tuppence on one visit and then they go back and she's gone.

So yeah, yeah.

Similarly.

So Olga Semenov who is the from Herzegovina in Halloween party she disappears.

Halloween Party is a Poirot mystery novel in which a girl is drowned while apple bobbing from 1969.

So she works for Mrs Llewellyn Smythe at the quarry house and we will return to that in a minute.

And she's suspected of forging the will of her former employer, who died and disappears off the back of it.

She isn't a main character, it's fair to say.

It's that her disappearance is is one of many mysterious things happen in the marvellous Halloween party.

Yes, but I think the big one in the 1960's, the most significant character that disappears is Canon Pennyfather in Yeah at Bertram's Hotel.

At Bertram's Hotel is a Miss Marple novel set in a London hotel which is not quite what it seems from 1965.

Very memorable I would say.

Yeah, definitely.

We're giving quite a lot of details about it, even the the date he disappears, November the 19th.

We should have a little party every year.

Yeah, what date is it today?

It's November the 12th.

Well, this time next week, oh, November 20th, we're doing Christie for Christmas to, well, they go Harper Collins.

So we all celebrate on behalf of Canon Penny Father there.

You go.

But you know, I do think so.

It's a with a slightly different spelling.

It is of course the name that she gave the Poirot substitute many years before in Play version.

In Murder on the Nile, both.

Murder on the Nile, the play vision of Death on the Nile called Murder on the Nile.

And there's something so that I think there's already, for me anyway, there's already as a Christie, as a long time kind of Christie devotee when he crops up, it's that's almost like a big neon sign towards it going.

This is a significant character.

And I think, you know, in terms of holding a particular focus in the novel, that kind of works on a textual basis of as well.

But, yeah, his disappearance is reported in the press, but nobody's come forward with any information yet.

He disappeared from a respectable West End hotel, I mean, rather than reappearing in a Yorkshire hotel.

And I mean, I think most crucially, the inspector says it looks, it really looked as though he meant to disappear leaving this place like that in the middle of the night.

You're quite sure about it, aren't you?

And he's also described as an absent minded gentleman.

And again, if you want to, you know, strain, strain the the confines of the reading, you could get there, get to kind of forgetfulness there as well.

Definitely, yeah.

And the the the inspector also says that a lot of these disappearances are voluntary.

He says, of course, a lot of these disappearances are voluntary, which is true.

And you noticed how Laura Thompson pulled out that quote?

Well, yeah, because.

This this is a point where Christie is is still being, as we've just seen, still being battered by these accusations of she did it deliberately.

Yeah.

And so to have a detective figure in one of her novels kind of doubting the credulity of, of somebody's, you know, doubting that her disappearance is genuine is really quite significant.

And that's why Thompson pulls it out.

And Bertrand's hotel is full of car imagery.

And we, we've talked about this before.

Christie discovered a real love of driving, didn't she?

And, and her cars sort of peppered throughout her Hoover in a really quite a modern way because a lot of women of her ilk and class wouldn't have driven as extensively as she did, certainly wouldn't have loved, you know, had such a passion for it as she did.

And abandoning the car is such a crucial part of that disappearance story, isn't it?

But yeah, there's there's all sorts of really striking car images evoked in a Bertram's hotel because.

Because you've got a a race.

Professional.

Racing drive, Yeah, it's one of our lead characters.

One of the protagonists, Yeah, the sudden roar of a car's exhaust, the screaming of wheels and the sound of a big racing engine.

And that is beauty beautiful.

That's of that's.

A woman who loves her driving.

Isn't it?

Yeah, that's a beautiful piece of writing from from a crucial moment towards the end of the book.

But I won't.

I won't say anymore in case there's anyone left that hasn't yet read it.

So we should also cover the fact that there are references to to suicide within some of these books.

So just to flag that up to any listeners who might want to skip over this next section.

Yes.

And we should say actually we always put sort of content trigger warnings in the episode description.

So it's always worth having a look there.

And as we're talking about, we may as well say indeed, we write the titles that we spoiled in the episode description as well.

So it's always worth checking that before you click play.

But yeah, there's a real preoccupation with suicide attempts in Caribbean mystery.

A Caribbean Mystery is a Miss Marple novel about a murder on the fictional island of San Honore from 1964.

Which I think is significant and we talked about this in our horror episode, but I think it's significant because it's after the suicide of Campbell Christie, Archie's brother.

It's after the suicide, the much publicised suicide of Sylvia Plath.

We've just had the big freeze and there were, there was a bit of a kind of spate of suicides during that particularly bleak period in British history.

So maybe it makes sense that the book that she was kind of gearing up to write through that period is particularly saturated in these things.

I wanted to spotlight Vias for Venom, which is the new or newer Catherine Hark up book.

So she wrote a S for arsenic and which we use extensively in our We Have Drugs episode.

Yeah.

And she followed up with Vias for Venom.

She writes in that in 1963, the year out of the Christie must have been planning a Caribbean mystery, 40% of suicides in England and Wales were due to carbon monoxide poisoning.

And she goes on, and it's very much a particular moment in time because what you see then, as she goes on to say, is that there's a 35% drop in all suicides between 63 and 75 because of the removal of carbon monoxide from domestic gas supplies.

Not the sole reason, she clarifies, but certainly an important factor.

But that just shows just how domestic and just how commonplace suicide attempts were in this period.

And I also wonder if there's something about the reporting of of suicides that this sort of, you know, in quotation marks, the shame of a suicide in the family meant that it was often covered up by families because they they didn't want that to be the reported reason, whether for religious reasons or, or else what, or something else.

And but I think there was more transparency actually about causes of death.

That's very true as the 20th century moved on.

Because I guess it goes hand in hand with the stuff that we've talked about before, Vizvi, the 60s just generally being a bit more liberal people, being a bit more accepting and open and honest.

And yeah, absolutely.

Well, well, in a Caribbean mystery, Miss Marple does say to to Raphael.

Mr Raphael that as far as she's concerned, it's young people who commit suicide easily out of despair from love, sometimes from sheer anxiety and worry.

But old people know how valuable life is and how interesting, which is a wonderful thing to, to you know, that that that shows the clarity of age.

You know that that that Miss Mark was really expressing there that the older you get, the more you can value life in in a particular way.

And I think that quote speaks just as much to.

To us in the 21st century, as it did in the 1960s, I think that's that's a really nice, nice approach to their subject.

Crucial to the plot of Caribbean Mystery is that the murderer, Tim, is trying to make his wife Molly look mad and indeed look like she might kill herself, and there are various conversations about the veracity of that.

Whether it's convincing or not.

Molly always seems such a happy girl.

That kind of thing, which I think is interesting as well, given that I don't know, we talk about we talk about that again, maybe a lot more openly today that you know, that people are fighting their own battles and that you might not necessarily realise, but similar to what you were just saying about that quote to Raphael, it's it's very astute from Christie, that depiction.

Yes, people, even when they think they want to commit suicide, often don't really want to do it.

They managed not to take a full overdose.

It's not always deliberate deceit, it's just a subconscious looking after itself.

I mean.

And then the.

The the links the potential links you could draw there are fascinating, Absolutely.

I also noticed when I was going through the the subject that I didn't even reread it but it but it occurred to me that in The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, The short story collection The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and a Selection of Entrees is a collection of early short stories, including the titular The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding or the Theft of the Royal Ruby and the Mystery of the Spanish Chest, both of which were rewritten for publication in 1960.

There is the dream, which we don't talk about on this podcast simply because she didn't.

It's an old story that wasn't revised for this collection.

But we do know that Agatha was involved in the collection, obviously from the rewriting of two of the stories, but also because she was part of the selection process, You know, they discussed the stories.

Yeah.

So we know she would have read this during the 1960s and.

We read it well.

Crucially, we know that readers read it in the 60s.

You know, whether or not Chrissy actually reviewed those stories, we know she didn't make changes to them apart from the 1st 2:00, but readers were picking that up in 1960.

Yeah, which where the whole premise of it is that Mister Farley says that he has dreams of suicide and that then eventually does end up apparently committing suicide.

And so this is, you know, this like premonition this the idea that that he might have been driven to it, but by his unconscious, that he wasn't actually in control of it.

Because This is why Poirot gets called in, because he keeps on having these dreams.

But most particularly I noted that Doctor Stillingfleet is a character in this.

So I think only appears in one other novel before this and Doctor Stilling Fleet says it isn't the people who threaten to commit suicide to usually do it.

You know, that's why suicide sometimes seem unaccountable.

But this is significant because Stilling Fleet reappears in 3rd girl to talk to somebody who's got fear of, you know, perhaps suicide, perhaps deaths, perhaps all sorts of things that might be happening to them psychologically.

So I I suspect that AXA was influenced or reminded of this sort of psychological approach when she reread the dream.

I'm reminded of that character and yeah, exactly because it hadn't appeared since South Cyprus.

Is that right?

OK.

So and there's a lot of conversation around that with Norma because Norma just seems to be this sort of this young girl in in sort of free falling crisis.

And that might be a good moment to segue into the idea of a fugue state and memory loss actually, because that could have been an explanation for Norma's demeanour in 3rd Girl.

We know it isn't.

It's actually that she's hopped up on Purple Hearts.

But yeah, Molly, as we've just spoken about in a Caribbean mystery, she's drugged via her face cream by Tim and she has blackouts and these sort of, I think it's belladonna that he puts in it.

It's like.

Yes, yes, yes.

So.

She has dreams of flying through the air, Miss Marple says.

No wonder she got frightened about herself.

She had all the signs of mental illness.

I think Chrissy often walks.

For someone that's so plot driven and black and white, arguably, she actually surprisingly often walks the line between the fantastical and the dreamlike and reality.

We talked a bit about it.

Do you remember?

There's that bit that I love in pricking of my thumbs, where Tuppence has a a nightmare and you just go with LSD all around us.

What would a reader in 1968 have made of that kind of nightmarish sequence and that jolt weight of waking up?

Well, it's funny that this thing about the dreams of flying, you know, there's The Call of Wings, which is one of the very earliest short stories.

But if you were to have a had it published in the 1960s, I think you'd have seen it as a discussion of psychedelia, whereas actually it's much more rooted in sort of more traditional fantasy, I guess.

Yeah, definitely.

Because in 3rd Girl.

3rd girl is a Poirot novel set in swinging London about a young woman who thinks she may have committed a murder from 1966.

There's a particular quote in 3rd Girl I pulled out.

You think she may have lost her memory meaning Norma one hears of such things I mean.

Again, just inviting these links back to the the story of the disappearance.

Para says yes, that is a possibility in her state.

She may be wondering about quite unaware of who she is or she may have had an accident that is less likely.

I can assure you that I have made all enquiries in hospitals and and they find her and they they end up finding her with stealing fleet.

The use of drugs really muddies the water between what is a mental health crisis or issue and what is being instigated by the drugs.

Because when Doctor Stilling Fleet says that the symptoms that Norm is experiencing include confusion, loss of memory, aggression, bewilderment or sheer fuzzle headedness.

Well, those could be due due to drugs just as much or perhaps more easily than anything else.

But because initially that isn't really raised as the most likely scenario, it's sort of forces us to work out whether we want to make that connection or not that some people might go, ha, this seems like it, especially because there's been quite a few references to drugs in the story, whether you're thinking.

Yeah.

I mean, also though, they're not 2 separate things, are they like as in a mental health crisis and drug use do and can go hand in hand, not exclusively, but they can do.

So we're just sort of walking that line.

And I guess it's it's significant to mention that along with this sort of mental health issues or whatever is going on with Norma, there were quoting claims to have had lapses of memory, to have lost long periods of time when she does not remember what she had been doing.

Which perhaps is a neat sort of summary of Agatha going This is a thing that really does happen.

Yeah, it's it's funny.

Now we're talking about it.

I'm going is there?

Because we've often said, haven't we, that there's there's a perhaps surprising lack of judgement from Christie when she talks about things like young people taking drugs.

Oh, completely, yeah.

And I wonder if this is another argument for her sympathy with characters like Norma, which is going, you know, the girl's suffering and, and actually the way she talks about her is quite sympathetic.

Yes, yes.

So press intrusion is a regular feature of Christie's narratives.

I mean, I guess it holds that generally speaking, a case including murders and disappearances, the press are going to be interested in that.

But the way they sort of the way they're characterised perhaps quite negatively after her experiences quite, as I said, intrusion quite intrusively and and sort of all kind of crowding in is, is very particular.

There's a lot about the press in Mirror Cracked, because of course we're talking about stars.

The Mirror Cracks From Side to Side is a Miss Marple novel about a poisoning at a film star's house from 1962.

You know, there is the world of of Hollywood that's encroaching on our humble Miss Marple novel there.

Yeah.

And so there's various moments where people talk about what the papers are saying about the murder that's taken place and the connection to Marina Gregg.

You get the impression that Marina Gregg has probably had as much, if not more negative press coverage over her years of her career than than Christie had.

Although they didn't manage to spot that she had a baby, so they haven't been that intrusive, no.

True.

The clocks has got this as well.

The press pop up in the clocks because after the telephone box murder, Mrs Lawton, who's one of the witnesses nearby, says that indeed we have.

That is indeed we have heard from the press knocking at the door and ringing at the bell and asking all sorts of foolish questions.

Definitely an insight into Agatha thinking there.

Very annoying I know, said the inspector.

I wish we could spare you all that Mrs Lawton.

We'd put a stop to a good deal of that if we could, but we're powerless in the matter.

You know, the press has its rights.

It's a shame to worry private people as they do, said Mrs Lawton, saying they have to have news for the public.

So when you're disappearing your crime writer, the idea that perhaps the public have got a right to know about it, rather than it just being a personal matter.

Yeah.

Well, again, today there's so much unethical reporting that's defended by, oh, you know, the public have a right to know about this stuff.

And it's a very interesting conversation because at what point is it just intrusive?

There's the word.

Nosiness.

Let's let's.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

As opposed to in our interest.

To, I mean, Mrs Lawton doesn't agree, doesn't believe in it.

She, she says that it's all a tissue of lies as far as she's concerned.

So I, I, I think that this is definitely a bit of authorial statement there.

Yeah, yeah.

And again, I said I, I rewatched that disappearance of Mr Davenham for, for this, and I noticed that there's a not only is there a bit of a scrum of the breath, you know, there's AI wish there was a the captual term for it.

But that stereotype that you see in every TV show, in every film, it's Chicago is it always makes me think of that thing of the flashing bulbs and the yeah.

And the reporters all sort of, you know, gathering around and all that stuff.

And you what?

Are they like grey?

Oh yeah.

No, that's it.

I've got it now.

But they but they do it to Martin Gables, borrow right at the start of that case where he's getting out of the taxi.

And there's a great meta moment in that where he's watching, he goes from watching the news of reportage of the case in the TV in the car to the TV in the car showing a shot of him nodding at you, the viewer going, I'm going to go and get involved in this case.

And within the fiction of the piece you're given to understand that he is looking at a press camera and going, hello, I'm going in.

But really he's looking at us.

You're going what, A Jeep?

We're about to go on.

This I'm going to make a good game of this woman's distress about her disappeared exactly.

Well, let's make it but into a bat.

Just as well he turns up alive and well then isn't it?

But yeah it spoilers.

And similarly the opening of act 2 of Deathbeat read in in our archive episode we we read the script for that.

It was the mid 60s planned but never staged musical adaptation of Hickory Dickory Dock.

And, and again there's, yeah, there's a, there's a moment of crisis at the end of Act One murder.

And then at the beginning of Act 2, there's this kind of rugby scrum of of journalists.

Of singing, dancing reporters.

How I would love to have seen that musical number stage few twirling Max reporters in their Big Mac.

Because that's what it's been.

They would all been wearing their Big Macs.

It's about those light bulb flashes and stuff and a big pad with a pencil.

Yeah.

And how those props would have been used, I don't know.

We'll just have to imagine.

What could have been it's well reported that Agatha's car is found abandoned near a quarry in the story of the disappearance.

And you know, quarries as a as a setting and quarry gardens as a setting is something that that actually runs throughout the the Canon.

I'm thinking of the body in the library, but the the 60's.

The swinging techs are no exception, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, Endless Night.

So this curse or this rumour linked to a quarry is established quite early on in Endless Night that we're told that people got killed here in the quarry when they got the stone out to build.

Apparently old Geordie fell over the edge one night and broke his neck.

He might have been drunk, we are told.

He did like a drop, apparently.

But there's many drunks that fall and doesn't, they don't necessarily have lasting harm.

So I love this idea that you can go, oh, isn't that speaking?

They go.

I mean, he might have been drunk, but that doesn't necessarily mean.

And that's how myths and stuff get established, isn't it?

No.

No, because so Michael says.

Was he drunk?

Michael is kind of playing along with the rumour, right?

Choices will be.

Beautiful.

Yes, Yes, because.

Then it's almost like a prophecy coming true.

What happens then, we're told towards the end, is the body of old Mrs Lee has been have been found in the disused quarry on the far side of the hill.

She had been dead some days.

There have been accidents there before, and it had been said that the place ought to be fenced in, but nothing had been done.

A verdict of accidental death had been brought in and a further recommendation to for the council defence the place off.

So Michael is is capitalising as he does throughout with Mrs Lee, the character of Mrs Lee who we talked about at the start of this episode.

Actually, she's the sort of bystander traveller figure she yeah, he's going oh where he go.

Here's another.

It must just be all part of that local, that local story that you tell as opposed to yet another person that he finishes off.

So I think most particularly and most beautifully is the quarry garden in Halloween party, which we talked about a little bit in the Halloween special just past actually.

Because as we said in that, what what happens in the 2023 adaptation of that story is that they relocate the garden on the roof, right?

Yes, this terrace garden.

But in the book, it's this beautiful, bountiful garden of Eden in this converted abandoned quarry, and it's a meeting place for the Co conspirators and lovers.

And you pulled out this quote actually about the atmosphere in the quarry garden.

Yes, that there was an atmosphere and that Poirot tried to pin it down.

It had qualities of magic, of enchantment, certainly of beauty, bashful beauty, yet wild.

Here, if you were staging a scene in the theatre, you would have your nymphs, your forms, you'd have Greek beauty.

You would have fear too.

Yes, he thought, in this sunk garden there is fear.

It's such a beautiful there's so many different metaphors evoked by that setting, and it's something that Chrissy does a lot.

I'm thinking of the meson Sen in the hollow.

I'm thinking of various follies such as dead man's she, she often has this setting where it can be both a place of the the absolute height of asceticism, but it also can be debased by murder.

And and that's exactly the kind of dichotomy she's she's playing with that.

And I pulled out that Sopriro's narrative when he's kind of heading there.

He says a quarry garden was an ugly term.

It suggested the noise of blasting rock, the carrying away by lorries of vast masses of stone for Rd making it had behind it industrial demand, but a sunk garden that was different.

It brought to mind with it vague remembrances in his own mind.

And there's this tension between, you know, you think the desolate you think.

What do you picture when you say quarry?

You think of that desolate.

You think of risk.

You think of you think of, you know, Christie's car abandoned on the edge of it.

You think of peril and.

I I think of Doctor Who filming Alien, you think?

Of doctor and but it's turned into something beautiful and bountiful and and almost spiritual because Michael that would it be terribly anachronistic to call him a landscape gardener.

As it probably would would go for it.

Close Who's both this this portent of beauty and a beautiful man in and of himself but turns out to be, you know rotten to the core and and yeah he knows how to make this bear quarry of stone and rock blossom as a desert can blossom.

Really beautiful writing from Christie to finish off that run through.

So next episode is our annual Christmas special.

It is.

It's become an annual Christmas special.

I knew that's what you were laughing at before you even said I knew I could see in your eyes you were thinking, is it?

Is it an annual special if you've only done one before?

I know you so well at this point.

Terrifying, yes, but you know why that is though, because you were thinking it too really, as you were saying it, you were thinking, is it annual?

So do get in touch with us.

You can find us on Instagram at Christy Underscore time.

Our blue sky is christytime dot B sky dot social.

You can e-mail us at christytimeprod@gmail.com and our website ischristytime.com.

You can find Grey on his website at greyrobertbrown.wicsite.com forward slash Grey Robert Brown.

I'm on Instagram at Doctor Mark Aldridge and Blue Sky as markaldridge.info, which is also my website.

And of course, you're always very welcome to pick up one of my books as a lovely Christmas present as it's approaching.

Why?

Not quite, and indeed, do please rate and review the podcast where if you get the podcast, we've had a few lovely extra reviews recently.

Actually the platforms.

We do read them all and we really appreciate it and the comments on Spotify as well.

And and also don't forget that our previous episode recorded at the festival is available on YouTube.

So, you know, I hope you'll all be gathering around on Christmas Day at the centre of the activity Speech, yes?

No, Timmy, you can't open a present.

Not until we've watched The Swinging Christie's in Torquay.

Excellent.

OK, Thanks very much.

Keep swinging.

Bye.

Thanks for listening my senoritas.

The Swinging Christies is a Christie time project by Doctor Mark Aldridge and Grey Robert Brown.

This episode was recorded in Puerto de la Cruz on the 12th of November 2025.

Our artwork was designed by Tom Double and by the studio and our music is by Dar Golan.

Want some dens?

Oh my God, I'm hungry.

Are you?

I'm quite excited to see what they have.

Yeah, I suspect I'll walk away with chips and salad.