Agatha Christie’s greatest mystery – her own disappearance – solved.

On the evening of 3 December 1926, Agatha Christie quarrelled with her husband. She then disappeared from her home and her abandoned car was found the following morning at the edge of a chalk quarry.

What could have happened? Hundreds of police officers and thousands of volunteers combed the frozen countryside for days. The Home Secretary put pressure on the police, and a newspaper offered a huge reward for information. Fellow crime writer, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle even called in a medium to try to find her.

Eleven days later she was found 180 miles away at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire - she claimed to have lost her memory.
After initial relief that she was safe, public reaction turned sour, angry at the waste of time and resources – the popular theory was that the whole thing was a publicity stunt or an attempt to frame her husband for murder.
Or did she suffer a nervous breakdown and act in a state of confusion and dissociation, known as a fugue state.

I examine all the evidence from my perspective as a forensic neuropsychiatrist to get to the bottom of Agatha Christie’s greatest mystery.

References:
Cade, J (2006) Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days. Peter Owen Ltd.
Christie, A (1977) An Autobiography. Collins.
Janet, P. (1907). The major symptoms of hysteria: Fifteen lectures given in the medical school of Harvard University. Macmillan.
Le, X., Lancashire, I., Hirst, G., and Jokel, R. (2011). Longitudinal detection of dementia through lexical and syntactic changes in writing: a case study of three British novelists. Literary and linguistic computing, 26(4), 435-461.
Lotfinia, S., Soorgi, Z., Mertens, Y., and Daniels, J. (2020). Structural and functional brain alterations in psychiatric patients with dissociative experiences: A systematic review of magnetic resonance imaging studies. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 128, 5-15.
McNally, R. J. (2005). Debunking myths about trauma and memory. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 50(13), 817-822.
Morgan, J (2017) Agatha Christie, a Biography. Harper Collins.
Owens, C (1996) The Lost Days of Agatha Christie. Cottage Press.
Pope, H. G., Poliakoff, M. B., Parker, M. P., Boynes, M., and Hudson, J. I. (2007). Is dissociative amnesia a culture-bound syndrome? Findings from a survey of historical literature. Psychological medicine, 37(2), 225-233.
Pujol, M., and Kopelman, M. D. (2003). Psychogenic amnesia. Practical Neurology, 3(5), 292-299.
Staniloiu, A., and Markowitsch, H. J. (2014). Dissociative amnesia. The Lancet Psychiatry, 1(3), 226-241.
de Vito, S., and Della Sala, S. (2017). Was Agatha Christie’s Mysterious Amnesia Real or Revenge on Her Cheating Spouse? Scientific American Mind, 28(6), 30-34.

Copyright Disclaimer
The primary purpose of this video is educational. I have tried to use material in the public domain or with Creative Commons Non-attribution licences wherever possible.
Where attribution is required, I have listed this below. I believe that any copyright material used falls under the remit of Fair Use, but if any content owners would like to dispute this, I will not hesitate to immediately remove that content. It is not my intention to infringe on content ownership in any way. If you happen to find your art or images in the video, please let me know and I will be glad to credit you.

Images
Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
Other images and video samples Fair Use

Music
Johannes Brahms: Piano Quartet in G minor Op.25. Roxana Pavel Goldstein (violin),
Elias Goldstein (viola), Stephen Balderston (cello), and Mathew Ganong (piano).
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Edward Elgar: Salut d’amor: Emanuel Salvador (violin) and Pau Casan (piano)
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 via IMSLP.
Jules Massenet - Méditation from Thaïs performed by Bomsori Kim and Pallavi Mahidhara. CC3.0 via Wikimedia commons.
Camille Saint-Saëns: Carnival of the Animals. Aquarium. Pianos: Neil and Nancy
O'Doan, Seattle Youth Symphony, conducted by Vilem Sokol. Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Jacques Offenbach: Overture to Orpheus in the Underworld. CC 1.0 Universal Public
Domain Dedication via Wikimedia commons.
Psycho by BaDoink CC0 via Freesound

Video produced by Graeme Yorston and Gabriel Isles