The Mysterious Case of the Missing Novelist Quiz

Answer: 1926

Around 9.45 pm on the 3rd December Agatha Christie climbed into her two-seater Morris car outside her home, a large house called 'Styles', in Berkshire and drove away. The following morning her car was discovered a dozen or so miles away, near Guildford, Surrey, its front end buried in a clump of bushes half way down a bank.

Answer: A bottle labelled "opium"

The journalists found they had made the trip in vain, the bottle in fact only contained a harmless stomach remedy, and had no bearing on the case at all.

Answer: At a weekend party in Surrey with his mistress

Archibald had recently fallen in love with a girl ten years younger than himself, a typist by the name of Nancy Neele, who he had met on the golf course. Nancy was well known to Agatha and had spent many weekends with the Christies, although Agatha had no idea that the girl was having an affair with her husband.

Answer: London

Having found her car abandoned in Surrey at 11.00 am, the police were puzzled when it turned out that she had posted several letters in London a few hours earlier, not least of which, apparently, was one to her local police chief setting out fears she had for her life.

Answer: A waiter in a hotel in Yorkshire

Agatha's story, with accompanying pictures, had been appearing in the newspapers since she went missing. When the 'Daily News' offered a reward for any information, reports of sightings flooded in, but all turned out to be false alarms. It transpired that she had been staying in a room on the third floor of the Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, Yorkshire for a week and a half when the head waiter recognised her and contacted the local police.

Answer: Teresa Neele

Agatha checked into the hotel using the second name of her husband's mistress, saying that she was a visitor from South Africa. When he arrived at the hotel Archibald found her in the dining room, reading an account of the ongoing investigation into her disappearance in the evening newspaper. When confronted, she seemed to be unsure of his identity.

Answer: The Big Four

After having initially sold nine thousand copies, "The Big Four" heralded a major upturn in Agatha's popularity, and her subsequent books sold in increasing numbers, prompting speculation that her disappearance was nothing more than a publicity stunt.

Answer: She had lost her memory

No-one of course believed Archie's story, least of all the Surrey police who, on his return to 'Styles', presented him with a bill for the cost of the search, which incidentally he refused to pay. Questions were also asked in the House of Commons, where the whole episode was denounced as a "cruel hoax".

Answer: Her mother died

In April, 1926 Agatha was on the way to visit her mother, who was suffering from bronchitis, when she had a sudden strong feeling that her mother had already died, and was devastated to find on her arrival that her premonition was correct.

Answer: To spite her husband and spoil his weekend

Having been told by Archie that he was in love with a younger woman and wanted a divorce, Agatha staged her disappearance with the help of her sister-in-law, Nan, maybe in the hope of persuading him to stay with her. Unfortunately the prank back-fired when the letter she sent to Campbell, in order to ensure that she would be found quickly, was mislaid by him before he had read it properly.

She had not anticipated the intense media coverage, and hated the publicity she had unwittingly courted, having no desire to publicly admit that her seemingly idyllic life was not as it seemed, and her husband's infidelity was in fact the cause of her disappearance.

The incident did not help her relationship with Archie either, and two years later they were divorced.

He married Nancy Neele and Agatha, some years later, met and married archaeologist Max Mallowan, fourteen years her junior.