On Her Birthday: Agatha Christie’s ‘Gone Girl’ Days of 1926
There was no blood, or poison; there were no clues left, when a crime novelist disappeared.
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There was no blood, or poison; there were no clues left, when a crime novelist disappeared. Almost a thousand police officers, 15,000 volunteers, and lots of aeroplanes were arranged by the government to search the landscapes.
The New York Times carried the news on their front page because a world famous crime writer vanished overnight. Her car was discovered, without the owner and she was later discovered in a hotel registered under a false name.
An unfaithful husband, a wide readership, a public outcry, a heavy media coverage, a surprising return, and unsolved questions of what happened to her and why she disappeared. Sounds familiar? This is not the story of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl but, from the real life of Agatha Christie.
The Christie India Knows
She intrigued us many a times with her suspenseful murders, mind boggling intrigues and tantalising tales of crimes committed in wealthy households, on opulent vacations or lavish transports by deceptive men and women.
Some of her most famous works include The Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None, A Murder is Announced, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, etc, and the magic is far from fading even after all these years.
Hollywood is ready with a latest version of Christie’s famous novel Murder on the Orient Express, starring Judi Dench and Johnny Depp. Bollywood, has been a loyal fan of Christie and the latest rendition of her ‘whodunit’ setting has been deployed in the movie Jagga Jaasoos.
The earlier adaptations included the movie Dhund based on her novel The Unexpected Guest and Gumnaam based on the famous And Then There Were None. A few of her books have also been turned to regional films.
The Bengali rendition of her radio play and short story Three Blind Mice and The Mouse Trap was titled Chupi Chupi Aashey. Similarly, a Malayalam thriller named Grandmaster was based on her famous work The ABC Murders. Indians have always been fans of Christie, and specially the millennials.
Catering to Readers’ Delight
The interview of a few young professionals gave us an idea of how influential Christie is now, as it was during then.
23-year-old Aayush, who works with a news agency, said that he had always been a fan of Christie. He listed three of his favourites from the massive collection of Christie’s books he read has since his childhood. “I haven’t read all her works, but I loved, A murder is Announced, The Body in the Library and Murder on the Orient Express. As a teenager, I used to roam around in my area, imagining myself as Hercule Poirot.”
Similarly, Apoorva, a 24-year-old Gender Studies student in Bangalore, recalls how she loved reading Christie’s And Then There Were None, which was a gift from a relative. “My younger sister and I used to play games which involved clue finding. We loved the mystery and the brainstorming which Christie stirred in us,” she said.
When it was conveyed to them that their favourite author once disappeared for 11 days, in a way similar to the character of Amy in Gone Girl, it came as a shocking revelation.
The Secret of Christie
It was on 3 December, 1926, when 36-year-old Christie, already famous and married to her first husband Archie Christie, a First World War fighter pilot, had an altercation with him regarding his extra-marital affair with Nancy Neele. He left her that day to spend the weekend with his mistress.
What happened afterwards became the subject of many theories.
A famous and successful author’s disappearance in this way baffled the world. She was discovered at a hotel in Harrogate, with the name Theresa Neele, a false identity she had assumed.
The Gone Girl Connection
The couple got divorced in 1928. Many presumed that she might have suffered a memory loss when she crashed her car. Her biographer Andrew Norman, stated that she had a rare psychiatric disease called the ‘fugue state’, which resulted in amnesia due to lengthened state of stress, and others suspected that it was a publicity stunt to defame her husband.
Although, she never mentioned this episode again.
Whatever may be the reason of Christie’s disappearance, it is uncannily reflected in Gone Girl.
When a rich and intelligent Amy Dunne, who is famous as a character called ‘Amazing Amy’ from a children’s story book, disappears from her home, the husband becomes the suspect.
The threat of divorce in a disintegrating marriage was similar to Christie’s, as it prompted Amy to disappear and get her husband Nick Dunne incriminated as a suspect in a false case of her murder.
The media outcry was raised on a national level, but Christie’s news had reached the international audience because of her fame.
Nick Dunne cooperated with the Police and media to help bring back Amy, as did Archie Christie by giving his full support in the search operation. Amy drives back home, later on, to her husband, with no clues left for the world as to why she plotted this. So did Christie, when she showed up and said that she was not able to recall anything.
So maybe, as she once said, “Instinct is a marvellous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.” It seemed like an instinctive reaction of a crime writer, to fame, fantasy and reality.
(With inputs from The Gaurdian, Independent.co.uk)
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