Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
Speaker 1: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the Cabinet of Curiosities. On a cold December night,
Speaker 1: Mary vanished. She had left to note describing a last
Speaker 1: minute trip north, and then seemed to have fallen off
Speaker 1: the edge of the world. Mary's friends and family began
Speaker 1: asking around, but no one had seen any sign of her.
Speaker 1: Her own husband, retired colonel, tried pulling a few strings,
Speaker 1: but she still remained undiscovered. It wasn't until a couple
Speaker 1: of days later, when her car was found that people
Speaker 1: really began to worry. The car had been abandoned, along
Speaker 1: with clothing and her i d on a small country road.
Speaker 1: Those with overactive imaginations began to suspect something more than
Speaker 1: a simple mistake or even a practical joke. They believed
Speaker 1: Mary had been kidnapped, possibly even killed, and they knew
Speaker 1: just who had committed the crime. Mary's husband, you see,
Speaker 1: he was already in a bit of hot water, so
Speaker 1: to speak. A few months earlier, he had requested a
Speaker 1: divorce from Mary, and in the weeks since they had
Speaker 1: been fighting constantly. He had found another woman, and Mary
Speaker 1: was standing in the way of that happiness. If you'd asked,
Speaker 1: some of them might have even suggested that he was
Speaker 1: a bit resentful of that. It was easy to connect
Speaker 1: the dots and label him as a suspect, which is
Speaker 1: what the police did. They questioned him and his mistress,
Speaker 1: but in the end they didn't think that he had
Speaker 1: committed the crime, and in the meantime, search parties were
Speaker 1: expanding their reach. At one point, at least a thousand
Speaker 1: law enforcement officials and fifteen thousand and civilian volunteers painstakingly
Speaker 1: examined the region Mary had disappeared from, all while being
Speaker 1: shadowed by a number of airplanes. Her disappearance was covered
Speaker 1: by The New York Times. Celebrity mystery writers even got involved,
Speaker 1: spinning their own theories of what happened, and one man
Speaker 1: hired a medium to examine one of Mary's gloves in
Speaker 1: hopes that it would lead them in the right direction.
Speaker 1: But it didn't work. Don't worry, though, The story does
Speaker 1: have a happy ending, and that's because eleven days after
Speaker 1: she vanished, Mary was found over two hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: miles to the north. She checked into a hotel under
Speaker 1: a different name and claimed she had no memory of
Speaker 1: the entire ordeal. Some people believed Mary was telling the truth,
Speaker 1: that yes, she had somehow lost touch with reality for
Speaker 1: a week and a half. Psychologists call it a fugue state,
Speaker 1: where a person going through a traumatic experience subconsciously creates
Speaker 1: an entirely new reality where the stress no longer exists.
Speaker 1: But others thought there was something more going on. They
Speaker 1: believe Mary actually knew what she was doing, and that
Speaker 1: the purpose behind the whole ordeal was to have her
Speaker 1: husband charged with her murder. People who believe this theory
Speaker 1: claimed that once he had been executed for her murder,
Speaker 1: she would have strolled back out of the darkness and
Speaker 1: claimed amnesia. They believe, in a sense that Mary was
Speaker 1: a master of deception and planning, something pulled straight out
Speaker 1: of the pages of a dime store novel. But like
Speaker 1: a lot of things in life, will never know for sure,
Speaker 1: because she never talked about it or explain herself ever. Again,
Speaker 1: it was all just one big mystery. Whatever the truth was,
Speaker 1: she recovered nicely enough. She went on to Mary an archaeologist,
Speaker 1: which I find rather ironic because archaeologists at the basic level,
Speaker 1: are really just people who dig around for clues that
Speaker 1: tell a story, and Mary's life was built around clues.
Speaker 1: In fact, without her, popular literature wouldn't be what it
Speaker 1: is today. She's still the best selling author in history,
Speaker 1: ahead of J. K. Rowling, Stephen King, and even William Shakespeare,
Speaker 1: with over two billion books sold. Nearly everything she wrote
Speaker 1: has been adapted in some form or another. And you've
Speaker 1: heard about her your entire life, just not as Mary.
Speaker 1: That's because she has been, still is, and always will
Speaker 1: be the Queen of the mystery novel Agatha. Mary Christie
Speaker 1: Peter Carpon was a spy. There was no question about it.
Speaker 1: He had been captured by the French as he was
Speaker 1: trying to slip into their country in nineteen fourteen, just
Speaker 1: as the First World War was big inning. Maybe his
Speaker 1: papers were clearly forged, or perhaps there was something about
Speaker 1: his accent or the way he shifted his eyes when
Speaker 1: they asked him questions. We don't know why he was captured,
Speaker 1: only that he was, which meant that the French had
Speaker 1: a problem on their hands. They could toss him in jail,
Speaker 1: which they did right away. But then what alert the
Speaker 1: Germans that their spy had been captured. That was only
Speaker 1: going to force them to send another spy, or perhaps
Speaker 1: more than one. The French would have to be more
Speaker 1: diligent with their border patrols after that, and no one
Speaker 1: wanted to do that. There were too many other things
Speaker 1: that needed their time and resources. There was another option, though,
Speaker 1: but it was risky. Someone proposed actually keeping Peter Carpon's
Speaker 1: capture a secret from the Germans. They could send fake
Speaker 1: intelligence reports back to the man's superiors in Berlin and
Speaker 1: try to fool them into believing that Carpon was doing
Speaker 1: his job. So that's what they did. For three years,
Speaker 1: they sent back reports, and for three years the Germans
Speaker 1: replied with more instructions and requests. Of course, the French
Speaker 1: were feeding the Germans one false report after another, but
Speaker 1: the Germans hadn't noticed. They were even making military decisions
Speaker 1: based on those false reports. It was brilliant. It gets better, though,
Speaker 1: you see, Peter Carpin needed an income to survive in France,
Speaker 1: so the Germans were sending him money on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was for his own personal expenses, while other
Speaker 1: times it was funding for the projects that they were
Speaker 1: tasking him with and every time Germany sent that money,
Speaker 1: the French were intercepting it and putting it into a
Speaker 1: bank account. In nineteen seventeen, though, Peter Carpin escaped. I
Speaker 1: don't know how, but he managed to slip out of
Speaker 1: wherever they were holding him and vanish into the depths
Speaker 1: of France. More than likely he was going to head
Speaker 1: straight back to Germany, but without his money and papers.
Speaker 1: That was going to take some time. Oh and speaking
Speaker 1: of money, that was when the French decided to spend
Speaker 1: the cash they had been covertly stealing from the Germans.
Speaker 1: They bought a brand new car with it fancy right.
Speaker 1: A few years later in France sent forces to an
Speaker 1: area of Germany that the Treaty of Versailles had declared
Speaker 1: to be a demilitarized zone. The Germans had failed to
Speaker 1: make all of the World War One reparation payments that
Speaker 1: they had agreed to, and had instead formed a sort
Speaker 1: of passive resistance that was creating tension. The French arrived
Speaker 1: as a sort of peace keeping measure. They brought the
Speaker 1: car with them, which was a bit poetic. I think
Speaker 1: a car purchased by the French with German funds and
Speaker 1: now it was in Germany. Now, I don't know the
Speaker 1: exact circumstances, but at some point in the French occupation
Speaker 1: there in Ninete, that car was involved in an accident.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was used in crowd control, or perhaps it
Speaker 1: was just being driven through the streets like anyone today
Speaker 1: would enjoy. Whatever the reason, the car had from moving,
Speaker 1: it tragically struck a German citizen down, throwing him to
Speaker 1: the ground like a rag doll. The French driver of
Speaker 1: the car quickly climbed out, panic and grief painted across
Speaker 1: his face, and approached the body of the man he'd hit.
Speaker 1: It was too late, though, the man was dead. Checking
Speaker 1: his papers for anything that would help them contact the
Speaker 1: man's relatives and inform them of the tragic accident, the
Speaker 1: French soldiers discovered something amazing. This man they had hit,
Speaker 1: the one who now lay dead in the street after
Speaker 1: being struck by the German funded automobile, wasn't the random
Speaker 1: stranger they expected him to be. In fact, they knew him.
Speaker 1: It was the spy himself. Peter Carpon. I hope you've
Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.