Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Dunnon Zaren Burnett.
Speaker 3: I got a question for you, my friend. Yes, do
Speaker 3: you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 2: I know it's ridiculous. No, you don't you know what?
Speaker 2: How I know it's ridiculous. We got an Instagram fella
Speaker 2: here Ron.
Speaker 3: Do Good, Ron do good, do good.
Speaker 2: He's got a phenomenal name. D I U g U
Speaker 2: I d oh, And I thought I'm going to butcher
Speaker 2: this name, and that's not fair for this dude. So
Speaker 2: I looked it up and if I got it wrong,
Speaker 2: then Ron, oh my god, I'm so sorry, but I
Speaker 2: think it's do Good. Anyway, he tipped me off to
Speaker 2: something that you know, Uh, the interns told him this
Speaker 2: is amazing, this is horrible. And then he told the
Speaker 2: interns amazingly horrible or horribly amazing.
Speaker 3: And I'm glad they can have some fun.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, he gets us. I need to read
Speaker 2: you something from a promotional.
Speaker 3: What you you know something about me?
Speaker 2: I'm all ears, I know so quote. We are committed
Speaker 2: to supporting Australia's music industry and nightlife. And that sounds good, right,
Speaker 2: that's what you're part of it. I love the nightlife
Speaker 2: and providing Assi's with the ultimate KFC experience. It's so
Speaker 2: exciting to be partnering with such incredible local Aussi talent
Speaker 2: on what is sure to be a fantastic night out
Speaker 2: and we cannot wait to open the doors to our
Speaker 2: very first night club in Australia. We love to throw
Speaker 2: a gig, so it's encouraging fans to grab their tickets,
Speaker 2: unleash their free spirits and embrace the fried side of life.
Speaker 3: Producer Dave, can you turn her mic off? Just just
Speaker 3: turn it down?
Speaker 2: I have to ask you, what is preventing you from
Speaker 2: embracing the fried side of life?
Speaker 3: I don't know common sense?
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, So KFC is partnering with UH producer Lude
Speaker 2: l U U d.
Speaker 3: E HD LUDINGFC there again.
Speaker 2: So apparently it's like some like hibbity hoppity guy. Right,
Speaker 2: he's a club guy. He has a mullet psh Australian style.
Speaker 2: So so there they've paired up. So he's not only
Speaker 2: going to headline the club, he's he's got a mash up.
Speaker 2: He's collabed for ludes Zinger Sliders, which are the sliders
Speaker 2: coming to pairs eron.
Speaker 3: You get so much joy from this?
Speaker 2: I do you have no idea? They're each packed with
Speaker 2: half of a Zinger filet, and is a zinger a
Speaker 2: new kind of animal? I don't know. One is smothered
Speaker 2: in Chili relish and the other in super charge sauce,
Speaker 2: which I think is just like a four local reduction.
Speaker 2: And they're gonna I don't know. KFC says they're going
Speaker 2: to be certified.
Speaker 3: Fire, certified fire.
Speaker 2: To summarize in conclu there's a KFC night club in Australia.
Speaker 3: You hear yourself, I do, I hear you know?
Speaker 2: My life is just one string of like Elizabeth, did
Speaker 2: you hear what you just said? And I go, yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess yeah I did. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: Well that is certified ridiculous.
Speaker 2: It so is.
Speaker 3: Do you know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 2: Please share?
Speaker 3: Do you have a moment?
Speaker 2: My life is a series of moments. Okay, most of
Speaker 2: them are available to you.
Speaker 3: Thank you, you're so generous with your time. I've got
Speaker 3: a story for you. Did you know that one of
Speaker 3: the most famous mystery writers ever, forever ever? They once
Speaker 3: disappeared for eleven days. But not only did she disappear,
Speaker 3: but many think that she faked her death, and not
Speaker 3: only that Elizabeth, she may have been attempting to frame
Speaker 3: her husband for her murder. Oh yes, that famous mystery
Speaker 3: writer was drummroll, please I get the Christie.
Speaker 4: Wow, yeah, buckle up, love her.
Speaker 3: This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers,
Speaker 3: heists and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free
Speaker 3: and one hundred percent ridiculous. Wood Bee, I like it.
Speaker 3: You're in one, You're on one, and you're writing.
Speaker 2: I am all over one.
Speaker 3: Let's talk Agatha Christie, Let's undisputed queen of the murder
Speaker 3: mystery book right totally. Now you know how we're ninety
Speaker 3: nine percent murder free, one percent murder. I guess Agatha
Speaker 3: Christie ninety nine percent murder. Oh I know, yeah, I
Speaker 3: totally flipped it.
Speaker 2: Well, because here's the thing. She's kind of got Like
Speaker 2: the original uh version of murder she wrote, you know where,
Speaker 2: like if she shows up in town like somebody's gonna
Speaker 2: you know, get got uh she miss Marple. Yes, Like
Speaker 2: if she shows up to your country estate for some
Speaker 2: to do, I'm like, I'm getting out of.
Speaker 3: Town by life insurance on all the people I am.
Speaker 2: Hopping on a horse and to lose and with Puaro.
Speaker 3: Too, same thing. Yeah, he also rides.
Speaker 2: With curly mustache coming in. I'm like, curly mustache my
Speaker 2: way out of it.
Speaker 3: Did you have a favorite between Marpo and Puaro.
Speaker 2: I think I like Paro really yeah, uh, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Part of me is the problem that I'm having is
Speaker 2: I'm having trouble disconnecting the books from the television versions
Speaker 2: and the movie versions. In the movie so like, I
Speaker 2: love that the television Puaro with David A Camera's name
Speaker 2: now the kind of standard PBS. No, it's like Sachet
Speaker 2: or the most recent one, the one that I love him,
Speaker 2: and he plays a great Quaro and he's kind of
Speaker 2: I feel like the basis for this character in the
Speaker 2: Mazy Dobbs novel series amazing. Yeah, Maurice, I guess his
Speaker 2: name is he. I feel like that writer took in
Speaker 2: spray from Puiro to creative anyway. I like Quoro's very intellectual,
Speaker 2: larger issue assessment of the crimes instead of the like
Speaker 2: sneaky you know, I'm going to piece this together and
Speaker 2: then Aha.
Speaker 3: So you're not a big fan of the Columbo style
Speaker 3: the Murder She wrote style.
Speaker 2: I just love murder mysteries.
Speaker 3: I know you do, really do. I always thin it's
Speaker 3: funny about Miss Marple is that she's the one people
Speaker 3: always overlook and then poiro distracts you with the flamboyance
Speaker 3: of the mustache and the outrageous Belgian accent and everything.
Speaker 3: So one you get, you pay attention to the other
Speaker 3: one you do not.
Speaker 2: So she covers they're sleeping on the on the bad
Speaker 2: baby over there. You know, they they're not attention to her.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like you. The older you get as
Speaker 2: a woman, the more invisible do you become.
Speaker 3: I've heard this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's great, the opposite effect. There are parts
Speaker 2: when you think, yeah, is kind of nice to be invisible,
Speaker 2: but you know it's also demoralizing.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, totally. And so we're social preachers.
Speaker 2: The aged Miss Marple. She goes somewhere and people say
Speaker 2: wild stuff in front of her.
Speaker 3: And she's she's just like a raw knife.
Speaker 2: And that's why you shouldn't underestimate us, old broads.
Speaker 3: That's so true. I always say that now, speaking of
Speaker 3: a you know, underestimating people, And you mentioned the movie versions. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 3: the classic, in my opinion, is The Murder on the
Speaker 3: Orient Express, not the new one, the nineteen seventies version
Speaker 3: with everyone in it. Yes, that movie incredible, right, Albert Finnie,
Speaker 3: his Hercule Parole.
Speaker 2: I love Albert.
Speaker 3: Unforgettable. Right now, For those who don't know, the plot is,
Speaker 3: there's the train, the Orient Express, and then there's a
Speaker 3: surprisingly large number of Americans on it, and there are
Speaker 3: a bunch of people who work for the same American
Speaker 3: Charles Limberg, and I won't tell you anymore right now.
Speaker 3: The cast for that film is this also an insane
Speaker 3: list of stars in the last mid century? Do you
Speaker 3: remember how many people are in that movie?
Speaker 2: Run it by me? Because you mentioned Albert Finnie. I
Speaker 2: just recently watched Annie. Oh my gosh, such a good movie,
Speaker 2: and I remember all the lyrics. I'm really proud of myself.
Speaker 3: Anyway, go ahead, Okay, we got Ingrid Bergman, Wow, Lauren Bacall,
Speaker 3: Vanessa Redgrave, Sean Connery, John Gilgood, Anthony Perkins. It's just
Speaker 3: like a crazy hit list. Yeah yeah, Now, of that
Speaker 3: that list of actors, you have a favorite, and any
Speaker 3: one of those jump out for you. For me, it's
Speaker 3: obviously Ingrid Bergman, she's my favorite.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, I kind of like Sean Connor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought you did you play both shots?
Speaker 2: No, that's one to take shots. That's all I can do.
Speaker 2: That's it what I mean. Or I could do like
Speaker 2: a real impression of him.
Speaker 3: Could you do an impression of Sean Connery for us?
Speaker 3: Would you favorite producer? David and Irick one?
Speaker 2: Okay, have about this miss Sean Connory and a little
Speaker 2: pennies that I hit lighting.
Speaker 3: Wow, that I know who's the man now dog? Okay,
Speaker 3: So La has a three seasons. As I told you,
Speaker 3: my favorite is a second favorite is Award season. The
Speaker 3: others are fire season and flood season. So one of those.
Speaker 2: Is my favorite.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's true. Actually, now, the forty seventh Oscars
Speaker 3: Murder on the An Express cleaned house that year because
Speaker 3: I told you all those stars right. They won for
Speaker 3: Best Adaptive Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Costume Design, Best Cinematography,
Speaker 3: I mean just everything. Now compare that to the recient adaptations.
Speaker 2: Now, now that what was the first one he did,
Speaker 2: Death on the Nile, because that was a stinker.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's the one to start. Wonder Woman and the
Speaker 3: alleged Cannibal, grandson of Armin Hammer exactly. It was so
Speaker 3: we saw that together and we were just laughing at
Speaker 3: not at the film, like near the film, at each
Speaker 3: other what we were saying about them.
Speaker 2: It was in the theaters and I went up to
Speaker 2: the screen and I barred on it. That's what happened.
Speaker 3: The murder on the Arin Express version that was a
Speaker 3: little bit better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was that was good.
Speaker 3: I had a brilliant conceit. The whole setup was a
Speaker 3: bunch of stars to get together to kill Johnny Depp.
Speaker 3: I mean it was just like so now so anyway,
Speaker 3: in both films, Kenneth brodducts version of Hercule Pero. What
Speaker 3: do you think? I thought delightful.
Speaker 2: I thought it was good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Who's the Venice one?
Speaker 3: That was a little bit oh hunting in Venice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're just not good movies. He puts a lot
Speaker 2: of people who are not likable in them, like a
Speaker 2: lot of like in real life, they're unlikable. So I'm
Speaker 2: walking into it being like I can't believe I want
Speaker 2: to watch.
Speaker 3: This casting agent's not reading the local trades, the news anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like what Bozo's can I put in here? They're
Speaker 2: nice to me, They said, yes, and then they're just
Speaker 2: they're very convoluted in their retellings.
Speaker 3: So Agatha Christie writer, we talked about Agatha Christie, you know,
Speaker 3: basically not filmmaker, but films made of her books. We've
Speaker 3: talked about creator.
Speaker 2: She's a content.
Speaker 3: Content Agatha Christie content creator. So what about Agatha Christie
Speaker 3: cultural phenomenon? Did you know that Agatha Christie has sold
Speaker 3: more books than almost any other writer you can name.
Speaker 3: Go ahead and name a writer. They sold a lot
Speaker 3: of books. John Grisham sold more books in him. Name
Speaker 3: another one.
Speaker 2: Who's the Da Vinci code man?
Speaker 3: Oh Dan Brown? Danny Brown, Dan Brown? Right, Danny?
Speaker 2: Yeah? What about that?
Speaker 3: More than him? God, Stephen King? More than him? Okay,
Speaker 3: she has a century head start on these writers, Stephen King,
Speaker 3: John Gris, those guys, like the supermarket fiction writers more
Speaker 3: than him. Okay, that's not me saying that. By the way,
Speaker 3: she's such a badass. Guinness Book of World Records. According
Speaker 3: to Guinness, they say her two billion books she has
Speaker 3: sold are more than anybody the writer you can name,
Speaker 3: two billion, two billion. She's the best selling fiction writer
Speaker 3: of all time.
Speaker 2: Go for it.
Speaker 3: Billion books sold in English, one billion books sold in
Speaker 3: one hundred and three other languages. She's killing the game.
Speaker 3: Now if you include non fiction plays, religious texts, so forth,
Speaker 3: there's still only two writers who sold more books than her.
Speaker 3: You name those two writers.
Speaker 2: Of non fiction, Well, I mean.
Speaker 3: And one's one's not really the writer, one is God,
Speaker 3: and the other monks.
Speaker 2: A non fiction.
Speaker 3: I don't Billy Shakespeare.
Speaker 2: How is that nonfiction plays?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: No, I said, I said, nonfiction plays religious texts, things
Speaker 3: that are not necessarily people. That's journalism. Elizabeth plays journalism.
Speaker 3: It's life drawn done dramatically, rendered dramatically. When we're talking
Speaker 3: about the big dogs of the printage page, it's basically God, Shakespeare,
Speaker 3: and Agatha Christie. That's the list, right, And this was
Speaker 3: true in her lifetime. She was like king of the mountain. Then,
Speaker 3: for instance, there's this story Agatha Christie on a train
Speaker 3: by herself. She was not visually distinctive, so people could
Speaker 3: miss her. They wouldn't know that they were sitting on
Speaker 3: a train with Agatha Christie's she and she would say
Speaker 3: that she was just a housewife. She even said that
Speaker 3: after she was selling millions of books. Right, anyway, she's
Speaker 3: on this train same train carriages her. Two women, they
Speaker 3: both have Agatha Christie books on their knees, right, And
Speaker 3: Agatha Christie remembers this moment as she tells it, two
Speaker 3: women discussing me, both with copies of my paperback editions
Speaker 3: on their knees, and like I said, they don't recognize her.
Speaker 3: So they're talking freely about her, unaware that the author
Speaker 3: is right there listening to them. So the two women
Speaker 3: they get to talk and they get to a course
Speaker 3: to gossiping and they're like, oh, yes, oh. One of
Speaker 3: the ladies says, I hear she drinks like a fish
Speaker 3: eo right, And so she's just having to hear this
Speaker 3: all the time because people don't know she's like this
Speaker 3: king or queen rather of the crime world, a fiction
Speaker 3: of books. And still people are like, oh, I wouldn't
Speaker 3: recognize her. She's walked right past me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, as you can imagine, with this person who is
Speaker 3: selling so many books and everybody loves her, when she disappears,
Speaker 3: the Queen of Crime disappears on December sixth, nineteen twenty six.
Speaker 3: It was a super big deal. All of a sudden,
Speaker 3: papers are like, wait, what Yeah, Agatha Christie goes missing.
Speaker 3: It's a real life murder mystery. The time Elizabeth, she
Speaker 3: was thirty six years old, she'd already published many of
Speaker 3: her best books, as I told you. And so she's
Speaker 3: published her sixth book, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. And
Speaker 3: the reason why Agatha Christie had went missing was, in
Speaker 3: rough terms, we'll just put it, sometimes a girl just
Speaker 3: needs to get away, that's the true. Right now, she
Speaker 3: and her husband, Archie Christie had rather recently moved into
Speaker 3: a grand home, a big i'll put it in your terms,
Speaker 3: a long daddy Sunningdale, Berkshire, and it was a sort
Speaker 3: of home that gets a nickname. They called the twelve
Speaker 3: bedroom mansion Styles, which was the title of her first book. Yes,
Speaker 3: they named it after the sidekick from teen Wolf, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3: With an amazing amount of oppressions she's saw forward, She's like,
Speaker 3: you know, Michael J. Fox. I like that kid. He's
Speaker 3: going to be a hell of an actor. But not him.
Speaker 3: What's the one next to him? Now? As she learned
Speaker 3: from that Styles mansion, big house, right, big house can
Speaker 3: also make you feel more alone?
Speaker 2: Oh completely, yeah.
Speaker 3: Right, the emptiness of it, the sound of that emptiness, right,
Speaker 3: And also her husband was often gone. That also really
Speaker 3: kind of exacerbated the emptyiness.
Speaker 2: The house implies that there should be a lot of people, yes.
Speaker 3: And a lot of life in it, right, So she
Speaker 3: grows lonely in response to her success in the big house.
Speaker 3: Setting all this aside for a moment, Agatha was also
Speaker 3: dealing with somewhat of a life crisis, right. She was
Speaker 3: in a dark place. Had died that same year in
Speaker 3: the spring, and Agatha and her mother they were really close,
Speaker 3: like super close, and the loss was devastating to her.
Speaker 3: So she already has her somewhat absent husband and now
Speaker 3: her mother is gone. Her husband is not there to
Speaker 3: help her with the loss. Not only that, he's just
Speaker 3: shrugged off the loss, like he didn't even attend the funeral.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, like he was of no help when she
Speaker 3: lost like someone. Yeah, right, So she has no mother.
Speaker 3: She has a daughter of her own, though, a seven
Speaker 3: year old daughter, and so that's later that same year,
Speaker 3: in the summer, Agatha she takes a trip with her
Speaker 3: daughter to her mother's estate to kind of like show
Speaker 3: where this is Grandma's place and do all that and like,
Speaker 3: let's you know, the commune with her spirit the two
Speaker 3: of them, they chill, they talk about grandmother. You know,
Speaker 3: they're just vibing out right. Yeah, husband shows up, recently
Speaker 3: departed mother's estate. He's got big news for them. His
Speaker 3: big news is Elizabeth. He's met another woman, a much
Speaker 3: younger woman named Nancy Neil, and he's in love with Nancy.
Speaker 3: In fact, he wants a divorce. And because he and
Speaker 3: Nancy had been carrying on for having an affair of
Speaker 3: about a year now, her husband was tired of sneaking
Speaker 3: around pure me, the exercise of hiding what I'm doing
Speaker 3: from you. So Agatha tells him, nope, I won't grant
Speaker 3: you a divorce.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: And so even though her hubby archie, he seems to
Speaker 3: me he's like a total sad sack of a man,
Speaker 3: she loves him. She wants to keep this guy around.
Speaker 3: She won't let him go. No.
Speaker 2: You know, he comes up and he's like, oh, I
Speaker 2: want a divorce. I beg nope, and I'm about to
Speaker 2: make your life miserable.
Speaker 3: She actually loves him, so she tries to save their marriage.
Speaker 3: She works for a while, right, her husband was like, oh,
Speaker 3: good lord, did you not listen to a single word
Speaker 3: I just said? I want a divorce.
Speaker 2: Nope, nope, didn't listen, So I'm going to.
Speaker 3: Agatha said about this. She wrote about this period later
Speaker 3: in her life. She said that this was quote the
Speaker 3: beginning of a nervous breakdown. No, right, yeah, so that
Speaker 3: day at her late mother's estate when he said he
Speaker 3: wanted to get a divorce and shack up with his mistress,
Speaker 3: that was the summer.
Speaker 2: Right, of course, it's the beginning of a nervous breakdown.
Speaker 2: I just like that is this most tender point?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, she losenes her mother and then her
Speaker 3: husband destroys everything, and yeah, so come winter, Archie, this
Speaker 3: the sad sack of a husband. He comes back to
Speaker 3: Agatha and informs it, Look, I can't go on like this.
Speaker 3: I must be with Nancy. I'm going to go spend
Speaker 3: the weekend with her.
Speaker 2: She's non threatening exactly.
Speaker 3: So that afternoon, Agatha she could go out for a drive. Right.
Speaker 3: She was half out of her head. She's in deep
Speaker 3: inner feels at this point, right, But she knew she
Speaker 3: couldn't do anything rash because she's got her daughter with
Speaker 3: her in the car. So she's like, I'll wait till later. Right.
Speaker 3: She's also thinking maybe he'll come home and he's just
Speaker 3: being whatever, you know, peculiar.
Speaker 2: I can't you know. When I hear these stories, I'm like, honey,
Speaker 2: just come over to the jaded side of the fence.
Speaker 2: You'll get here eventually, but he's join us early and
Speaker 2: then your life will be much better anyway.
Speaker 3: For Seed, she waits for her husband to come home.
Speaker 3: When Archie doesn't come home that night, around nine forty
Speaker 3: five pm, she goes up to her daughter's room. She
Speaker 3: kisses her daughter goodbye, and then she grabs her car
Speaker 3: keys and she takes off on her drive on her own.
Speaker 3: I'll leave it to Agatha to tell the story. I
Speaker 3: just wanted my life to end. All that night, I
Speaker 3: drove aimlessly about in my mind there was this vague
Speaker 3: idea of ending everything. I drove automatically downroads I knew
Speaker 3: to may Head, where I looked at the river. I
Speaker 3: thought about jumping in, but realized that I could swim
Speaker 3: too well to drown. Then back to London again, and
Speaker 3: then on to Sunningdale. From there I went to Newland's Corner.
Speaker 3: So she just keeps driving through the dark and the
Speaker 3: despondency of her blues. Then something happens, Elizabeth, She says,
Speaker 3: when I reached a point on the road which I
Speaker 3: thought was near the quarry, I turned the car off
Speaker 3: down the road, down the hill toward it. I left
Speaker 3: the wheel and left the car run. The car struck
Speaker 3: something with a jerk and pulled up. Suddenly I was
Speaker 3: flung against the steering wheel and my head hit something.
Speaker 3: Up to this moment, I was missus Christie. After this moment,
Speaker 3: she was someone else entirely, literally and figuratively. The crash
Speaker 3: was the beginning of a two week long disappearance of
Speaker 3: Agatha Christie. Nice, I'll take a break and after this
Speaker 3: we'll get into what happens while she's gone. All right, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: we're back.
Speaker 2: So where were we?
Speaker 3: Oh? Right, the English country side?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Oh, my heart like telling her story about how
Speaker 2: she's feeling and she's striving and so despondent, Like I
Speaker 2: just it's heart wrenched.
Speaker 3: She feel her. Yeah, you can relate. You're like, oh,
Speaker 3: I get your girl. So, Agatha Christie, she crashed her car.
Speaker 3: Eventually she wakes up behind the wheel. Right, she's not dead, obviously,
Speaker 3: but she's still in the car. And Agatha she's banged up,
Speaker 3: she's got blunt trauma wounds to her chest from the crash.
Speaker 3: She has bruises on her head, like I said, though
Speaker 3: not dead. So she's like, oh, I need to she
Speaker 3: probably got a concussion. Probably She's like what do I
Speaker 3: need to decide what to do? And so she's like,
Speaker 3: you know, gathers her wits. Then she climbs out of
Speaker 3: the crash car. She walks into the English countryside. It's December,
Speaker 3: so the trees are bare, they're just like skeletal things
Speaker 3: on the horizon. Right, the air is cold to the skin, right,
Speaker 3: the crisp wintry night, you get it right, But like
Speaker 3: a fiend arisen from the ashes. Agatha Christie would write,
Speaker 3: as I told you up to this moment, I was
Speaker 3: missus Christie. Right in this moment on she remakes herself.
Speaker 3: She's like, I'm gonna go be someone else. Now she's
Speaker 3: this new woman, reborn right there in that field, and
Speaker 3: now she needs a new name. Right, So I'll get
Speaker 3: to that in a second. But the next day a
Speaker 3: boy is out walking and he finds Agatha Christie's car.
Speaker 3: It's a Morris Crowley if you're into old cars, And
Speaker 3: the thing was all left all parked Yankee style, right,
Speaker 3: it's all cock eyed at the edge of a quarry.
Speaker 3: It looks like someone tried to like push it into
Speaker 3: the car. What's the good place to hide something? Right?
Speaker 3: The front wheels are dangling off the edge, okay, right? Yeah.
Speaker 3: The only thing it was that stopped it was it
Speaker 3: had hit like some bushes right around the edge of
Speaker 3: the chalk pit. Right. So there are other curious facts though.
Speaker 3: When the cops came out to investigate, they find that
Speaker 3: the car's gearshift was in neutral, right, which is strange.
Speaker 3: The handbrake wasn't engaged, which that tells someone who's you know, investigating.
Speaker 3: It looks like someone was trying to roll the car,
Speaker 3: push the car, right. But Agatha Christie, she couldn't be
Speaker 3: strong enough to push a car all a cliff into
Speaker 3: a quarry, right, So what was her plan? Maybe she's
Speaker 3: just gonna roll it down a hill. Yeah, we don't know.
Speaker 3: It's inconclusive, right. What we do know is that Agatha
Speaker 3: Christie walked to a railway station and then, as she
Speaker 3: put it, he's strange the railway authority they had did
Speaker 3: not recall me as I was covered with mud and
Speaker 3: I had speared blood on my face from a cut
Speaker 3: on my hand.
Speaker 2: Wait, that's why they didn't recall her. Is everyone walking
Speaker 2: around buddy and bloody? Because like in.
Speaker 3: Nineteen twenties in England, I don't know. Can you tell me?
Speaker 3: Maybe she got in with the union busters. I don't
Speaker 3: know Elizabeth, but they didn't recognize her. Right. So there
Speaker 3: she is at King's Cross train station, one of my favorites.
Speaker 3: I've been to that one so many times. Right, So
Speaker 3: she purchases herself a ticket to a resort spa in
Speaker 3: a town called Harrowgate. I may be pronouncing that Harrowgate
Speaker 3: up in Surrey. At the station, she grabs a taxi cab.
Speaker 3: When she gets up to Harrowgate and she asked the
Speaker 3: driver to take her out to the Hydropathic Hotel.
Speaker 2: That sounds awesome.
Speaker 3: Then that sounds awesome. It's a resort spa. Right, Agata
Speaker 3: walks in. She's a lone, no luggage. She tells the
Speaker 3: front desk that she'd recently arrived from South Africa and
Speaker 3: her name, wait for it, Teresa Neil.
Speaker 2: I was hoping for Agatha v. Stallion.
Speaker 3: Now now miss Regina Corntower. It comes and making up
Speaker 3: a new name. She picked the last name of her mistress,
Speaker 3: Nancy Neil. She became Teresa Neil.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, there's a lot of what's like psychological.
Speaker 3: What's your take on that name choice? You know?
Speaker 2: And I don't know. I'm guessing that the Neil gal
Speaker 2: is younger, Yes, yes, yeah? And so oh.
Speaker 3: Is she framing her husband? Is she taking on the
Speaker 3: identity in some strange pathology?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say it's that. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 3: No one can know, no one either way. The resort
Speaker 3: spa manager. He escorts the new missus Neil upstairs and
Speaker 3: to as Agatha put it, a good room on the
Speaker 3: first floor, fitted with hot and cold water because remember
Speaker 3: nineteen So you don't promised to cold water in Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: real nice. Right. So she's made it, she's made her break.
Speaker 3: She's in the hotel, she's got a new name, a
Speaker 3: new self. So what does she do next? What does
Speaker 3: she do now that she's an anonymous and a lone
Speaker 3: formerly famous person. Well to answer that, Elizabeth, I'd like
Speaker 3: you to close your eyes as a club and picture it.
Speaker 3: It's early December nineteen twenty six. There is a piano plane.
Speaker 3: You know the tune. It's the recent hit song, Yes
Speaker 3: we have no Bananas. You, Elizabeth, are currently not at
Speaker 3: a speakeasy in New York or a slanky private music
Speaker 3: club in London. Nope, you're at a health spa and
Speaker 3: resort in the English countryside, and you are a patient
Speaker 3: at the resort, that's what they call the guests at
Speaker 3: this spa. And you are a wealthy Glasswegian woman of
Speaker 3: a certain age who's come to this spot to get
Speaker 3: her humor's balanced to like the ancient Greeks.
Speaker 2: Ah, that's great.
Speaker 3: So that's what your latest doctor told you. Your health
Speaker 3: requires some time at a spa, so you found this
Speaker 3: spa to convalesce. Now that you've been here for a
Speaker 3: few weeks, you're feeling much better, and you've come to
Speaker 3: enjoy the night times. For Dressed in one of your
Speaker 3: favorite moomoos, you come downstairs, drawn by the sound of
Speaker 3: the music. Tonight there's a soiree of sorts. They're in
Speaker 3: the downstairs ballroom. Guests are dancing, some seated at tables
Speaker 3: that encircle the dance floor. They're drinking punch. Others are
Speaker 3: drinking healthy cocktails like gin and carrot juice. That's so healthy,
Speaker 3: Hey man, what are you talking about one of the
Speaker 3: new patients. A single middle aged woman is behind the
Speaker 3: keys of the piano. She's playing that light and airy
Speaker 3: pop song, Yes we have no bananas, as she sort
Speaker 3: of half sings the lyrics, the bouncy words, dance right
Speaker 3: along with the patients.
Speaker 7: Yes we have no bananas. We have no bananas today.
Speaker 7: Our eggs are delicious, but they act suspicious. They look
Speaker 7: like they passed away. If you try some of our spinish,
Speaker 7: we'll tell you you're finish. But yes, we have no bananas.
Speaker 7: We have no bananas today.
Speaker 2: And with that, all the relaxation I've gained at the
Speaker 2: spaws gone.
Speaker 3: The woman behind the keys, missus Neil, as she calls herself.
Speaker 2: Oh man, she's really bitch, chaps.
Speaker 3: Up from the piano. Another patient takes over for her.
Speaker 3: Missus Neil spins and pirouettes onto the dance floor, all
Speaker 3: gayety and joy. You spoke with Missus Neil earlier today
Speaker 3: at lunch. You recognize her. She remember she told you
Speaker 3: she's from South Africa. That's right, and sadly she lost
Speaker 3: a son not too long ago. Yet the loss of
Speaker 3: her son doesn't show up in her glowing smile as
Speaker 3: she dances towards you. You find that Missus Neil is
Speaker 3: rather good at the Charleston. It's the dance craze at
Speaker 3: the moment on both sides of the Atlantic. She even
Speaker 3: shows you how to move your hands and knees in
Speaker 3: that jazzy way, the coordinated knock knees dance step of
Speaker 3: the Charleston. You laugh as you attempt at talk talk talk.
Speaker 3: You're a quick study, and with not much time you're
Speaker 3: doing the Charleston better than Missus Neil. She's not as
Speaker 3: good a dancer as you are. After a few turns
Speaker 3: on the dance floor, Missus Neil is winded, so she
Speaker 3: returns to the piano. She warbles out a few more tunes.
Speaker 3: You lean on the piano with another patient. When either
Speaker 3: of you recognize a song, you sing along, but Missus
Speaker 3: Neil seems to prefer the upbeat jazzy tunes, so you
Speaker 3: don't recognize many of them. You sip from your gin
Speaker 3: and carrot juice. This is the life. You'd have no
Speaker 3: reason to believe that you've just spent the night carrying
Speaker 3: on and carousing with Agatha Christie, the most famous woman
Speaker 3: in the world, who isn't a Queen.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth man if I if I could still drink booze.
Speaker 2: I loved gin. You love carrot juice, and I love
Speaker 2: carrot juice.
Speaker 3: You got this gin and juice carrots?
Speaker 2: That sounds kind of good. Blood orange juice.
Speaker 3: Dress it up, yeah, put a fur coat on it.
Speaker 3: I like that. Okay, so good. Well, other than dancing,
Speaker 3: carrying on and sipping on your gin and juice, did.
Speaker 2: You did you know how to do the Charleston when
Speaker 2: you were a kid?
Speaker 3: Of course I was one of those kids.
Speaker 2: Think I was raised like my grandparents helped raise me,
Speaker 2: and I think that's why I talked to propaganda poster.
Speaker 2: But yeah, like totally did the Charleston as a kid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a great dance. What's up at that?
Speaker 2: But let's start teaching kids with Charleston?
Speaker 3: I think we should. So other than dancing, you know,
Speaker 3: carousing and hanging out with Agatha Christie and shaking your knees. So, yes,
Speaker 3: we have no bananas. What else did Agatha Christie get
Speaker 3: up to while she was on her break?
Speaker 2: Cocaine? No, surprisingly, you're telling a story.
Speaker 3: I have no cocaine in the story. Can you believe it?
Speaker 3: And also it's like surprising how much cocaine shows up
Speaker 3: when I hate cocaine. Here's cocaine again, and.
Speaker 2: Two of us are like, it's disgusting.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about let's talk about how stupid it is,
Speaker 3: so silly, and what terrible decisions you make and one
Speaker 3: of the things you will sacrifice for if anyway, there's
Speaker 3: no cocaine in this story. But I did think you'd
Speaker 3: appreciate this Elizabeth, what she did decide to do.
Speaker 2: Yes, she slept in, Oh god, bless super late.
Speaker 3: She slept in late. And then she took breakfast in bed. Yes,
Speaker 3: she lazed about. She just let Agatha be Agatha every day,
Speaker 3: breakfast in bed.
Speaker 2: We'll hire her at slots, and I'm heart.
Speaker 3: She also, you're kind of girl. She she read a lot.
Speaker 3: The resources spot had a library, and the librarian helped
Speaker 3: her find mysteries to read, because Agatha wasn't just a writer,
Speaker 3: she was also a reader.
Speaker 2: She's painting herself by reading through her old stuff like
Speaker 2: crap I should, and she's.
Speaker 3: Making to have dog airing the pages.
Speaker 2: Or like I nailed it on that one.
Speaker 3: The other thing that she was reading a lot of
Speaker 3: was the newspapers covering crew with disappearance. So she's just
Speaker 3: sitting there reading them, hoping nobody recognize that, right, and
Speaker 3: of course they don't. So in her bedchambers though, she
Speaker 3: did keep a frame picture of her daughter on her
Speaker 3: bedside table because she did still think about her. She
Speaker 3: wasn't planning on disappearing from her entire life. She was
Speaker 3: just kind of taking a break. She'd not forgotten about her,
Speaker 3: right And so, as I told you, she arrived alone
Speaker 3: with no luggage. She had no clothes, so homegirl needed
Speaker 3: to go shopping. So that was the other thing she did,
Speaker 3: like day two, she went out and bought herself some luggage,
Speaker 3: a whole new wardrobe because there's going to be a
Speaker 3: new miss thing. She's got all sorts of sundryes. As
Speaker 3: she put it, she bought a new hat, a coat,
Speaker 3: evening shoes, books, magazines, pencil and fruit and various toilet requisites.
Speaker 3: So she bought herself with femine napkins.
Speaker 2: Right, you know, she got like you know, rose water
Speaker 2: for her skin. Oh that kind of tilt requis toilet trees.
Speaker 3: I thought requisites was like a British euphemism for like, you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, what you require a woman would require. So
Speaker 2: she probably got like powders and skinry, you know.
Speaker 3: And I've seen that written on old machines. I think
Speaker 3: it's the funniest term.
Speaker 2: They used to have it where apparently like it was
Speaker 2: before my time, like I don't know, have some contraptions.
Speaker 3: Attached one into another.
Speaker 2: Exactly like a parachute.
Speaker 3: Anyway, So that night, the second night she goes down,
Speaker 3: she shows up for dinner. She's all decked out in
Speaker 3: her new.
Speaker 2: Duds, big pat on.
Speaker 3: She also had a very tipey scarf that she had
Speaker 3: picked up. I like a good scarf, I know you do,
Speaker 3: so I bring that up right. So she's out there
Speaker 3: obviously got her new friends. They're noticing the scarf right well,
Speaker 3: one of the employees she noticed the scarf, and she's like,
Speaker 3: oh right, like everyone's just taking now taking notice of this,
Speaker 3: like creature come alive. Right. So, as I told you,
Speaker 3: the second night act of the Christie, she's chilling with
Speaker 3: her new friends. She played billiards. She was apparently pretty good,
Speaker 3: but she could rack them right. So she played piano again,
Speaker 3: saying more popular tunes with the jazz as if she's
Speaker 3: just doing sets. At this point, she's like she got
Speaker 3: a big, like one of those whiskey glass of the
Speaker 3: dollars and on top of her piano. Anyway, the resorts
Speaker 3: Spat had an entertainment director, as I told you, kind
Speaker 3: of like a cruise ship. Will just imagine that her
Speaker 3: name was Miss Corbett. She was the one who started
Speaker 3: to really take notice of the new patient and she
Speaker 3: noticed the beautiful scarf. She also noticed that there was
Speaker 3: a price tag still attached, so she's like feeling sorry
Speaker 3: for her, But I don't think she's recognizing that this
Speaker 3: is like the behavior of someone on the lamb, right,
Speaker 3: She's like thinking, oh, she forgot only go get some
Speaker 3: scissors or whatever. So on the next few days, other
Speaker 3: guests they start to have their suspicions about this new person, missus.
Speaker 2: Neil mini pearl hat with the teg zach.
Speaker 3: So you see by now at this point the London
Speaker 3: press is going crazy. Right, they discovered that ACTAA Christie's missing.
Speaker 3: It's front page new.
Speaker 2: The quarries exactly there.
Speaker 3: They've got police everywhere. But finally they publish a portrait
Speaker 3: of her on the front page. So now, because you
Speaker 3: don't they don't really have photography dominating newspapers in.
Speaker 2: The nineteen twenty sketchy exactly.
Speaker 3: So they finally get an image of her. Right. So
Speaker 3: now back at the health spot resort, these newspapers are
Speaker 3: arriving each day. Now they got one with her face
Speaker 3: on it. She doesn't care. She's still reading the newspaper.
Speaker 3: That ain't me. I don't know who that lady is.
Speaker 2: I would be telling people, you guys, look, I look
Speaker 2: just like Agatha Christie wild yeah, exactly, get ahead of it, get.
Speaker 3: Two steps ahead that just now the hotel.
Speaker 2: Manage, because I keep tripping forward.
Speaker 3: Well, I wasn't going to bring that part up. I'm respectful. Now.
Speaker 3: The hotel manager, his wife would come down around I know,
Speaker 3: I don't know, pick him up for work. I don't
Speaker 3: know how, but she'd come around. And so she was
Speaker 3: there and she's like noticing this person. Apparently she's a reader.
Speaker 3: She reads the news. That's Agatha Christie, right. So she,
Speaker 3: as the hotel manager remembered, when she had been here
Speaker 3: about days. My wife said to me, I believe that
Speaker 3: lady is missus Christie. So the hotel manager what does
Speaker 3: he do? He dismisses his wife's suspicions. He's like, oh
Speaker 3: you what are you talking about? That's flat out absurd.
Speaker 3: Why would Agatha Christie be in Surrey? So anyway, meanwhile,
Speaker 3: there's about three hundred constables out searching Hill and Dale
Speaker 3: for her, right, just anywhere they can. But they begin
Speaker 3: to have their doubts that she's alive because like, after
Speaker 3: forty eight hours, you know how it goes. Oh, first
Speaker 3: forty eight man, this is still still true in nineteen twenties. Man,
Speaker 3: you're gonna find her. Then he gets his seventy two hours,
Speaker 3: they're like, should we tell the husband? Yeah, so the
Speaker 3: Bobby's as I said, they start to believe she's dead. Right,
Speaker 3: So four days after she went missing, in three days
Speaker 3: of searching, the police call off the hunt to find
Speaker 3: Agatha Christie. They're like, so much for that, you're kidding,
Speaker 3: Guardian to the cops. Agatha Christie's brother in law had
Speaker 3: received a letter apparently from Agatha, so she informed him
Speaker 3: that she was at a resort SPA in Surrey, quote
Speaker 3: for rest and treatment. Now our girl, Agatha like Dracula,
Speaker 3: she's dead and loving it, right, So she seemed to
Speaker 3: hang it out.
Speaker 2: She sends it a letter to her brother.
Speaker 3: Brother in law.
Speaker 2: Was not on another end, okay, and does he give
Speaker 2: this to the cops or does he keep it hush
Speaker 2: hush on the QT.
Speaker 3: He does for a second, then he gives it to
Speaker 3: the cops.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, So then they're like, oh, she's not dead.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll get to that in a second, because there's
Speaker 3: a reason why he gets brought to the cops. But
Speaker 3: at this point she's unaware. She's still swanning.
Speaker 2: Around, probably like how long does it take to get
Speaker 2: someone declared?
Speaker 3: Exactly? Because he's doing well with the books, you know.
Speaker 3: So at this point though, missus Neil is going around,
Speaker 3: and she would say later on, I was very happy
Speaker 3: and contented, right, she doesn't realize things are like, you know,
Speaker 3: the walls are closing in. At the other end of
Speaker 3: the spectrum, as her husband, Archie, he was beside himself
Speaker 3: with worry. Of course, it was not his missing wife
Speaker 3: that he was worried about. He was concerned for Archie.
Speaker 3: He was writing about all these news reporters circling about
Speaker 3: the story, you know, following anybody asking questions. He was
Speaker 3: rather certain that they would discover that he'd been having
Speaker 3: a year long affair with his mister me look bad.
Speaker 3: And he was a colonel, so he had all that
Speaker 3: British look, not that kind of colonel. So at first
Speaker 3: Archie's in Fideli. He gets overlooked, right, he's golden. No
Speaker 3: one susses it out. Then he decides, you know, what
Speaker 3: the hell, I'll make a colossal mistake on my own.
Speaker 3: He decides to speak with reporters from which paper, the
Speaker 3: Daily Mail, all the papers, the Daily Mail.
Speaker 2: Captain good decisions there, keep the streak going.
Speaker 3: To the tabloid reporters. They do their due diligence, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: They ask him about his side piece, They're like, hey,
Speaker 3: what's up in missus Neal. Archie wheels about in his
Speaker 3: mind trying to decide what he's going to say. Right,
Speaker 3: he doesn't know he's grasping for an excuse. So he
Speaker 3: while he's thinking, he sort of just half attacks the
Speaker 3: reporters out of instinct. Right, I told you he's a colonel.
Speaker 3: He's like attack, So he says, and I quote, it
Speaker 3: is absolutely untrue to suggest there was anything in the
Speaker 3: nature of a row or a tiff between my wife
Speaker 3: and myself on Friday morning. I strongly depreciate introducing any
Speaker 3: tittle tattoo into this matter.
Speaker 2: Quit your tittle tattle.
Speaker 3: At tabloid reporters. That's their job, is tittletable.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So, in his panic of self defense, the husband he
Speaker 3: throws his wife fully under the bus. He's like, he
Speaker 3: raises the prospect that maybe his wife missing on purpose.
Speaker 3: Maybe she planned and designed this, you know, carried out
Speaker 3: her own disappearance. He's like, ask Agatha when you find her.
Speaker 2: Well, they were still locking women up for being exactly hysterical.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Archie Christie told the Daily Mail reporters, quote,
Speaker 3: my wife had discussed the possibility of disappearing at will.
Speaker 3: Engineering a disappearance had been running through her mind, probably
Speaker 3: for the purpose of work. Personally, I feel that is
Speaker 3: what happened. Right. So back to the constables on the
Speaker 3: search for the missing mystery writer. They aren't entirely convinced
Speaker 3: of the letter to the brother in law. They're like,
Speaker 3: isn't that something that a husband is trying to hide
Speaker 3: a murder would do? Like, oh, yeah, my brother, he
Speaker 3: got a letter from my wife saying she's fine, it's cool,
Speaker 3: it's cool, don't worry about it, because he bets. We know,
Speaker 3: whenever a woman, married woman goes missing, who's the first suspect?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the husband rightfully, the husband.
Speaker 3: Right exactly. So December tenth rolls around. We're now about
Speaker 3: a week after she first went missing. The police now
Speaker 3: they decide to bring out the dogs because Archie, he's
Speaker 3: one hell of a suspect. He just oozes with the
Speaker 3: foul scent of guilt. So they're like, we may be
Speaker 3: able to find a body. So they bring out the dogs.
Speaker 3: The dogs, the hounds. They bring out. They can't find it.
Speaker 3: They just start barking and whining. Nothing. Right, So the
Speaker 3: London Times reported that the constables quote are now said
Speaker 3: to be of the opinion that it is a case
Speaker 3: of suicide. Oh yeah. So the public though, still hungering
Speaker 3: to find what happened to this famous writer. So the
Speaker 3: papers continue to cover the story with constant front page updates.
Speaker 3: By the next week, the story begins to shift. And
Speaker 3: after this break, Elizabeth, I'll tell you how the story shifted.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all right, Elizabeth, we're back as I was telling you,
Speaker 5: stories were shifting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people were looking for dead bodies. Yeah, were not
Speaker 3: dead because they were dancing in and exactly just being
Speaker 3: their best Agatha. So at this point on Tuesday, they
Speaker 3: basically we're a week into her being gone, an editorial
Speaker 3: gets published. Once again, the Daily Mail steps into it.
Speaker 3: The writer for the Daily Mail, they argue that if
Speaker 3: the rumors are indeed true, and the letter to the
Speaker 3: brother in law is accurate, and Agatha Christie is indeed alive,
Speaker 3: then this is a terrible hoax to pull on the
Speaker 3: people who loved and supported her. The writer he basically
Speaker 3: called it, to quote, a heartless, practical joke. So this point,
Speaker 3: we're December twelfth, Okay, just give you a date night,
Speaker 3: nine days after she's disappeared. The next day, the cops
Speaker 3: still at it. They're still looking for something. Agatha Christie's
Speaker 3: still laying low. People's suspicions ratcheted up. Everyone that the
Speaker 3: spa is like, I'm pretty sure that dying crush, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: she's still running with it. And however, the cops at
Speaker 3: this point they're no longer convinced she's dead. They've at
Speaker 3: least caught up to the idea. You know what, she
Speaker 3: may not be dead. They now believe she's on the
Speaker 3: run somewhere. They're like, we don't know where, but we
Speaker 3: think she's on the run. So they what do they
Speaker 3: do for clues? Elizabeth? They turned to her books. They're like,
Speaker 3: why don't we start reading her books for clues? So
Speaker 3: they read the manuscript of her newest novel. They're like,
Speaker 3: let's see what that is about, right, because it's just
Speaker 3: about to come out, but it hasn't come out yet.
Speaker 3: And the book is called the Blue Train. They're like,
Speaker 3: the Blue Train to wear She's on the train now.
Speaker 3: I may not be doing a really good job of covering,
Speaker 3: like how big this search was for Agatha Christie. So
Speaker 3: for just for give you some numbers and some scale.
Speaker 3: This marked the first time that a plane was ever
Speaker 3: used in England to search for a missing person. Oh,
Speaker 3: there were so many people out looking on the grounds
Speaker 3: that they put the number right between ten and fifteen
Speaker 3: thousand individuals. It's people, just locals out there looking like
Speaker 3: I've got my dog in a cane and a walking stead,
Speaker 3: let's go see if you can find him. As I
Speaker 3: mentioned dogs, they had trained animals as in and I
Speaker 3: quote six trained bloodhounds, a crate looad of of Aarradale terriers,
Speaker 3: many retrievers and Alsatian police dogs and even the services
Speaker 3: of common mongrels.
Speaker 2: Wait, that sounds like the greatest group of dogs.
Speaker 3: It sounds like your next birthday party.
Speaker 2: Sounds like my dream back.
Speaker 3: So the hunt drags on despite all the dogs and
Speaker 3: all the locals looking cops they pull out their latest theory.
Speaker 3: They go, okay, we're gonna ask for the public for help.
Speaker 3: The bobbies they now believe that Acta Christie is on
Speaker 3: the run and she may be hiding out in London.
Speaker 3: Not only that, but she was quote likely disguised and
Speaker 3: probably in mail attire. Oh so now are supposed to
Speaker 3: be going up to men who don't have a sloth
Speaker 3: th goo, are you act at the Christy? Give them
Speaker 3: the once over? So the cops they all mentioned that
Speaker 3: there may or may not be a sealed envelope with
Speaker 3: the specific instruction that it should only be opened on
Speaker 3: the event that her body was discovered. So now they're
Speaker 3: ratcheting up the stakes. So basically the Daily Mail and
Speaker 3: the police are competing for who can come up with
Speaker 3: the craziest theory.
Speaker 2: Didn't finish the manuscript of this book.
Speaker 3: To help in this case. Forgot the spiritualist because this
Speaker 3: is the highest spiritualism time they come rushing in psychics
Speaker 3: of all they come by the score. They stepped forward.
Speaker 3: In one news story there was in London Times. The
Speaker 3: psychic reported that I get the Christie was indeed alive
Speaker 3: and well and would be found very soon, which turned
Speaker 3: out to be correct. But the psychic really had a
Speaker 3: fifty to fifty chancel on that one. So I mean,
Speaker 3: like what to be given them? Like, oh, she's you
Speaker 3: alive or dead?
Speaker 2: This is such a fantastic I say, that is it.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting it's the most interesting period of time
Speaker 2: for me in like not necessarily just European but mostly
Speaker 2: British English culture of the time between the wars. Yes,
Speaker 2: completely the mindset of it, and there's like this identity
Speaker 2: but yet they know that they've like they're doing things
Speaker 2: not knowing what's about to happen. Yes, well, oh man,
Speaker 2: I love.
Speaker 3: It so so okay, remember once again I told you
Speaker 3: the author of Sherlock Holmes. Yeah, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Speaker 3: He was big in a spiritualism to the show. Oh
Speaker 3: my god, that the friend to the show. He got
Speaker 3: his own gear and once he heard his peer in
Speaker 3: the mystery game was missing, he's like, oh, threw on
Speaker 3: the deer stalker hat and he was like, grab my
Speaker 3: wife's crystal ball, let's do this. Right. So somehow, Sir Arthur,
Speaker 3: He's like, I need to get some personal property. So
Speaker 3: he gets a hold of Agatha Christie's personal property. He
Speaker 3: gets his hand on one of Agatha Christie's gloves. Don't
Speaker 3: ask me how. He takes the glove to a spiritualist.
Speaker 3: The psychic did the routine and then she declared Agatha
Speaker 3: Christie is alive.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 3: And not only that, but she'll be found soon.
Speaker 2: She is mad.
Speaker 3: Both times pistols the spiritusts were correct. She would be
Speaker 3: found very soon. So the next day, December fourteenth, the
Speaker 3: police announced they found new evidence, not Agatha Christie, but
Speaker 3: new evidence. They found new clues, namely quote a bottle
Speaker 3: labeled poison, lead and opium, some fragments of a torn
Speaker 3: up postcard, a woman's fur lined coat, a box of
Speaker 3: face powder, the end of a loaf of bread, a
Speaker 3: cardboard box, and two children's books.
Speaker 2: Where did they find these things?
Speaker 3: This sounds like the you're giving away your next birthday party.
Speaker 2: Fish hooks, gum drops. Where did they find her car?
Speaker 2: I believe Oh I thought it was just like in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah no, this is he says. They walked around. We
Speaker 3: think this could be hers that's my coat. Well it's
Speaker 3: now a clue.
Speaker 2: I'm taking your coat in the end of the loaf
Speaker 2: of your breath.
Speaker 3: And the rest of this whiskey. Okay. Not only that,
Speaker 3: the detectives they also declare that they believe missus Christy
Speaker 3: had left her home on purpose with no intention of returning.
Speaker 3: So now they're trying to refine their announcements. The police
Speaker 3: they also continue to investigate the husband because they're not
Speaker 3: entirely certain about old arch Right. One of Archie's colleagues
Speaker 3: at this time, he was quoted in a paper. He
Speaker 3: said he was in a terribly nervous state and told
Speaker 3: me the police had followed him and we're now waiting outside.
Speaker 3: They think I murdered my wife, he said. So he's
Speaker 3: like going around screaming to his friends that they think you.
Speaker 3: People were like, yeah, well, you know, Archie, you act
Speaker 3: a certain way exactly. Anyway, all as all these theories
Speaker 3: and suspicions start to come to a had two underemployed musicians,
Speaker 3: that's right, two under musicians. They cracked the case because
Speaker 3: they worked at the resorts Spa and they saw her
Speaker 3: all the time. That's Agatha Christie. So they when they
Speaker 3: confirmed that Archie was indeed no murder by coming forward
Speaker 3: and going, yeah, you can find her right here. The
Speaker 3: cops show up, the newspaper reporters show up, and they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's Agatha Christie. So the next day, December fifteenth, aga
Speaker 3: Christie is discovered to be alive and indeed at a
Speaker 3: hotel resorts spa. All the newspapers they start printing everything
Speaker 3: they can about this, and the interesting point is that
Speaker 3: they find out that she's been staying out of the
Speaker 3: name of her husband's mistress. So now the story gets
Speaker 3: so now that Agatha.
Speaker 2: So it's only the last name, it's not the first thing, Teresa.
Speaker 3: Neil and yeah, exactly kind of exactly. So once she's found,
Speaker 3: what does Agatha Christie do? What does she say? How
Speaker 3: does she what does she tell? The public has all
Speaker 3: these questions? How does she explain her sudden abrupt absence
Speaker 3: from her own life?
Speaker 2: Elizabeth, I'm going to guess the car accident.
Speaker 3: That's a good but but what does she say? What
Speaker 3: do you think she grabbed? She like, was there a deer.
Speaker 2: End forever and I didn't know who I was?
Speaker 3: Okay, that's good to stick to simple. Yeah, well, she
Speaker 3: would be proud to know that she did what any
Speaker 3: good fabricator of stories would do.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, she lied, good for her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got to Chrissy told the detectives that she
Speaker 3: did indeed hit her head in the car crash. She
Speaker 3: bruised her dome and was temporarily knocked unconscious, so she
Speaker 3: had no memory of the past eleven days. Okay, so
Speaker 3: she's covered the whole time, right. The cops say they were.
Speaker 3: They were like, but you don't have a bruise on
Speaker 3: your forehead, and she's like, oh, it's been two weeks.
Speaker 2: What are you doing?
Speaker 3: Exactly?
Speaker 5: I was.
Speaker 2: I was psychically murdered by my husband.
Speaker 3: He broke back exactly. So there's the question of her
Speaker 3: transient amnesia. Is that and that's hard. You can't see that,
Speaker 3: you can't detect it, So they have to take her
Speaker 3: word for it, or possibly the word of doctors. Right.
Speaker 3: So meanwhile there's her sad sack half a man husband, Archie.
Speaker 3: He arrives at the hotel resort spot to pick up
Speaker 3: his wife and bring her home. What do you think happens?
Speaker 2: She can't get in the car.
Speaker 3: He was met by a stony silence. That's a quote.
Speaker 3: And then he eventually he's like, you know, we can
Speaker 3: get you out of this. So he sticks to her
Speaker 3: story and he says, oh yes, he tells all the
Speaker 3: gathered reporters, so she doesn't have to talk to him
Speaker 3: that quote. She does not know who she is. She
Speaker 3: just suffered from the most complete loss of memory, like
Speaker 3: even my mistress.
Speaker 2: Right, he's hoping.
Speaker 3: So the couple they employ an act of subterfuge to
Speaker 3: escape the resort, spa and the press. They use a
Speaker 3: pair of decoys that go out dressed as the couple.
Speaker 3: They got the front door and the meanwhile the couple
Speaker 3: they escape through the side door. Right, So now she's
Speaker 3: able to get home. They take the train and they
Speaker 3: get to London. There's all these people waiting for her.
Speaker 3: She's like, oh, dear lord, she's a writer, right, so
Speaker 3: she's introverted. This is not what she wants. You want
Speaker 3: to get away, and now everything's closing in on her
Speaker 3: and they all have faces right, right, So the press
Speaker 3: also is keen to crucify Agatha Christie because of what
Speaker 3: they now believe is a presumed hoax. Because one, there's
Speaker 3: the costly distraction for all the people and the police,
Speaker 3: the volunteers, but also Agatha Christie had a new book
Speaker 3: coming out, so they assume this is all publicity, so
Speaker 3: they rail against her. So in her defense, Agatha Christie,
Speaker 3: she calls in doctors to examine her and prove that
Speaker 3: she's had in a legitimate medical episode. The doctors they
Speaker 3: interviewer at her sister's house. Agatha confesses to the doctors everything,
Speaker 3: and by everything, I mean she had no clear memory
Speaker 3: of anything. So she was like, I don't know anything,
Speaker 3: and they're like, oh, that sounds legit to us. So
Speaker 3: she says, only thing that she has is some hazy
Speaker 3: memory of that she went by missus Neil, but she
Speaker 3: doesn't know why she gave that name, and even though
Speaker 3: that is her husband's mistress, and so they're like, okay,
Speaker 3: good to us. The doctors listened to Agatha Christie, the
Speaker 3: examined her, and then they announced their findings. The doctors
Speaker 3: both of them agree missus Christie has had about of amnesia.
Speaker 3: So the story goes, this didn't end the cries of
Speaker 3: hoax and fraud. Elizabeth, we got tabloids on her exactly
Speaker 3: so months after she was found safe and mostly sound,
Speaker 3: an MP in Parliament decides to go and rail against
Speaker 3: her and like drum up some business for himself. He's
Speaker 3: from your old stomping grounds, Glasgow, Govind, I say that right,
Speaker 3: huh okay Glasgow, Govin, not.
Speaker 2: S Glasgow, glass Glasgow.
Speaker 3: Glasgow, Glasgow, Glasgow.
Speaker 2: Glas Go glads go there you go.
Speaker 3: Govin, Here you go, MP mister Neil McLean McLean. He
Speaker 3: put forth a question to the Home Secretary and he said,
Speaker 3: the number of the Metropolitan Police specially detailed for the
Speaker 3: search of missus Agatha Christie. The time occupied and the
Speaker 3: total cost including the wages of the office are so detailed,
Speaker 3: or like, basically there was a price to the Crown
Speaker 3: that was impossible to pay it. So he goes saying
Speaker 3: that we need to have an investigation into this, right,
Speaker 3: So he's just trying to drum up business for himself. Anyway.
Speaker 3: The reasons for all the suspicions in the hubbub was
Speaker 3: at Agatha Christie. As I told you, had the new
Speaker 3: book out, so everyone assumed it was a capitalistic play.
Speaker 3: But also if you recall the front pages splashed on
Speaker 3: newspapers across the globe, we're also portraying her husband as
Speaker 3: a lying, cheating, no good, sad sack excuse of the
Speaker 3: man once it came out about the mistress, So now
Speaker 3: that starts being well, maybe she was trying to get it.
Speaker 3: Now the debate is, was she trying to get away
Speaker 3: from him? So, well, what about the mistress? We haven't
Speaker 3: talked about her at all? Yeah, what is she dealing
Speaker 3: now that she's the scapegoat for all of this and
Speaker 3: people are either she knows he's mare exactly, she'd be
Speaker 3: well aware the mistress. In the wake of the scandal,
Speaker 3: her parents, her poor British parents, they were shook, scandalized, embarrassed.
Speaker 3: So they to protect their daughter and their good name,
Speaker 3: they sent Nancy on a trip around the world. They
Speaker 3: did ten month long trip around the world. She got
Speaker 3: a reward for this, so, I mean, you're going to
Speaker 3: be scandalized. That's the way to do it, really, I mean,
Speaker 3: this is a free trip around the world, no internet,
Speaker 3: nothing anyway. This, however, was not the end of their
Speaker 3: illicit love story, because in March of nineteen twenty eight,
Speaker 3: fifteen months after she disappeared, Agatha Christie sued her husband
Speaker 3: for divorce. Two years after that, her ex husband married again,
Speaker 3: can you guess who we married? His new bride, Nancy
Speaker 3: new Oh yeah, she came back around the world, came
Speaker 3: back from her trip, and she's like, I still love him,
Speaker 3: and so Agatha Christie though Elizabeth, she also got remarried
Speaker 3: in nineteen thirty. Her new husband far more her speed.
Speaker 3: He was an archaeologist from the British Museum.
Speaker 2: Oh that's cool.
Speaker 3: So he's a thief, a professional thief. For their honeymoon,
Speaker 3: the new couple went down to the Holy Land, where
Speaker 3: her husband conducted an excavation. Yeah, there you go. I'm
Speaker 3: just saying, is she got to her happy place. She
Speaker 3: had a husband. It was dusty and been interesting. Like her,
Speaker 3: she's like, oh I love this, and she got rid
Speaker 3: of the old sad sack Colonel Archi.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then the Neil lady needs to realize that
Speaker 2: how it starts is how it ends. So he's probably
Speaker 2: gonna have a wandering eye.
Speaker 3: Yes. Now, later on, you remember I said that there
Speaker 3: were the rumors of murder. Yeah, yeah, like well, it
Speaker 3: would have been claimed by some, including a nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: nine movie called Agatha, which, apparently people who like Agatha
Speaker 3: Christie say, is a terrible movie. Anyway, that her disappearance
Speaker 3: in the car crash at the query, all of it
Speaker 3: was designed to frame her husband for her disappearance and
Speaker 3: her subsequent murder, that she was going to off herself
Speaker 3: and blame him. Many folks like to say that Agatha
Speaker 3: Christie never spoke about her disappearance. I'll say, oh, we
Speaker 3: don't know why she did it. Well, that's not exactly
Speaker 3: true if you dig deep enough that she did talk
Speaker 3: about it, just once right in an interview with the
Speaker 3: tabloid newspaper once again the Daily Mail heading that story
Speaker 3: conducted in nineteen twenty eight, so it's two years after
Speaker 3: the incidents, ill fresh and not like twenty years later.
Speaker 3: So she explained how the afternoon she disappeared, and after
Speaker 3: her husband told her he wanted a divorce and he
Speaker 3: walked out, she'd first taken a driver with her daughter,
Speaker 3: and then she debated what to do next and take
Speaker 3: it away. Agatha, there came into my mind the thought
Speaker 3: of driving into it. However, as my daughter was with
Speaker 3: me in the car, I dismissed the idea at once,
Speaker 3: and driving into it is the quarry, sure? And then
Speaker 3: she said that night I felt terribly miserable I felt
Speaker 3: that I could go on no longer. I left home
Speaker 3: that night in a state of high nervous strain with
Speaker 3: the intention of doing something desperate. So that night, without
Speaker 3: her daughter in the car, is when she acted on
Speaker 3: the impulse, and it may not have been the best plan.
Speaker 3: I admit that anybody would see that, but it certainly
Speaker 3: was irresponsible leaving her daughter alone. But thanks to her
Speaker 3: eleven day walk about, Agatha Christie became a liberated woman.
Speaker 3: So I assumed she left her daughter in good hands.
Speaker 3: We don't know exactly the details. My point is, sometimes
Speaker 3: all one needs is to get away to get some perspective.
Speaker 3: Right here. Her disappearance also helped catapult her into a
Speaker 3: new level of fame, because, much like the Mona Lisa,
Speaker 3: after it was a stolen, it became the most famous
Speaker 3: painting the world, exactly after she stole herself, she became
Speaker 3: the most famous woman in the world who wasn't a queen.
Speaker 3: So there you go. So, Elizabeth, what's our ridiculous takeaway here?
Speaker 2: You know what, sometimes you need to stop and have
Speaker 2: some me time exactly, and also don't debase yourself and
Speaker 2: chase something that is not good for you.
Speaker 3: Good point my ridiculous takeaway once again, thank you for
Speaker 3: asking a little bit.
Speaker 2: Thank you for asking.
Speaker 3: You can't spell crime without me. Sometimes you need a
Speaker 3: little me time, and crime is how you get there.
Speaker 3: So that's all I got for you.
Speaker 2: Excellent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're in the mood for a talk bag.
Speaker 2: I love talking about.
Speaker 3: Dave hit It.
Speaker 5: Oh my god.
Speaker 6: I went, Hey everybody, it's me Elizabeth Sutton. I'd just
Speaker 6: like to say that I'm really enjoying the show. I've
Speaker 6: been listening in for a long time and I'm down.
Speaker 6: Is I Heart app just like a send us talkback?
Speaker 6: Hey there, what's their ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 3: Hello?
Speaker 6: This is eyes Undernett. I've been voking on my German
Speaker 6: accent obviously, and I wouldn't say it's cut in bettle,
Speaker 6: but it's quoting different. Keep it up. Yeah, alrighte you.
Speaker 3: I enjoyed the talk all right. As always, people, you
Speaker 3: can find us online Ridiculous Crime, Twitter, Instagram, We have
Speaker 3: a website. It's Ridiculous Crime dot com. Uh that's where
Speaker 3: you can find merch and stuff. And also, as you
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Speaker 3: a Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. As always start
Speaker 3: the email Dear Elizabeth, Okay, thanks for listening. We'll catch
Speaker 3: you next crime. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton
Speaker 3: and Zaron Burnette, produced and edited by her Quel Prowhile,
Speaker 3: Rose Mustache wax salesman Dave Houston. Research is by Marissa.
Speaker 3: I'm totally team Agatha Brown and Andrea is anyone team
Speaker 3: Archie song sharpened here. Our theme song is by Thomas
Speaker 3: I'm Team Amnesia, Lee and Travis. I'm team Yes we
Speaker 3: have no Bananas Dutton. The host wardrobe provided by Brought
Speaker 3: Me five hundred. Executive producers are Ben you know I
Speaker 3: once had amnesia, but I forget when Bowlin and Noel
Speaker 3: what is amnesia? Brown?
Speaker 2: Reds QUI say it one more times crime.
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