Agatha Christie's True Crime Inspirations

The author would like to express his appreciation for access to archive material, illustrations, books, newspapers and online resources available at the John Pike Local Studies Room, Torquay Library.

INTRODUCTION

In the year of the 120th anniversary of Agatha Christie’s birth, the ninetieth anniversary of the introduction of Hercule Poirot and the eightieth anniversary of the creation of Jane Marple, this collection of real-life crimes, scandals, tragedies and murders which influenced the works of the world’s most popular author or affected the lives of many famous personalities involved in her career, proves the old adage that fact is stranger than fiction.

‘The Duchess of Death’s’ fertile imagination was fuelled by the exploits of Jack the Ripper, which became the inspiration for the serial killings in
The ABC Murders
, whilst the kidnapping of a child in
Murder on the Orient Express
was based on the family tragedy that befell aviator Charles Lindbergh. Agatha was deeply moved by a horrific case of two young boys maltreated by their foster parents, which in turn triggered the idea for the world’s longest running play,
The Mousetrap
.

Amongst people in the film world who suffered personal tragedy was Miss Marple actress Margaret Rutherford, whose father was committed to an asylum for murder, while Hercule Poirot actor Peter Ustinov witnessed the assassination of Indian leader Indira Gandi. The controversial twist in the plot for
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
was suggested by Lord Mountbatten, who also arranged for his son-in-law, Lord Brabourne, to produce a series of star-studded Christie film adaptations before the two men became victims of an IRA bomb attack.

‘The Queen of Crime’ often used locations in her hometown of Torquay as a backdrop to her novels and, coincidentally, many of the true-life crime stories herein have links to her hometown, including the Profumo Affair, the Great Train Robbery and the baffling case of John ‘Babbacombe’ Lee – the only real-life butler to have been sentenced to death for murder – who became infamous as ‘The Man They Could Not Hang’.

Mike Holgate

Torquay, August 2010

1
AGATHA CHRISTIE
‘The Queen of Crime’

Take away the wolf from Red Riding Hood and would any child enjoy it? However, like most things in life, you want to be frightened a little – but not too much.

Agatha Christie (
An Autobiography
, 1977)

‘The Queen of Crime’, Agatha Christie, was born in 1890 in Torquay, the Devon seaside resort renowned as the ‘Queen of the English Riviera’. The youngest of Frederick and Clarissa Miller’s three children, it was at the family mansion, Ashfield, where she developed a love of detective fiction by listening to Sherlock Holmes stories read to her by her older sister. These experiences, linked to the nursery rhymes recited by her nanny, would later inspire her to produce a stream of classic titles including
A Pocket Full of Rye
,
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
, and
Hickory, Dickory, Dock
. Although the celebrated author always retained the fondest memories of her privileged upbringing, where she was cosseted by household servants and educated by private tutors, her early life was coloured by a series of terrifying incidents, tragedy and sorrow that perhaps stimulated a morbid interest in death. This might have been viewed as an unhealthy fixation in a well-bred young woman; instead, it cultivated a penchant for relating murder mysteries that brought her critical acclaim and everlasting fame.

A decade younger than her siblings Madge and Monty, Agatha had an isolated childhood and invented imaginary playmates. Her closest friends as an infant were the family’s pet dogs, and while taking one for a walk she witnessed the horror of it being run down and killed by a horse-driven carriage. When aged eleven, further tragedy struck when she suffered the loss of her father. A man of independent means, American-born Frederick Miller had embraced the life of an English gentleman, idly passing his days visiting the yacht club or watching cricket and taking a philanthropic interest in local affairs. He donated money to the building of All Saints Church in his daughter’s name so that she became a founder member. The fictional sleuth Miss Jane Marple, who made her debut in
Murder at the Vicarage
(1930), would have been proud of the parishioners of All Saints when they solved the mystery of lead gradually disappearing from the vestry roof in 2008. Volunteers sat up all night in the church and their prayers were answered and vigilance repaid when they summoned the police at dawn to apprehend the thief who was caught in the act.

In her autobiography, Agatha recalled that she enjoyed being frightened as a child and experienced feelings of ‘indescribable terror’ when playing a game with her sister Madge. They invented ‘the Elder Sister’, whom the girls pretended was mad and lived in a cave in the cliff face of the beach at Corbyn Head. Agatha enjoyed swimming but during her teens once got into difficulties and almost drowned at the Ladies’ Bathing Cove. Far from experiencing sounds of music and seeing her life flash by, she began to black out as she sank beneath the waves, fully expecting to die, before she was plucked to safety by a local boatman who hauled her roughly aboard his craft and applied a crude form of artificial respiration – flushing the water from her lungs with a ‘bit of punching’.

The fledgling writer’s imagination was running riot from the age of four, when she experienced terrifying nightmares of a military figure she described as a French soldier in a grey-blue uniform, wearing a three-cornered hat over powdered hair and bearing a musket. His appearance would cause her to awaken the household by screaming ‘The gunman, the gunman!’ However, Agatha revealed that it was just before the age of five when she really ‘first met fear’. This occurred when she went primrose picking near her home accompanied by her nanny. After walking up Shiphay Lane and passing the infamous White House of convicted baby-farmer Charlotte Winsor, who was sentenced to life-imprisonment for killing an infant in 1864, they entered a field and were warned off for trespassing by an angry man who threatened to ‘boil them alive’. The panic-stricken child felt sick as she visualised herself being placed in a steaming cauldron – a memory that lingered well into old age: ‘From that day to this I have never known so real a terror’.

Death became a commonplace event during the First World War when the newly married Agatha Christie qualified as a dispensary nurse at the Torquay War Hospital. Her knowledge of poisons and the presence of wounded Belgian soldiers inspired her to create retired policeman Hercule Poirot for her first novel,
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
, completed in 1916. Agatha had accepted a proposal of marriage from airman Archie Christie after attending a Wagner concert performed by the Torquay Municipal Orchestra at the Pavilion in 1913. The couple were wed on Christmas Eve 1914 and spent their honeymoon in Torquay at the Grand Hotel which, many years later, threw up an unsolved mystery that may have nonplussed the ‘little grey cells’ of her famous fictional detective. In September 1997, a guest was found dead in his hotel room. Having eaten a meal of roast lamb washed down with a bottle of wine and a cyanide-laced bottle of coke, he left an apologetic note in which he thanked the chef for a ‘magnificent’ last supper. Known as ‘Mr Patel’, the man had distinctive scars on his shoulders that led investigators to believe he had links with the Tamil Tigers, a well-known terrorist group. However, despite exhaustive enquiries neither his true identity nor the reason for taking his own life was ever established.

A milestone was reached in 1926 with the publication of a groundbreaking novel that many critics judge to be the crime writer’s greatest work,
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
. However, the year was marred by two catastrophic events. Clarissa Miller passed away and while Agatha wound up her mother’s affairs at Ashfield, her husband remained at the marital home in Berkshire and began a love affair with his golf partner, Nancy Neele. In December Archie asked his wife for a divorce and, with her mind in turmoil, she drove off the road with the intention of ending it all but emerged suffering from concussion. She then abandoned her car and disappeared without trace. Before the amnesiac was located eleven days later at a hotel in Yorkshire, the derelict Ashfield was searched by the police in the forlorn hope that the missing author had returned to the sanctuary of her former home.

In an incident that would be replicated in a Christie play,
The Unexpected Guest
(1958), where the wife of a murdered man recalls her husband’s irrational habit of shooting at people from a window of their home, the local constabulary had been summoned to Ashfield a few years earlier to caution Agatha’s brother, Monty, who had ceased his illegal activities in the ivory trade and returned from Africa, having fallen seriously ill with a recurring infected wound received in war service. Considered to be the black sheep of the family, Monty cheerfully confessed to Agatha that he had led a ‘wicked life’ and fallen foul of the law all over the world, ‘But my word, kid, … I’ve had a thundering good time’. Although expected to live only six months, Monty’s health gradually improved and he eased the boredom of his recuperation by firing his revolver at terrified visitors. Tradesmen and neighbours complained to the police but the gunman was unrepentant: ‘Some silly old spinster going down the drive with her behind wobbling. Couldn’t resist it – I sent a shot or two right and left of her. My how she ran!’ Eventually Agatha and Madge provided their brother with a Dartmoor cottage where he was cared for by an elderly widow and mother of thirteen children, Mrs Taylor, whose own deteriorating health with bronchitis later necessitated further funding so that housekeeper and patient could make an ill-fated move to the warmer climes of the south of France.

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