Read Online Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days by Jared Cade - Free Book Online

autobiography that ‘rough country held no terrors’ for her because she did so much walking and exploring in the region. One of the things Agatha’s family and friends had to suffer out of affection for her was her optimism about the weather and her belief it would be better on the moor than in Torquay. Judith recalls that the weather could be treacherous and it would often bucket down with rain on Dartmoor.
    On one occasion Peter attacked and killed a farmer’s hen. There was nothing Agatha could do except apologize and offer to pay the farmer for the loss of his livestock. On the drive home Judith and Rosalind sat in the back of the car with the two dogs. The only way they were able to survive the journey was to lean their heads out of the windows because Peter and Billy stank after spending the day foraging around in the mud and undergrowth.
    By now Rosalind had developed into a bright, affectionate, direct and hyper-active child. ‘She was the kind of child,’ Agatha once said of her daughter, ‘who was never still for a moment, who, if you returned from a long and gruelling picnic, would say brightly, “There’s at least half an hour before supper – what can we do?” It was not unusual to come round the corner of the house and find her standing on her head.
    By March 1925 Agatha was hard at work on The Murder of Roger Ackroyd , unaware that Archie had been introduced at the golf course to a brunette typing clerk who worked at the Imperial Continental Gas Association in London. Nancy Neele was vivacious, had plenty of time for socializing and was down to earth and practical; more significantly, her passion for golf equalled Archie’s. Romance blossomed.
    Agatha remained in total ignorance of Archie’s affair while she was busy writing. Given that her tastes were literary and Archie’s sporting, Sunninghill was clearly not the place for them to regain what she believed was the temporary lost footing in their marriage. Somewhere altogether different was required. Following the completion of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd they went abroad in the summer of 1925 to Cauterets in the French Pyrenees. The holiday could not have come at a better time: Archie had stopped seeing Nancy because he was convinced that their affair was sure to lead to further complications and unhappiness. It seemed Agatha and Archie might be able to unite their lives once again.
    The decision to visit Cauterets was Agatha’s, since she had happy memories of staying there with her family as a young child. At first, the couple found it disappointing. Their holiday soon acquired momentum, however, with walks up the mountains where they drank the sulphurous waters, which in a letter to Clarissa they described as ‘ la douche nasale ’ . There were charabanc expeditions (Archie wrote scathingly about their fellow passengers to Clarissa) and games, including boules, before they moved on to San Sebastian, where they indulged in one of Agatha’s favourite passions: swimming. The evenings were spent at the Kursaal, where Agatha found Archie sadly lacking in spontaneity. The cabaret show started at 10.30 each night, and Archie, who was used to going to bed early at home, duly retired at the first interval. Agatha, who took pleasure in being as impulsive and capricious as her mother, considered her husband was becoming rather stuffy. Their holiday ended on a more carefree, frivolous note when, having endured the outward journey to France sitting upright in a second-class compartment all night for reasons of economy, they decided to travel home first class. What Agatha was unaware of was that Archie’s moodiness during the holiday was caused by his mixed feelings about Nancy, and soon after their return home Agatha began to feel like a golfing widow once more – and with good reason. The abandoned wife was more abandoned than she knew, for Archie was once again seeing Nancy.
    Archie’s preoccupation with furthering his career intensified, and