Read Online Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days by Jared Cade - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jared Cade
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Agatha’s success as a writer continued to overshadow Archie. The financial divide between them widened throughout 1925, and this led to heated arguments. Another factor contributing to the ultimate breakdown of their marriage was Agatha’s battle with weight, which had begun after Rosalind was born, Archie felt the slim young girl he had married was becoming matronly and loquacious, rather like his mother whose emotional excesses he preferred to ignore. Archie continually asked Agatha to lose weight, but she was unable to do so, and she became the victim of his cruel taunts about her figure.
Agatha’s and Archie’s marriage looked increasingly shaky, and at first it was easy to blame this on the confines of their upper-floor flat at Scotswood. Agatha was hoping to escape the obsessive golf and bridge fraternities in Sunninghill by moving further into the country, but the decision to buy a large house a short distance from Sunningdale Station was Archie’s. He was secretly anxious not to move further from London because this would make it difficult for him to continue his clandestine relationship with Nancy Neele. But in their furtive affair the couple had been skating on thin ice for some time – and the ice was about to crack. Owing to an unexpected twist of fate Archie was to find himself under the same roof as his wife and mistress at the beginning of 1926, the year all three would look back on as the worst in their lives.
Chapter Five
The Gun Man Reincarnate
The scene for the tumultuous breakdown of Agatha’s and Archie’s marriage in 1926 was Styles, a large mock-Tudor house ten minutes’ walk from Sunningdale Station. Screened by tall trees, the back of the house gave on to Charters Road, while the front overlooked a long, narrow lawn, bordered by a stream in which it was safe for Rosalind and her friend Judith to play, and beyond this was a garden with rhododendrons and azaleas, a kitchen garden and wild gorse bushes. The house had a reputation for being unlucky, since the last three owners had all come to grief in various ways. Styles had formerly been known as ‘Sans Souci’, not an apposite name, meaning, as it did, ‘carefree’.
The move to Styles at the beginning of the year was not a happy one. Sunningdale society – conventional in its attitudes and with a strong emphasis on sporting and outdoor pursuits, especially golf – had become stultifying and restrictive for Agatha. Rosalind was now attending Oakfield, a private school, and Agatha found it impossible to escape golfing associations even when she took her daughter to dancing classes, because they were often held at Dormey House, an annexe of the Sunningdale Golfing Club.
Despite her disdain for her husband’s obsession with golf, Agatha duly filled out a banker’s order on 16 March instructing Lloyd’s Bank of Torquay ‘to pay Wentworth Club £8 8s. every year’ in order to keep up her golfing membership. Her favourite form of exercise – away from Torquay where she loved swimming in the sea during the summer months – was walking her two dogs, Peter and Billy, for an hour or more each day. Her mind was fertile with ideas for her stories, and it was not uncommon for residents of Sunningdale to see her talking to herself as she worked out her plots. According to Mrs Tregurtha, a neighbour who sometimes played bridge with Agatha and who was aware of her growing reputation as a writer, the residents of Sunningdale regarded Mrs Christie as ‘a very clever woman’.
Agatha’s loneliness increased, and Archie would sulk if she invited married friends down from London, because he was obliged to entertain the husbands – the only place he really wanted to be at weekends was on the golf course with his mistress. The one couple to whom Agatha could extend hospitality at Styles without incurring Archie’s wrath was Nan Watts, recently divorced, and her second husband. George Kon was a distinguished cancer specialist and lecturer
Agatha’s and Archie’s marriage looked increasingly shaky, and at first it was easy to blame this on the confines of their upper-floor flat at Scotswood. Agatha was hoping to escape the obsessive golf and bridge fraternities in Sunninghill by moving further into the country, but the decision to buy a large house a short distance from Sunningdale Station was Archie’s. He was secretly anxious not to move further from London because this would make it difficult for him to continue his clandestine relationship with Nancy Neele. But in their furtive affair the couple had been skating on thin ice for some time – and the ice was about to crack. Owing to an unexpected twist of fate Archie was to find himself under the same roof as his wife and mistress at the beginning of 1926, the year all three would look back on as the worst in their lives.
Chapter Five
The Gun Man Reincarnate
The scene for the tumultuous breakdown of Agatha’s and Archie’s marriage in 1926 was Styles, a large mock-Tudor house ten minutes’ walk from Sunningdale Station. Screened by tall trees, the back of the house gave on to Charters Road, while the front overlooked a long, narrow lawn, bordered by a stream in which it was safe for Rosalind and her friend Judith to play, and beyond this was a garden with rhododendrons and azaleas, a kitchen garden and wild gorse bushes. The house had a reputation for being unlucky, since the last three owners had all come to grief in various ways. Styles had formerly been known as ‘Sans Souci’, not an apposite name, meaning, as it did, ‘carefree’.
The move to Styles at the beginning of the year was not a happy one. Sunningdale society – conventional in its attitudes and with a strong emphasis on sporting and outdoor pursuits, especially golf – had become stultifying and restrictive for Agatha. Rosalind was now attending Oakfield, a private school, and Agatha found it impossible to escape golfing associations even when she took her daughter to dancing classes, because they were often held at Dormey House, an annexe of the Sunningdale Golfing Club.
Despite her disdain for her husband’s obsession with golf, Agatha duly filled out a banker’s order on 16 March instructing Lloyd’s Bank of Torquay ‘to pay Wentworth Club £8 8s. every year’ in order to keep up her golfing membership. Her favourite form of exercise – away from Torquay where she loved swimming in the sea during the summer months – was walking her two dogs, Peter and Billy, for an hour or more each day. Her mind was fertile with ideas for her stories, and it was not uncommon for residents of Sunningdale to see her talking to herself as she worked out her plots. According to Mrs Tregurtha, a neighbour who sometimes played bridge with Agatha and who was aware of her growing reputation as a writer, the residents of Sunningdale regarded Mrs Christie as ‘a very clever woman’.
Agatha’s loneliness increased, and Archie would sulk if she invited married friends down from London, because he was obliged to entertain the husbands – the only place he really wanted to be at weekends was on the golf course with his mistress. The one couple to whom Agatha could extend hospitality at Styles without incurring Archie’s wrath was Nan Watts, recently divorced, and her second husband. George Kon was a distinguished cancer specialist and lecturer
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