When police found the car of 36-year-old Agatha Christie hidden in the clump of bushes a dozen or so miles away from her Berkshire home, on the morning of the 4th December 1926, they suspected first suicide and then murder. But while it seemed that prime suspect Archibald Christie, Agatha's husband, might stand to gain from the death of his wife, he had a pretty solid alibi for the night of her disapperance. Where was he? At a week-end party in Surrey with his mistress, Nancy Neele.
Just 11 days after Agatha disappeared, a waiter revealed her whereabouts - she had been hiding out in Swan Hydropathic Hotel (as the Old Swan was then called) in Harrogate, where she was registered as 'Mrs Teresa Neele' from Cape Town. Archibald originally claimed that his wife had lost her memory (no one believed his story, least of all the Surrey police who presented him with a bill for the cost of the search) and it wasn't until after the detective writer's death that the truth finally emerged.
