Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle

Following the much publicised success of his interventions in criminal cases such as the wrongful convictions of George Edalji and Oscar Slater, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was sometimes called upon to solve other mysteries. It was presumably assumed that he shared the deductive powers of his literary creation.

However, when the Chief Constable of Surrey approached him in December 1926 regarding the unexplained disappearance of the 36-year-old author Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle resorted instead to a psychic. By then the creator of the supremely rational Sherlock Holmes had become ever more obsessed with spiritualism. He had already made himself a laughing stock in more sceptical circles through his astonishing credulity, most famously his enthusiastic defence of the Cottingley fairies, those obviously faked photographs of paper cut outs that he insisted were genuine evidence of supernatural beings.

The Disappearance of Agatha Christie
Depressed following a row with her husband, who wanted a divorce, Agatha Christie had apparently driven off into the night of December 3. Her car was later found abandoned, headlights blazing, with her fur coat and driver's licence inside, quite a distance from her Berkshire home in Surrey. An intensive search over a week revealed nothing, and it was assumed that she was dead, whether by accident, suicide or even murder. Her husband Colonel Archibald Christie became the chief suspect.

Rather than applying any of the cool logic he had so brilliantly given to his famous detective, Conan Doyle took one of her gloves to a well-known psychic named Horace Leaf, whose speciality was psychometry, the non-existent ability to divine psychic information from a subjects possessions. Leaf was not told who owned the glove but immediately exclaimed Agatha. This was perhaps not as astounding as it might seem since the news of the disappearance of Agatha Christie was all over the newspapers. Leaf indicated there was trouble connected with the glove. The person who owns it, he claimed, is half dazed and half purposeful. She is not dead as many people think. She is alive. You will hear of her, I think, next Wednesday.

And remarkably, although Leaf was off by one day, Christie was indeed tracked down the following Tuesday to the 'Swan Hydropathic Hotel' (now called 'The Old Swan') in Harrogate, Yorkshire. She had checked in under the name of Mrs Teresa Neele of Cape Town, perhaps deliberately (or possibly subconsciously) borrowing the surname of her husband’s lover. Apparently Christie went dancing each evening there to the music of the 'Happy Hydro Boys'. A member of that band, the banjo player Bob Tappin, recognised her.

She never explained her disappearance. Various theories were put forward but today, these symptoms would likely point to a depressive episode, possibly within the context of bipolar disorder.

The Fall of Arthur Conan Doyle
As for Conan Doyle, he was utterly jubilant at this apparent validation of his mystical methods. He wrote in the 'Morning Post' that the Christie case afforded an excellent example of the use of psychometry as an aid to the detective, occasionally remarkable in its efficiency. He added wrongfully that it was often used by the French and German police, but if it is ever employed by our own it must be done quietly for it is difficult for them to call upon the very powers which the law compels them to persecute.

Horace Leaf, respected only in spiritualist circles, lived well into his eighties. One of his books bears the intriguing title 'Death Cannot Kill'. He passed away passed over in 1971.