Thinking Sideways: Agatha Christie Disappearance

which is on, which is totally yes, it's on. Also, I haven't mentioned the tuper coper lately, so so why not. Let's just say he's here in spirit. Yeah, I think you really have upset some of our listeners. The tuper Copera hasn't made an appearance on the show in a while. I'm sure, I'm sure that we can work it into this before we get too far into it. And by too far into it, I mean into it at all. Uh, this suggests this is a listener suggestion. I believe it's

pronounced tomorrow. I think that's right. It's like Maru the Cap but with an O Insteadmorrow. Yeah. Anyway, this week we're going to talk about what is up with the Agatha Christie disappearance? She vanished for eleven days? She did? Yeah, actions, well, maybe we're talking about that she disappeared in nineteen six. And if you're a doctor who nerd like me, you know that it's because of a giant space wasp. It's proven. No, I didn't see that particular episode, did he did he

actually transport her like ten days forward in time? Spoilers? Sorry, Oh, come on, that was like season three those spoilers. Actually, I think of season five. It was the Donna season. So yeah, five, Oh it was, and then' like that season. Let's let's see this a doctor on now like thirty seven or something. This is a very long conversation. Yeah, so here's the story. You guys, Ready for the story? Yes,

all right. On December three, Agatha Christie and her husband Archie had been fighting a little bit, just a little. He had asked her for a divorce because he was in love with another woman. By the way, this is kind of a jerk jerk thing from to do. Because her mother died recently, she was under a lot of stress. Yeah. Yeah, and to top it off, he had a quote unquote problem with sick people. Yeah, so he was nowhere to be seen, like a month or two. He was hanging

out in London. Yeah, no, no, if I'm not coming to the the house, yeah yeah. Archie left the house that afternoon to spend some weeks with his mistress, who was named Nancy Neal. I thought they were just going to spend like a weekend again. I was gonna say, I didn't. I've seen both. That's why I was trying to see if you'd found anything that said he said X amount of time. Okay, I think a weekend, a long weekend. You know, it's British timing. I don't know what. I

don't know what that is, but I don't know. There's a lot of stuff where you're kind of like, I don't actually know how what that's referencing. But okay, cool. So after a little while, I think it was like nine pm or something like that. After he left, Agatha got up from her chair, went upstairs, kissed her daughter, and left a note for her secretary saying that she was going to Yorkshire for a bit. Later that night, her car was found abandoned, lights on quote perched above

a chalk quarry. Yeah you hear that differently suddeny here, it's like run into some sort of bush. Sometimes you hear it's like kind of on the precipice, yeah something, or just hood up lights on. Yeah. But I think the consistent thing and all of these versions is all of her stuff was in the car. I've never heard when where her stuff wasn't abandoned at the car. Most of her stuff. Yeah, it was a fur and a bag with a little bit of clothing and and of

course your driver's license was in there. Yes, And interestingly it was found. It was found southwest of London, which is like totally the wrong direction to go if you want to have to the Yorkshire Yeah, fifteen miles. I pulled it up on the map. It's about fifteen miles south south west, southwest of Yeah, no southeast, yeah, from their home. From their home, she drove southeast, yeah, instead

of driving northeast to go to Yorkshire. Correct. Yeah. Well maybe she was confused, Yeah, maybe maybe she couldn't read a map. Yeah. Anyway, that was it for eleven days, that the map upside down. Yeah, it's possible actually. Yeah.

People suggested that this was the publicity stunt, after all, the murder of Roger Ackroyd had just been published I think within a year of the of her disappearance, and it was, you know, a massive success of course, yes, but for some reason people thought that she needed a publicity stunt on top of that. Maybe she wanted to give it a little boost. I guess, yeah, I'm going

to disappear and give our ratings a booth. But most people suspected that her husband had something to do with it, which I think you would naturally assume a little bit after the search had been going on for a few days. It actually made the cover of the New York Times, the New York Times, So of course if that ended up in a huge nationwide manhunt. Almost about fifteen thousand people volunteered to help search for her, as well as dogs and airplanes they had searching for her as well.

Apparently that was an historical first for Britain. Yeah, the airplanes, Yeah, using them to search for people. And since they kind of feared the worst, they started dredging streams and lakes especially there was there was a little lake right and right near where a car was found, so that's the first place they turned to. Yeah, and there's a great picture that shows during the search when they're doing the dredging.

And I don't know that everybody understands, so I had never really thought about it, But do you know how you dredge for a Well, what they were doing is they had basically a giant, three pronged hook on a rope, chucking it in, letting it sink and dragging it back to the top, which would have paid in the butt. And I would hate to be the guy who was like, I gotta bite yeah, really seriously, probably brought up a lot of logs, car tires, maybe some road signs, and

probably some of Churchill's tea set. Wait, I mean a Turing t set. Yeah. Yeah, you guys you've heard about what happened with his teacup, right, didn't He used to like lock it to his death. It was just kind of a weirdo move. Yeah, I don't know, like why. Well, it turns out to somebody at Bletchley Park thought that they were a really funny prankster and would steal people's teacups, and nobody really knew what the deal was until a couple of years ago when they drained the pond and

on them all in the middle. He just thought it was funny for them to disappear all of a sudden, So that's criminally irresponsible. In the middle of a war. You're wasting precious teacups. Yeah, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna tell the whole story here, But someday, if you're curious, like you're listening to this, you should go out on the internet and try to find the story of Churchill's parrot. Oh, yes, that's a great story. Yeah, not for this show now,

Batgar story. Sorry. Famous people started getting involved. Arthur Conan Doyle remember him. Yeah, he gave a psychic one of Agatha Christie's gloves. The psychic who was Horace Leaf. You guys, you've heard of I am not. Actually you haven't. I may have, but the name is not ringing a bell. So he was like one of the most He was kind of the spearhead of the spiritualist movement and he would hold all of these like seances and stuff like that and just with a total hack. There was a

lot of that stuff going on. Yeah, yeah, there was. He said that he could tell she was still alive though quote half days and half purposeful unquote. Yeah, I mean that's that's the whole thing, right, it's like mediums and spiritualists. It's that like cold reading situation. Anyway, He however, did predict that she would surface a few days later,

and accurately she did. Bob Tappen the banjo player at the then named Harrowgate Hydropathic Company or the hydro which is now called the Old swan In because sure he recognized Christie. She had apparently checked in some number of days ago. Though I've never been able to find out when under the assumed name of Mrs Teresa Neil. That theme sound familiar, does do? Who? Just? It's um archies love her? Nancy Neal? Oh used the same last name? Okay,

got it? Yeah? No, sorry, not to res Nel, but yeah, okay, yeah, that's why I was confused. I wanted banjo player, by the way, the one of the London papers that offered a one hundred pound reward and he collected it. He got to collect it with hundred pounds back in those days, was you know, chunk changed nair amount of money? Definitely apparently?

Oh sorry, that was also gonna say that. Apparently one of the stories goes that it was actually one of the one of the maids that recognized her, and she mentioned it to him, and he just so he jumped in there and grabbed the rewards. She should have kept

her mouth shut, should have she should have told somebody. Yeah, Apparently, according to the prevalent theory, whatever, Christie had crashed, her car gone into the what the old timey doctors called the out of body amnesia experience, boarded a train to the Hydro, checked in with almost no luggage, and lived like a normal guest for eleven days. She had like a pouchful of money, she like three hundred pounds or

something like. She had a lot of money. She had like a money belt yeah yeah, which like, okay, I don't know why, like her driver's license and stuff weren't in there, but okay, fine, who goes around with a money belt stuffed full of cash all the time. I don't know rich people. I guess, I guess. Actually, when I travel, I usually have a money belt with money in it if I'm traveling overseas, right, yeah, but that's that's traveling overseas. Yeah, not when you're, you know, going

to drive over to Yorkshire for a little bit. It is admittedly it's two miles something from It's a couple hour drive, is what it is. Though, that's that's not far enough to me to justify trapping on yield money belt. I agree, Well, I'm sure a lot of people do that kind of thing. Yeah, she I guess she had read the newspapers with her name and picture plastered kind of all over it, without apparently recognizing herself nor anybody else looking at the you know, she's sitting there reading

the newspaper. There's the picture of her. You know, you can play that in a movie, right, there's a picture of her. You look at that, You look at her, You look at that, You look at her, and you go, no, it's not her. It's not her at all. Did you did you look at the photos that they have of her, because they had renditions of hers. Yeah, they especially with that that weird little little um the glasses and the high shirt. Yeah, or that weird haircut, or she looked

like what's his name from the three students? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I kind of imagine, like, I don't know how tappens revelation played out, I guess I imagine him just kind of looking at her and saying, oh, hey, you're Agatha Christie, the people are looking for you, and her being like, no, I'm I'm miss Neil, and he's like, nah, no, no, I'm pretty sure you're Agatha. I'm going to call a police. You probably didn't say that because she might iran if

she's maybe done that, that's true. Yeah, the police did show up, and her husband did as well. Apparently this rated on his like how much do I care about my soon to be ex wife scale her disappearance. I think the guy who philanders as much as he was this is it's really weird that this rank's okay, but

the death of her mother doesn't. Yeah, but I think at this point he was under a lot of scrutiny from the press, and you know, you don't you know, it's like you're treating her so bad, you don't care care about her at all, and so you wanted to demonstrate that. I don't. I don't think you probably especially wanted to go. But I mean, I think in addition to that, it's, you know, you're treating her so bad,

you're being horrible to her. You probably killed her. If we can't find her, we'll probably think that you killed her. He probably had a pretty big vested interest in trying to make sure that she was found safe and sound. True anyway, he without I guess, protests from her. I never read any stories about her, you know, kicking and screaming and protesting and saying, oh I'm not a good Christie. Um no ah. He took her from the hydro to Las Palmas, which like, why would you complain about that?

Spain little island off Spain, got it, beautiful little resort community. Hang on, I'm gonna go see a check it out a street view. Yeah, you should have done that already. Yeah. So she fully recovered and never had a spell of lost time, at least that we know of. Again, never had out of body or not anesthesia the same thing, totally. Anesthesa does give you amnesia, does you know? So that's the story. We don't know anything. I mean, we don't know what happened during the love and days at all.

There's no record of it, and she didn't talk about it in her memoirs at all either. She seems to not genuinely. She never wanted to talk about She didn't remember. That's what she said. That's what she said. Yeah, because there's a lot of questions how did she get from why did she go south? And then how did she get from the car to the train, because it's not like it was across the street from the train depot

or just down the street from it. There are there's that town just to the northwest of where they found the car, and it's it's spelled Guildford, but if I know, the British just pronounced Jolfer, but it's spelled Guildford. So there's a train station there and that's not very far from where she crossed your car five, not even that I don't, okay, Yeah, and so she but she would have to be aware of what's around her to then know to go that direction. I mean, it's just there's

a lot of things. Well, I mean, I guess somebody could have picked her up. It it was dark. Somebody could have said, oh, yeah, i'll give you a right to the nearest town and you can, you know, deal with everything there. And she just was maybe a little you know, adult, and so it was like, oh, okay, cool, I'll get on the train. Well, yeah, it was one way to look at it. Yeah, it's possible. There was a rumor you'll read sometimes on the internet, um that there was a cottage not far by that was found

with women's clothes like left in it. It was an abandoned cottage or something that it meant that Agatha had like changed her clothes. But that was total bunk. That didn't actually happen. It's like a late addition to the story. I want anything like that ever happened on the internet. Never, never,

never ever. So theoris the first one is the doctor obviously, yeah for real, I mean the giant Wasp aliens could have been involved in the episode slash real life, because we all know the doctor, who is a documentary Agatha has been luring had been luring the Wasp away from a party when she crashed her car. She suffered some pain as the Wasp dies and she passes out, and the doctor realizes that, like, oh, I'm the reason that she was gone for eleven days, although in the episode

it was ten days. So I'm just going to take her to the small where she was found. But no, you don't think that as much as I like, dr who is that not ane? I'm putting theory nobly not like yet, as you would say, okay, fine, all right, serious Option one, she was faking it yeah, I'm kind of liken this one. Okay, So in true again Devin fashion, we're doing the titles subheadings. But and this one is

actually pretty plausible that she was faking it. I mean again, you know, it's like what you see pictures of yourself all over the place, Like, how do you not? Yeah, because even if you've forgotten who you are, you're still looking in the mirror every day. I don't know what you look like. Yeah, um, but how many times have you gone and looked at yourself in the mirror and

not notice something about yourself? You know, Let's say you've got some you know, there's a wrinkle in your forehead or something, you've got that distinct pattern, and you just don't notice those anymore. And it might be that if she's you know, a little screwed up in the head, you just ignore that. Your brain just says, well, I normally don't look at that, So I'm not gonna look at that. I'm not gonna look at this. I'm gonna look at that. And I just don't know who that

that that funny bit of nose and eyebrow wiz, you know. Actually, and maybe she'd put out a whole lot of weight recently. You know, the pictures were not you know, taken just yesterday. Yeah, they weren't. Yeah, it's not like we were in the age of instant photos. Yeah. So maybe she had the picture those photos, that photo was taken and then she put on like three pounds. That didn't happen, But it

might be a couple of years out of date. Yeah, before we get too deep into this, this theory and kind of you know, why and and how, let's pause for a second to take a step out of the Agatha Christie story and into psychology. Whoo, who at least favorite college class? He's my favorite college class. It's weird that they kept taking me stare at that black and white spinning wheel. Yeah, by and I wouldn't remember anything.

Yeah yeah, well maybe you had this happen to Actually I have to have that sometimes when I've just sort of lost memory. Yeah, usually alcohols involved. Yeah, usually yeah. Yeah. As I mentioned before, officially Agatha was diagnosed with out of body amnesia and I had to turn to our experts on this. So a huge thank you to Luke, Hannah, Aaron Jacob, and Elena and thanks guys. You guys were

like crazy helpful. I can google all I want and read the Wikipedia articles that you quoted back to me, and it will never be as good as somebody you know, writing out in layman's terms what this means and giving me their professional opinion on something. So thank you. Everybody pretty much agreed that the modern diagnosis of an out of body amnesia experience would be what's called a FuG state. If you're a fan of Breaking Bad, you probably have a little bit of experience with this. You guys on

Walter had to account for some lost time. What are you staring me? Yeah? Yeah, here right, yeah, any any you know? So he's naked in a store and he doesn't really know who he is, and thanks for spoiling that spoils a very small part of it. But in the in the episode, it's very clear that he isn't

actually in state. He's faking it. Yeah. Essentially, as I understand it, when somebody is under a huge amount of stress or incredibly depressed, the brain basically decides to say, like, by Felicia, let's start a whole new life as a whole new person, and makes it up for you. I don't know how often this happens though, I well, nor

do I, and we'll we'll talk about that. Yeah, there does seem to be Yeah, um, it can also be caused by trauma, like a car crash, right if you hit your head hard enough, your brain wakes up and it's like, I don't know what's going on. She ran her car into a bush. I thought, Yeah, have you've seen the hedgerows? Those things are stout? Didn't think, have you ever seen I've never seen a small headge in

England and they're all massive. Yeah. I guess for me, it's a little bit like I don't know what caused her to crash her car, So I don't even know if it was crashed well, or to run off the road or whatever. You know, it wasn't in the middle of the road. It was off the road for some reason. So she might not have you know, this, this head injury that we're now talking about, might not even happen in the car. It may not have happened at all.

It may have been you know, she may have slipped into a few state because because her husband, her mom just died and her husband is leaving her, and like that's a pretty a small child, pretty high level of stress. That is a lot of stress. Yeah, but you know, as far as the car thing goes, I'm not sure she even crashed. And I think what happened is this was this was early December in Britain. She's driving a British car. What does a British car have in it?

Nothing that Lucas electrics, Yeah, which means that the car will just stop running for no reason whatsoever. Yeah, you never You never experienced Lucas electrics, so you haven't. I drive Japanese cars mostly. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, that's why I drive good cars. That's what I donna say. But yeah, yeah, no reliance, no Robin reliance. Um. So the experts did agree on that bit. Just across the board. Everybody said, yes,

huge state, that's a thing. It's an actual thing. What they didn't super agree about is how common it is. The answers kind of varied from not uncommon to extremely uncommon. And I think that, you know, not uncommon is like the term that clinicians use when they're like, well, you might know somebody who has this happened to them. I don't,

you know, It's not like I don't know either. I had one expert who said that, UM, in all you know, she's practicing clinician, And she said, in all of her time, like twenty years or whatever, and in everybody that she knows, none nobody has ever actually encountered, UM, somebody who's been in a few state. So I wonder, certain diagnosed this come into fashion and and things. More and more of the medical practicing, psychologist psychological practices seem to keep being

subdivided into smaller, smaller, more finite answers. So I wonder if fugue state was kind of that blanket general term they used for this whole group of things they didn't understand. And as time has gone on and things have gotten more exact, they've kind of abandoned that term or even the whole thing, because then, oh no, it's actually this one thing, or it's, oh, this other thing. I don't think fugue state is an old term. It's that out of out of body amnesia is what they used to

call it. FuG state is certainly not a new diagnosis, but I also don't think it's particularly old. UM. One of the people that I talked to UM said that oftentimes people who suffer from PTSD will experience moments of these not weeks months, you know, and you you you hear stories like there's all those stories of villagers after you know, bombs go off, planes drop a gazillion bombs and obliterate the town and they're all just kind of wandering around, going where what is this place? Where am I?

What's going on? So, I mean, it's a very famous example of a potential we'll maybe do an episode. Is Benjamin Kyle. Yeah, if he's not faking it, he is in a few state. That's that's a thing. Apparently. Well if I mean, either he's faking it or he's in a few state, those are the only two options he needs to snap out of it. Yeah, somebody needs to give him a shake, Yeah, because that's I'm sure what cost. That always clears it right up. I'm going to shake you. Yeah.

When I was a kid, this is actually a recurring theme and a lot of like comedies like whatever, people would get it, get hit in the head and they would have amnesia. And then while it turns out that you know American television, another blow to the head and the exact same spot will bring your memory back. So I didn't somebody hit her on the head with a rock really though, or put her in a car and shut it down the hill. I mean, the thing is right, is it seems like I haven't heard anybody say she

totally denied it. You know, there's no record of how she reacted once somebody was like, hey, you're at the Christie. There's no record of how she reacted or anything. And it was not really thoroughly investigator. Yeah, they beat the bushes, but once they found her, they didn't really question anybody there. It seems like, well, it's I think it's because everybody

was really peeved. She wasted a lot of people's time, and obviously that would be a good reason to say what she said, which is that I was in a huge state or out of body or whatever, I just had no memory, because obviously otherwise one up there and knowing the papers says that thousands of people are out looking for her, and she didn't lift a finger to let anybody know that she was. Okay, So we'll we'll talk about this. We're getting a little ahead of ourselves. Yeah.

So the for option, as we were going to play now off pause, is the first serious option is she was faking it. So if we go with the experts who say it's extremely uncommon for people to experience this sort of you know, time lost, lost self fugu state. Then we end up with the theory that um Agatha was faking it. But why would she fake it? I can think of one reason. I can think of a couple. Yeah, for real, let's talk about a couple of them, all right.

The first one is she was attempting to sully the name of her husband, right, yeah, n married what twelve fourteen years at that point, I mean, she'd been wrong pretty seriously. I would say, oh yeah, and they had a kid too, don't forget, you know. And so suddenly and it's like, you know, we've been together, we've had a kid, and now I want to I'm in love with a younger woman. That's kind of rude, But yeah,

I don't. I don't think it was just a matter of sullying his name as Ash, staging a disappearance and drawing a lot of attention to that and well than basically his romantic getaway for the weekend. Yeah. There's actually a quote that I have here um by the author of Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days, whose name is Jared Cade and he says, quote, hell, hath no fury. She wanted to disrupt his weekend with Nancy Neal and make him suffer, although she still adored him. What no

one could have foreseen was the press reaction. She was propelled from being an author with a reputation into one of the most famous women in England unquote, which I think is fair. Right. It's who who says I'm gonna run away from home for a couple of days with the anticipation of a national manhunt. Yeah, you know, I think you don't. There's no way you would consider that

that would ever happen. That it would just be that Archie her husband would get word that she was missing, and he would say, oh, better go look for her. And she would resurface a few days later and say see how see how it feels or whatever, I got you or whatever. But once it gained steam, she couldn't get out from under it. Right, That's exactly I mean.

I think you kind of panic, right if you see your face on the front page of the New York Times and they're like missing thousands of people looking, well, you're not going to be like, oh, I better like show up because you're going to see if you can

find a way to make it go away. Yeah. Last the thing is like, by by doing what she did, I don't think she really thought through the consequences that, well, if she fixed leaving her car in someplace not anywhere in New Yorkshire, what they're belonging still in it, you know. And then she picks up the papers, sees her name in there and her pictures, says, oh, gets in touch with the police right away. They go say, well, why was your car parked where it was? There's not a

lot of good explanations for that. And I don't think she thought her planned to to really quite carefully enough. Oh I'm I'm sure that it wasn't really a plan. I I get the feeling that if she did this intentionally, it was a bit of I'm going to do this, and then she stops, crap, I can't do that, you know, like just kind of making it up as she goes along, and she's like, well, I said i'd go to Yorkshire. So I went to Yorkshire and then I checked in and I was having a good couple of days and

then oh, hell, it's all over the news. If I come out now, it's gonna be terrible. Oh it's another day. It's still terrible. You know, it's just every day just hoping it'll go away, it'll die down. Yeah, make um fun. Fact, she was actually driving the way she was driving. I

know you guys were kind of speculating back but first left. Yeah, when she first left, because she wasn't driving towards Yorkshire, Yorkshire from from their house, and I know that Joe does this all the time, so it's my turn to do this. Um. She was actually driving towards the place where Archie was spending the weekend with his lover. On the map, it kind of lines up in the direction she was going, so Mary was actually maybe she sat down and thought, I'm actually I need to go confront

him or confront them or whatever. And then car breaks down with the great electronics, with great electronics, that's that's seriously a possibility. I remember like some years back, in front of mine had a chance and heally convertible my little Brady sports car that had Lucas electrics in it, and we he was living in Newport at the time, and we went to a concert in Eugene and night it's night night. We're driving back to Newport and well the car just crapt out in the middle of nowhere.

We had to spend the night sleeping in the car. Yeah, so she could have been doing it. She could have been going to ruin their weekend. She could have been lying, faking it because it was a trick gone awry. I guess she could have been doing it to stage a disappearance,

to have his name be sullied. I don't know. Maybe she was heading that direction to murder him, and it's unlikely, but maybe if bowl Yeah, yeah, but then why she went in border to train to some place ELTs She was being stupid, Not to be mean, but she's like, this is stupid. What am I doing? Not bad idea, It's like bad idea became another. Yeah, yeah, imagine you

know for what Imagine her car did break down. That the nearest town is that little town called Guildford or whatever it's however was pronounced, and so she walks back there and just says, he says, you know what, screw that car, I'm just gonna get on a train. Yeah, or you know, she decides, oh wow, that was crazy talk. I need to go take a spaw day and then it, you know, gets out from under her again. Don't These

are all theories, you know. The I didn't have time, unfortunately, to read Jared Kade's book about the Missing Eleven Days, did I Yeah, if I wish I had, But I did read. I did read a few summaries of it. Apparently he interviews some of the some of the relatives of some of the people who were actually involved in this, and they said that she actually concocted this whole scheme with one of her friends and actually got some help

and support from these people. Yeah. I've seen stuff about that. Yeah, so that's theory. Serious theory number one. Serious theory number two is that she was actually doing it to slowly. The name of her husband's lover did sort of bring that out of the open, huh that did? I mean, you know, it brought that whole situation out in the open.

But also she did check into the hotel under the same last name as her husband's lover, which is kind of sketchy, like it's not Neil isn't the most common last name, especially if he's just said, oh, I'm leaving

you from Nancy Neil. So the other little thing that I read and I don't I honestly don't remember where I read it, but I read that Agatha when she was asked why she took the why she gave that as her fake name, she actually gave the mailing address of the Neil family and said that inquiries regarding this matter should be directed there, which is pretty boss, right,

So that I don't know. In a way though, if she was faking it, it kind of worked because I don't think she and her husband officially were divorced for another year and a half, for another year, another year. Yeah, it took. It wasn't like, you know, I mean, they had already had their trial separation, which was her reconciliation, which didn't work at all. So in a way, she kind of got it kind of worked because he had to.

It wasn't like he was free to just go about with with miss Neil and have an open relationship because technically he's still married and that was highly frowned upon. Yeah. Yeah, so that's another option. I guess Batley was an attempt to just spoil their weekend and maybe shine a little bad light of publicity on both of them. But there's also the option to that she wasn't faking it that she really did go into a few state. I also

think this is fairly re in a ball. You know, Agatha was under a lot of stress, as we mentioned, emotionally maybe physically I don't know, but certainly emotionally. She had a lot of the stuff that we were talking about earlier, and she was It turns out, according to most reports, she was really still in love with her husband Archie. So it wasn't just the embarrassment of a divorce and him taking a lover. It was also the heartbreak of you know, him saying, oh I don't love

you anymore. I'm leaving you for a younger woman. By So, I don't know, she could have She could have easily slipped into a few state even before she left the house. I mean, she got in the car, she was driving the wrong direction. She could have been confused at that point. She could have she could have hit her head in the car. You know, in some way, she could have slipped into a feug state wall she was driving. That's

you know, she kind of lost control of the car. Fine, and then she gets out and is confused, and so basically she could have slipped into that huge state for many time, when she was in the house, when she left to after she left her car. Yeah, I wouldn't. I would say that if if she actually was in a few states. It wasn't at the spa like she got there and checked it, you know that. Yeah, she didn't get such a great massige. Yeah. So yeah, maybe maybe it was a car breaking down. Maybe that was

a less straw. It's yeah, it's possible. Maybe that was it. Maybe the car broke down and she just lost it. Literally, I need to stop doing this podcast. But no, it is stressful. It's super stressful, especially as a woman, you know in the English countryside. Just suddenly you know, there's nothing you want to be in the next Morrow Murray, Yeah, or or the first mor Murray. Yeah, it wouldn't have been the next Well I'm just saying. I'm just saying, if you're a woman today and you break down, then

you could be the next Mornure. Yeah yeah, yeah, I you know what, Honestly, I'm torn. I don't know, I don't know, I don't I like, I don't know about this well I am I'm trying to remember where where I where I read this. But she was there for like about ten days. I think nobody knows exactly. I don't think exactly when, which is weird lit right now, she had to go to London and then catch a

train from London. Supposedly she had some co conspirators in London, if you believe that particular theory, she might have stayed there for a day or two. And apparently these people also helped her out by giving her some cash, um, and then she headed on up there. But apparently while she was staying there, it happens a week before this whole thing happened, she was I think, at Herod's in London, and she had lost her ring in the store and

she um. While she was staying at the bath the hydro, she actually wrote a letter to Herod's inquiring about the lost ring. Oh yeah, she did, she I believe it in the name Agatha Christie. She so it appears that she her memory was intact. If this is true. Yeah, if that's true, Yeah, it would appear that. But I don't know that we can you know, prove it either. Well that's it, I mean, I don't I haven't seen a copy of the letter. Eventually, the rain was found apparently, Yeah,

but uh, Yeah. The one thing about Agatha Christie that always that makes me wonder if maybe it's not real and that she was faking it is. For the most part, I never really saw her ever reflected in any way as an exceptionally happy person. She hated a lot of things. Yes, um, I mean she was a bit of an anti semit she was. She also hated her own characters books, uh perot and um, what's the marvel? Marvel? Miss Marple hated them? Why don't hate them? She was tired of writing about them.

And she really had created these characters that she said she detested. It was nineteen five she killed him, um pro she had written his death and then put it in a safe deposit box with instructions for it to be published upon her death. And you know, and then she ended up, of course publishing that story just shortly before she died, because she knew she was going to pass. But she, I mean, in general, just didn't seem like a happy person. So I don't know that that suddenly,

you know, her husband turned the tables on her. I can't see it is coming as a shock because if she had been that angry or not happy about things for a while people tend to know when their relationships are on the skins, it does sond like she was kind of a hard person to live with. Yeah, there was an incident of her throwing a full teak out let Archie's head. Yeah, I did not know that. I

don't know. I don't know if that was before or after he asked for the divorce after just I was gonna say it was probably just before he's like, that's it, good divorce. Yeah, So I don't know. I mean, I I think I do break a little bit more towards the she faked it. I think that seems more likely. But I also know that the mind is capable of doing some really weird stuff. And the line is, the mind is capable of doing strange things, but it's still

incredibly rare. Whereas the mind is capable of hatching sneaky plots to spell your husband's weekend. So there's much much more capable of doing that. But you know, the defense mechanisms of your psyche they're pretty they're crazy creative too. So like even if you know, if she was never really happy and she just got like way way less happy, became really really depressed, was dealing with all of this emotional baggage and stuff. Those are literally the textbook circumstances

of somebody going into this kind of few state. So it's also not, I think unreasonable to say that it could have happened. I wish we had descriptions from the staff of how Teresa Neil her assumed name, behaved. If she was a totally happy, go lucky kind of person that would totally support the fuge to the brain snaps, takes a break everything. Like, I wish we had anything

from the staff. It doesn't even have to be even like as much as ah, she reacted poorly when we told her that she was not that person, or she seemed like she knew that would be super helpful. The descriptions I have seen about what the staff said is they said that she wasn't holding up in her room. She was actually hanging out readings, going to dances. She

this this was the fun. Like when her husband Archie came to retrieve her, she made him wait until she had changed into her evening gown, which again, like I don't know, like it's never explained how she had those clothes. Did she buy them? Did she Yeah, Well, she was in London, she could have stopped off and then done a little shopping. Yeah, that's so she actually changed into her evening gown because it was evening before she came and left with him. I mean she seemed to be

she was socializing. Yeah, and that supports the thing that Joe was talking about. It if she had bought those clothes, she would have had to stop in London and couldn't have gone shopping till the day after she left her house. Because if she leaves her house and it's dark, okay, it's Christmas, that's about five o'clock or so, plus a train ride to London, you're gonna get there about nine o'clock. Nothing is open in London after nine o'clock. You're not

going to get there. Well, she left the house at nine, I thought. Yeah, I'm saying, I'm saying, best case scenario, she leaves when it gets dark, She's still got hours before she gets here. There's no way she could have made those purchases that same day. She mean, she had to have somewhere to stay. Yeah, she might have even stayed in Guildford for the night. Yeah, Yeah, she possibly could have stayed there. Train in the morning. It might not even be that there's a you know, ten o'clock

PM trained like there wouldn't be. But my yeah, so yeah that's our stories. Do you guys have any more thoughts? Not really, I'm just I'm just saying it was just her being sneaky. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I'm waffle on this one. Sure, me too. That's kind of how I feel. And it is a little bit of a shorter show. Sorry. If you follow us on social media, you know why. Actually, actually, if you guys would like, I can pad it out a little bit by just

reading something out of a random book. No, that's okay, I think. Yeah, we don't really want any of you. We don't need that. So there's gonna be some links that we use to research this as well as um you know, link to download the podcast on the website. The website is, of course, Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. You can also find us on iTunes. Of course, you know that you can leave us a comment and reading

if you'd like. That helps people find us. We're streaming on almost every single thing that you can stream anything on anymore. We are on Facebook. We have a page and a group. We do have both of those I found on Reddit this past weekend that some people were confused about that there are two different parts. The group is private, so you do have to send a request. But check out reddit our subreddit, um, it's just thinking Sideways for links to that. You can also find us

on Twitter, but it's Thinking Sideways no g um. You can always send us an email. That email address is Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com, and you can find us on Patreon, which is patreon dot com slash Thinking Sideways. Thank you pretty much. Sum it up? Yeah, I think so too. Tweet cool. Well, I guess have a good week everybody, and we'll talk to you later. See you next week, folks, Later everybody, Bye, guys,