The case of the missing novelist

A stranger-than-fiction mystery and media spectacle from 1920s England

I’m doing some podcast script-writing for iHeartMedia’s newish narrative anthology series, VERY SPECIAL EPISODES. My first one is hot off the presses. You can listen below or on your podcast player of choice. But first, here’s a little teaser in textual form…

Saturday, December fourth, 1926. A cool and misty morning in the British countryside. Frederick Dore, a tester for a car maker, was out for a spin. He traveled, as he did almost every morning, from a car factory on the outskirts of London to the rolling chalklands of Surrey, thirty miles southwest of Buckingham Palace. Around eight a.m., Dore drove past Newlands Corner, a popular beauty spot, as the English would call it.

Newlands Corner is two hundred and sixty acres, a patchwork of downs and woodland where ancient ewes and oak trees give refuge to deer, green woodpeckers and tawny owls. It's a landscape to behold, even at the dawn of winter. But that's not what caught Dore’s eye as he maneuvered his test car off the road.

In the distance, Dore spotted an abandoned vehicle near the edge of a quarry. He parked and walked over. As he got closer, an alarming scene came into focus. This was no fender bender. Dore thought it looked like the car, a gray Morris Cowley, had been “given a push at the top of the hill and sent down deliberately.”

The car's undercarriage rested on a cluster of bushes, with the rear end hovering slightly above the ground. Dore peered inside and observed a fur coat, an attache case, and some scattered effects, but the driver was nowhere to be seen.

Dore rushed off to fetch a policeman. When the officer arrived, he examined the scene more closely. According to the police report, the way the car was positioned made the officer think “some unusual proceeding had taken place.” On the bright side, it was a relief not to find anyone who'd been injured, or worse. Then again, it was also rather peculiar—a mystery, you might say.

The policeman continued his inspection. In addition to the fur coat, he saw several articles of women's clothing. Did the garments belong to the driver? If so, where
was she? Better yet, who was she?

An answer to that question lay in the attache case, which contained several
papers and—jackpot!—a driver’s license. It revealed the identity of a thirty-six-year-old woman who lived about sixteen miles north in a bucolic house in the village of Sunningdale. She was married to a noted military officer, with whom she shared a seven-year-old daughter. And there was one more attribute of note. It just so happened that this missing woman was a master of mysteries, mysteries not unlike the one now unfolding on the downs near Newlands Corner.

Her name was Agatha Christie.

Thanks to the crack team at iHeart Originals for their astute editing/producing/fact-checking/sound design. To VSE co-host Dana Schwartz for her ear-pleasing narration. And to my Agatha-expert guests for helping us tell the story: Mark Aldridge and Laura Thompson (whose Substack you should subscribe to by the way).