At age forty, Agatha Christie boarded the Orient Express with the hope her trek to Mesopotamia would lift her spirits. (See last week’s blog.) Little did she know the invitation by Leonard and Katherine Woolley to visit their archaeological excavation at the ancient city of Ur would change her life forever.
Upon arrival, she got on well with famous archaeologist, Leonard Woolley, and his wife. Katherine was a big fan of Agatha’s mysteries. Perhaps that’s why she suggested Leonard’s assistant, Max Mallowan, give Agatha a personal tour of the site. Usually tourists were as welcome as fleas, so Agatha was a privileged guest to keep Woolley’s assistant away from his duties so much. Agatha was, in turn, so impressed by the dig, she made a quick trip home and returned for a longer stay. In her autobiography, she gives no hint her return was because of her new friend Max. After all, he was only 25 years old. Wouldn’t a 15 year age difference make Agatha what today we would call a “cougar?”
When the excavation season closed, Agatha headed for Syria. Katherine insisted Max accompany her. Love transformed their devoted friendship, and Max proposed in Baghdad. He asked if she minded his being an archaeologist, digging up the dead. She confessed, “I love corpses and stiffs.” Obviously she did, given her success as a mystery writer.
Agatha sometimes remarked that being a detective is a lot like being an archaeologist. Both pay attention to detail, get rid of the extraneous, and make logical conclusions based on fact. It’s a good thing she liked both fields, because she would spend 1928-1958 camped out next to dusty trenches in places like Iraq and Syria writing her books. This was between taking field notes, mending pottery, labeling artifacts, tending to wounded diggers (She’d worked in a hospital during the Great War.), and supervising their household. Agatha, shy by nature, loved the desert life, uncomplicated by social pressures back in England.
In 1922, Howard Carter intrigued the world with his discovery of King Tut’s tomb, so the masses were primed and hungry for Agatha’s archaeology-based books. Through works such as Murder in Mesopotamia, Death on the Nile, Appointment with Death and They Came to Baghdad, Agatha Christie gave the world an intimate glimpse into that life. Of course, her most famous characters were beloved Miss Marple and the unforgettable Hurcule Poirot.
Max didn’t suffer for being “Mr. Agatha Christie.” He was knighted for his work in archaeology. Agatha was made a Dame a few years later. It turns out, after a stormy first marriage, Agatha finally found her knight.
I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, rocked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
Agatha Christie
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