The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 131: The Mystery of the Vanishing Woman

Episode Date: April 9, 2019

When one of the most famous women in the world disappears without a trace, it sets off one of the greatest whodunits you've never heard of.

This is the way I heard it. The woman checked into the resort alone. She arrived without reservations or luggage. She signed the guest book as Miss Neal and said she was visiting from Cape Town, South Africa, 8,500 miles to the south. For the next 24 hours, Miss Neal kept a low profile, but a sharp-eyed banjo player recognized her from a photo in the paper. He knew there was a reward and quickly notified the authorities. moments later detectives were on their way from London, hoping the woman called Miss Neal might help resolve a missing person's case unlike anything England had ever experienced. The drama had begun two weeks earlier when a car was found on a steep incline near a former rock quarry called the Silent Pool.

The windshield was cracked and the headlights were still on. Inside the car, police found a suitcase, a fur coat, and a driver's license belonging to one of the most recognizable women in England. Given the woman's wealth, detectives feared a possible kidnapping, but there had been no demand for ransom. Police questioned dozens of people, including her husband, who feared his wife may have killed herself. She's been in a dreadful state, Archie said. Since her mother's recent death, she's been deeply, deeply depressed. It's been terrible. The police tossed pronged hooks into the silent pool and dragged for a body.

They found nothing. Bloodhounds were dispatched. Fifteen thousand volunteers swept the countryside from Guildford to London. For the first time ever, airplanes were employed in the search for a missing human. while Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, hired a medium. Still, no luck. The press ran with headlines that only deepened the mystery. A suicide with no corpse, a murder with no suspects, a kidnapping with no ransom.

Across the Atlantic, the New York Times covered the mystery on its front page with a headline that read, Who done it? But that really wasn't the question. The question was, what happened? A famous woman had simply vanished from the face of the earth? Finally, detectives got a break. They learned that Archie had asked for a divorce a month earlier. A request his missing wife had refused. Interesting. Archie stood to inherit a great deal of money if his wife never returned. That was motive. Alas, Archie had an alibi. The night his wife vanished, he'd been at a dinner party with multiple witnesses, all of whom

vouched for him. But then, another break. One of those witnesses turned out to be Archie's young secretary, a young secretary who turned out to be having an affair with Archie, a young secretary named, that's right, Miss Neal. Archie quickly admitted to the affair, but after prolonged questioning, insisted he had no. knowledge regarding his missing wife. But what about his secretary? What might Miss Neil have to say to the detectives about the mysterious disappearance of the woman whose husband she loved? Clearly, this was a woman who needed to be interrogated. And so she was. Detectives converged on the quiet resort in Yorkshire. Inside, the band played as guests

danced and dined. They found the banjo player, who nodded them in the direction of the dining room. And that is where they found Miss Neal, chatting casually over a game of gin rummy with a few other guests. Only the Miss Neal they found was not Archie's mistress, nor was she Archie's secretary, nor was she from South Africa. This Miss Neal had no identification, no idea how she got to the hotel, no idea why she had identified herself as Miss Neal. But even though this Miss Neal didn't know

who she really was, the detectives most assuredly did, she was the woman on the front page of every newspaper in Britain. She was the elusive subject of the largest manhunt in English history, finally found, safe and sound and happy as a lark, 240 miles from her home, checked in under the name of her husband's lover. But why? Thus began the real mystery of the vanishing woman. For 24 hours, she said, I wandered in a dream

and then found myself in Harrogate as a well-contented and perfectly happy woman who believed she had just come from South Africa. The doctor said she had entered a fugue state, brought on by stress. In such a condition, they said, a person could black out while remaining fully conscious. But when the story hit the papers, it begged more questions than answers. How could she have gone unrecognized for so long with an entire country looking for her? Clearly, she must have known about Archie's affair with the real Miss Neal. Was this disappearance an attempt to shame her

philandering husband? Or had her husband drugged her so that he could declare her insane and steal her money? Or maybe the whole thing was just a publicity stunt designed to sell her latest book. Everyone had a theory, but nobody had a clue. Once home, Archie's soon-to-be ex-wife quickly regained herself. She divorced her husband, who immediately married his secretary, the real Miss Neal. hoping to restart her life, she left her home once again by herself. This time, however, she left her car in the garage, opting instead for a train to Baghdad, an exotic trip that she would never forget, a trip where she found adventure, inspiration, and new love. Thus, when she died at 85, the woman once at the center of England's largest manhunt was happily married.

more famous than ever, and the best-selling author of all time. Funny, though, of all the mysteries that surrounded this remarkable woman, the true tale of her strange vanishing is largely forgotten, mostly because she refused to discuss the matter after returning from her trip to Baghdad. Even in her own autobiography, there's no mention of the incident. And so her bizarre disappearance in 1926 remains the only unsolved mystery in her anthology of tantalizing whodunits. Sixty-six mysteries, written by a heartbroken wife who found a fresh start on a train bound for Baghdad, a train called the Orient Express. Such was the inspiration for a writer of mysteries, once known, very briefly,

as Miss Neal, the woman we know today as a dame called Agatha Christie. Anyway, that's the way I heard it.