Agatha Christie’s bust isn’t that big. But everyone on the English Riviera will tell you where to find it.
The bronze bust is on Cary Green, opposite the copper-roofed, Doulton stone grand pavilion on the seafront at Torquay.
It’s the only statue anywhere in the world of the famously prolific crime writer, author of The Mousetrap and the creator of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot.
Every September, Torquay remembers its favourite daughter with a festival. There are murder mystery evenings, plays, films, talks, walks and an ‘in character’ party on Burgh Island, where Christie wrote Evil Under the Sun and Then There Were None.
The Queen of Crime wrote 80 novels as well as 19 plays, several short story collections and a book of poems. The Guinness Book of Records lists her as the bestselling fiction author of all time and estimates that two billion of her books have been sold in 103 languages worldwide.
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in 1890 in Barton Road. The house was demolished in 1962. Nothing remains now but a boundary wall. And a plaque.
Torquay was then a party town and fashionable resort. It boasted more royal visitors than anywhere in the world.
Educated at home, young Agatha learned to read at the age of three. Her first published piece was a poem about electric trams. It appeared in a London newspaper when she was 11. She met Lt Archie Christie of the Royal Flying Corps at a ball at Ugbrooke House near Exeter.
He suddenly asked for a divorce shortly after Agatha’s mother’s death in 1926, causing her infamous 11-day disappearance before being eventually found in Harrogate in Yorkshire. They honeymooned in the Grand Hotel, Torquay. It lasted one night before Archie had to return to the Front.
Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920.
The Queen of Crime wrote 80 novels as well as 19 plays
“The name Marple came from Marple Hall in Cheshire,” said Joan, a Blue Badge guide who gives the Christie walking tour. “The character was probably modelled on Agatha’s eccentric grandmother who collected table napkins and bathroom towels.” Poirot was inspired by the Belgian refugees billeted in Torquay.
The Christie Mile begins at Torquay Town Hall, where she worked for the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) when it was a Red Cross Hospital. It was here, while working in the dispensary, that she learned about poisons.
It was also in the dispensary that she first started writing, encouraged by her sister, Madge. Also exhibited in the museum are Joan Hickson’s shoes. And a mock-up of Poirot’s study at Whitehaven Mansions.
Joan is an experienced Miler. She is the pace-setter and it is hard to keep in her slipstream. The trivia comes thick and fast. Christie collected fluffy monkeys. Poirot appeared on a Nicaraguan postage stamp celebrating the centenary of Interpol. Writing was “a chore”. She once held a poodle party when guests came dressed as dogs.
We walked down to the beach. “Beacon Cove is where Agatha nearly drowned. It was a ladies only beach then, and the members of the yacht club behind used to study the form of the swimmers through opera glasses!”
Also on the itinerary is Princess Gardens, named after Louise, one of Queen Victoria’s daughters. It is mentioned in the ABC Murders. Torre Abbey is Torquay’s oldest building dating to 1196.
It has a Christie Memorial Room, which is the home to her favourite armchair, her “noiseless” 1937 Remington typewriter and her “plotting notebooks”. There is also a handwritten manuscript for A Caribbean Mystery.
Christie explored Devon and the South Hams countryside in her Morris Cowley car looking for inspiration and locations. Fifteen of her books are either set in Devon or have specific connections with the county.
Some are surprising. Like Torquay golf course, where she was proposed to by Major Reggie Lucy while he was giving her a golf lesson. He is the model for Peter Maitland in Unfinished Portrait. Christie’s father was president of the Torquay Cricket Club.
You can see her baptism certificate at All Saint’s parish church. Churston station was Nassecombe in Dead Man’s Folly. Christie donated the east window at St Mary the Virgin Church at Churston Ferres in between Brixham and Paignton – “a happy window which children could look at with pleasure”. Kents Caverns appeared as Hempsley Cavern in The Man in the Brown Suit.
The area’s creeks, inlets and coves, like Elberry Devon, play starring roles in many books. Miss Marple’s home of St Mary Mead is a composite Devon village. Dartmouth’s Royal Castle appears as the Royal George in Ordeal by Innocence.
My tour ended with a twilight cruise to Christie’s holiday home: Greenway House on the Dart estuary near Brixham. Christie moved there in 1938 after marrying the eminent archaeologist Max Mallowan.
“I adore corpses and stiffs,” she wrote. They travelled around the world together, but they stayed at Greenway House every summer until her death.
It is now owned by the National Trust. Inside, all that remains of the prolific crime writer is a gardening hat and scarf as well as her collection of shell paintings.
Lady Mallowan died on January 12, 1976, and is buried in Cholsey, Oxfordshire, near her last home in Wallingford.
But Devon was where her heart lay. And it is where her unique bust now proudly stands.
The Agatha Christie Festival
Dates: September 15 to 22
Nearest airport served from Malta: Bristol (143km from Torquay). Fly there direct with Ryanair, Monarch or Air Malta.
For more information, visit www.englishriviera.co.uk/agathachristie/.