As you sink into the overused carriage and take your seat, something shifts. A different self appears: a transient, questioning presence. A person entering into an unspoken contract with life—accepting that anything, or anyone, may happen to them, and that this, too, is welcome.
I believe the same contract takes effect when someone moves to a new city or country for the first time. The more unknown the life ahead, the stronger the contract and its terms.
Writing is no different. As the writer sits before a blank page—the great unknown—they submit to its terms, trusting that in return, the same contract will offer them characters, stories, and adventure.
These were my first thoughts as I boarded the train from London to Harrogate for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. As a political journalist and crime writer from Turkey, this was a much-needed escape—my country doesn’t often leave room to ponder trains and the art of writing.
The Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate, where Agatha Christie was found after her much-speculated disappearance in 1926, still draws hundreds of crime writers and thousands of readers each year as the home of the Theakston Festival.
It all began with a confession. Agatha’s husband, Archie, admitted he was in love with another woman. That revelation triggered one of the most enigmatic episodes in the life of the world’s most famous crime writer—an episode that continues to puzzle readers and writers alike.
When Agatha drove off that day, was it revenge she sought, or refuge? When she checked into the hotel under the surname of her husband’s lover, was she in her right mind?
The case even attracted fellow crime writers like Arthur Conan Doyle and Dorothy L. Sayers. Doyle, leaning into the supernatural, brought one of Christie’s gloves to a medium in hopes of solving the mystery.
Agatha’s vanishing act became an international affair. One theory links her disappearance to Istanbul’s legendary Pera Palace Hotel, where Christie stayed many times between 1926 and 1932. She is said to have written Murder on the Orient Express in her usual room—Room 411.
Pera Palace, built as a luxury hotel in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, welcomed luminaries from around the world: Ernest Hemingway, Queen Elizabeth II, emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary, Greta Garbo, Alfred Hitchcock, Pierre Loti, Jacqueline Kennedy—even Mata Hari.
After Christie’s death, Warner Bros. attempted to make a film about her secret 11 days. Unable to uncover the truth, the company turned to Hollywood psychic Tamara Rand, who was asked to contact Agatha’s spirit.
According to rumor, Rand told the filmmakers that the key to the mystery lay—literally—beneath the floorboards of Room 411. That key, she claimed, opened a hidden room in the mansion of the hotel’s owner, where Agatha’s missing notebook was kept.
But when the filmmakers and the hotel’s management couldn’t agree on a price for the key, the mystery was locked away once again. Agatha’s key is said to have remained in a bank vault ever since.
Whether by design or by accident, Agatha Christie crafted an enduring riddle with those missing 11 days—one that continues to fascinate readers and writers around the world.
I doubt that it was even possible to travel to and from Istanbul in 11 days in those times. But as a writer, I understand the desire to be a stranger in a strange town among other strangers.
Maybe Agatha was simply renewing her contract with life—for more mystery, more adventure, and perhaps even more love.
Just like I do, every time I board a train.
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Elcin Poyrazlar is an award-winning author and journalist from Turkey who is noted for her feminist crime fiction.
She has lived in Istanbul, Brussels, Washington, London and Madrid.
Her latest thriller, The Shadow's Hand was published in April 2025.
Her other novels – Death of a Journalist (2014), Black Amulet (2016), The Woman in the Coat (2018) , The Flowers of Death (2021), The Lost Face (2022) and The Naked Heart (2023) – all received enthusiastic reviews.
Poyrazlar now lives in London.
Author Images - Vedat Arik
