“The Christie Belle” pleasure cruiser was full. And there was no mystery why. The weather along the River Dart was perfect and all the passengers on-board shared one abiding passion.
Murder Most Foul! And they all wanted to pay homage to “The Queen of Crime.”
Embarking from Dartmouth, the 30-minute, hourly £15 return voyage takes you past Sir Walter Raleigh’s boathouse to Greenway Quay.
“The National Trust” of Britain maintains Dame Agatha Christie’s waterfront holiday home in Glampton in south Devon. With her second husband, the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, the authoress of “The Mousetrap” and creator of supersleuths. “Miss Marple” and “Hercule Poirot, “the dapper little Belgian detective with the egg-shaped head”, lived at “Greenway” every summer from 1938 to her death in 1976.
“I get a kind of pang over its beauty,” said Christie about her beloved Greenway. “It wanted to be beautiful.”
Everyone on board was an Agatha Christie expert.
“She never wrote a single book here and she wrote eighty altogether, “said one Australian fan as we moored in front of the famous Georgian building flanked by Monterey pines, camellias and rhododendron.
Inside, all that remains of the prolific crime writer is a gardening hat and scarf as well as her collection of shell paintings. The house’s elegant Drawing Room has pottery collected by her parents and grandmother.
Devon is Agatha Christie land and every September (13-21 2025 ) , to remember its favourite daughter, the county stages a festival including river cruises, heritage bus tours, “Whodunnit” murder mystery evenings, talks, walks and a tea on her birthday ( September 15th).
There are murder mystery evenings , plays , films , talks , walks, a tea and a period costume summer ball thrown by the exclusive 1929 Art Deco Burgh Island hotel, Bigbury-on-Sea where Christie wrote “Evil Under The Sun” and “Then There Were None”. You can rent flapper dresses and stay in the Agatha’s Beachhouse, the Poirot or Miss Marple suites or those named after non-fictional guests like Noel Coward.
A unique sea tractor has been operating since the 1960s to carry guests over at high tide. The island is also home to the fourteenth century Pilchard Inn. It also has the seawater Mermaid Pool.
For two weeks, south Devon is overrun by dowdy tweeds, grey Homburgs, boutonnieres , pin curls , finger waves , waxed moustaches and dapper little bald men exercising their “little grey cells”.
Torquay has an “Agatha Christie Mile” sightseeing route which you can do at your leisure or in the company of a special guide.
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Barton Road . Ashfield , a large Victorian mansion on Mount Stuart , was her home for five decades. It was demolished in 1962 .Christie describes its greenhouse in “Postern of Fate”. Nothing remains now but a boundary wall. And a plaque.
Agatha said that growing up she enjoyed “a high standard of domestic comfort”. She led a privileged, genteel childhood of country houses dances , society balls held at places like Churston Court and Oldway Mansion , originally built for Isaac Singer of the sewing machine fame.
It was a life of leisure ( “The one really valuable thing in life”) parlourmaids , ankle length skirts , feathered hats and whalebone corsets “giving red sore places”.
“The English Riviera”, named because of its beaches and palm trees ( imported from New Zealand) , is made up of the seaside resorts of Torbay, Paignton and Brixham. Torquay was a party town and fashionable resort. It once boasted more royal visitors than anywhere in the world.
Agatha’s father, Frederick Miller, was an American and a man of independent means kept by his grandparents. Agatha loved him greatly. He died when she was only eleven. Her mother, Clara was English and aristocratic.
Agatha learned to read at the age of three. Most children didn’t start until eight. Her first published piece was a poem about electric trams. It appeared in a London newspaper when she was eleven. Agatha met Lt Archie Christie of the “Royal Flying Corps at a ball at Ugbrooke House near Exeter.
She described him as “A tall fair young man with crisp curly hair, an interesting nose , turned up not down and a great deal of careless confidence about him.” He suddenly asked for a divorce shortly after Agatha’s mother’s death in 1926 causing her infamous eleven-day disappearance before being eventually found in Harrogate in Yorkshire.
Christie’s first novel “ The Mysterious Affair At Styles” was published by John Lane in 1920. She received £26 for it and wrote four more books for the publishers before moving to “Collins” for life. “Styles” was the first appearance of Poirot and his “little grey cells” were taxed in a further thirty-three books.
“ She got Miss Marple and Poirot wrong,” my guide informed me as we walked the “Christie Mile”.
“They were old when they started and ancient when they finished. They would have been over 100 and still solving crimes and unravelling mysteries! Miss Marple was created in “Murder at the Vicarage” in 1930 and solved her last case in 1976 in “Sleeping Murder”! “
The name Marple came from Marple Hall in Cheshire. Christie often stayed at Abney where she write “After The Funeral”. The character was probably modelled on Agatha’s eccentric grandmother. “Poirot was inspired by the Belgian refuges who came to Torquay” , added my knowledgeable escort provided by English Riviera tourism.
There is a permanent exhibition – the only one of its kind in the world – in Torquay’s Town Hall where the young Agatha worked when it was a Red Cross Hospital. Her service certificate is on show ( “Hours worked : 3400 hours “).
It was in the dispensary that she learned about poisons and started writing , encouraged by her sister Madge”. Also exhibited in the museum are first editions and a pair of actress Joan Hickson’s shoes. .
On a tour the trivia comes thick and fast. Agatha collected fluffy monkeys. Poirot appeared on a Nicaraguan postage stamp celebrating the centenary of “ Interpol”. Writing was “a chore”. Agatha only drank alcohol once – bottle beer ordered to shock a prime Fundamentalist. She once held a “Poodle Party” when guests came dressed as dogs. The Edwardian Imperial Hotel features as The Majestic Peril At End House. The terrace is featured in the “Body In The Library”. “The Grand Hotel” is where Agatha had her one-night honeymoon after marrying Archie in 1914.”
Torre Abbey is Torquay’s oldest building dating to 1196. It has a “Christie Memorial Room” which is now home to her favourite armchair, her “noiseless” 1937 “Remington” typewriter and her “plotting notebooks”. There is also a handwritten MS 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. From Burgh Island ( “And Then There Were None ) to the Dartmoor setting of “The Sittaford Mystery.”
Some connections 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”. Agatha’s father was President of Torquay Cricket Club.
You can see her baptism certificate at the 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”. Up on Dartmoor Agatha finished the first draft of “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” in the Moorland Hotel at Haytor.
Lady Mallowan died on January 12th 1976 and is buried in Cholsey , Oxfordshire near her last home in Wallingford.
But Devon was where her heart lay and it is where she has been blessed with two busts.
One on Cary Green opposite Torquay’s copper-roofed , Doulton stone pavilion.
And the other, new one on the harbourside plaza.