However, despite her success Christie kept a tight rein on the family finances insisting on a careful, modest lifestyle. It was not until Agatha moved to Collins publishing house in 1926 for an impressive advance of two hundred pounds that she began to see the fruits of her labour and the couple and their young daughter Rosalind moved to a new home in Berkshire named Styles after Agatha’s first novel. In 1919 Agatha decided the time was right to publish her first novel and entered into a contract with the Bodley Head publishing company. When the war ended the couple moved to London for Archie to take up a post at the Air Ministry. At the encouragement of her older sister, Margaret – herself a writer who was often published in Vanity Fair – Agatha wrote the first of her many detective novels, The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

During this time, a number of Belgian refugees had settled in Torquay and were said to have provided the inspiration for the fledgling writer’s most famous Belgian Detective one Hercule Poirot. Whilst Archie continued to fight across Europe for the next few years, Agatha kept busy as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse in Torquay’s Red Cross Hospital. Archie was sent to France when the First World War broke out in 1914 but the young couple married on Christmas Eve the same year when he returned on leave. In 1912, 22-year-old Agatha attended a local dance where she met and fell in love with Archibald ‘Archie’ Christie, a qualified aviator who had been posted to Exeter. Although she was also a successful playwright responsible for the longest-running play in theatre history – The Mousetrap – Agatha is best known for the 66 detective novels and 14 collections of short stories written under her married name ‘Christie’.

Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on 15 September 1890 in Torquay, Devon, the youngest of Clara and Frederick Miller’s three children.

The curious affair at styles