The Woolleys reciprocated by inviting her back to Ur for a longer stay in the spring of 1930 and then to travel home with them across Europe, sightseeing on the way. The connection with the Woolleys prospered they spent time together in London that summer, and Agatha even lent them her mews house at Cresswell Place for their visit - the house that was to become the inspiration for her 1937 novella Murder in the Mews. She fell in love with the beauty of the place, with its ancient ruins and present day bustle of the people working on them, and seems to have found a little peace at last. Agatha didn’t realise it at the time, but she got the VIP treatment at Ur, with Leonard Woolley himself showing her around. Katharine Woolley, who we will be hearing more about later, had just read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and was pleased to make the acquaintance of its author.
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The expedition leader at Ur, Leonard Woolley, and his wife Katharine, were sent a telegraph to expect her, and she was given the full tour of the site and everything that had been found so far. Her hosts in Baghdad helped her make the arrangements, and soon she was on a train south for this ancient Mesopotamian city. She still wanted to visit the excavations at Ur that she had read about in the newspaper at home. Physically, she was in a city that was new to her, having all kinds of exciting tourist experiences, but spiritually, she was still in England, dwelling on the emotional trauma of the past few years. There, she wrote that although everyone she met was incredibly nice to her, she hadn’t quite managed to leave her troubles behind her as she had hoped. Her journey to Iraq took her across Europe to Istanbul, and then on to Damascus, and thence to Baghdad. Even before she set off for Baghdad in 1928, she had had the chance to travel to places where some of the greatest finds of the century so far had been made - in particular Egypt, where she had spent the winter of 1907 with her mother. In her autobiography, Agatha Christie writes that she had always been “faintly attracted” to archaeology although she knew nothing about it. Little did she know that a brand new chapter of her life was awaiting her there. She dashed out to the travel agents to change her tickets and arrange her visas, and five days later she set out by train for Baghdad. She had also always wanted to travel on the Orient Express, and suddenly decided that she would combine both of these interests and go east instead of west.
She already had tickets booked for the West Indies when she happened to read about the amazing archaeological finds being made at a place called Ur in modern day Iraq. She feared becoming too dependent on others for her happiness. As she says in her autobiography, she wanted to find out what kind of person she was now that she was newly single and unattached. Partly, she wanted to indulge her passion for seeing new places, but partly this solo trip was a test of her own confidence. Her divorce from her first husband had recently been finalised, and after a holiday abroad with her best friend and her daughter, she had plans to travel by herself for a while. In 1928, Agatha Christie took a momentous decision that was to shape the rest of her life.
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