British journalist Eileen Orr, who worked for The Royal Gazette in the 1970s, investigates how a collection of Bermuda memorabilia ended up in the home of the world?s most famous crime writer ? Dame Agatha Christie.

Did ?Queen of Crime? Agatha Christie ever visit Bermuda, or are these objects merely gifts from her friend who did? And what has the Governor?s wife got to do with it?

The mystery deepens as two pencil drawings and three shell pictures, the latter meticulously described as using shells from Bermuda, appeared yesterday among the 720 lots in a one-off sale of Christie collectables from Greenway, an attractive Georgian mansion on the banks of the River Dart in Devon, England. Home to the world?s most famous crime writer, Agatha Christie, who died in 1976, the house is now managed by the National Trust while Dame Agatha?s books continue to sell more around the world than any others except the Bible and Shakespeare.

The first drawing depicts a Bermudan house called Rosebank (above) which was on the site of what are now the Ace and XL Capital buildings and the second is inscribed ?Bermuda?, showing a three-masted ship in an unnamed bay, circa 1780. Being sold together as lot 366, the estimate was ?150-200, but they sold for ?440.

Catalogue notes for three shell pictures by a certain Joyce Gascoigne state that ?she used shells collected in Bermuda while her husband, Major General Sir Julian Gascoigne, served as Governor, 1959-64?. In two lots, the flower and bird creations were each expected to fetch around ?100 but sold for ?300 and ?420 respectively.

The Gascoignes were good friends and neighbours in Devon so is it possible Agatha visited them during their tenure at Government House? Could Bermuda?s balmy ambience have inspired her 55th book, A Caribbean Mystery, published in 1964? Albeit misplaced geographically, it is the only story that took her famous sleuth Miss Marple out of England.

Disappointingly, I seem to be on the wrong scent, so I?m not much of a detective. Richard Bearnes, managing director of Bearne?s auctioneers in Exeter, who are holding the sale, is sympathetic but tries to let me down gently: ?The Gascoignes were really more the friends of Agatha?s daughter Rosalind and her husband Anthony Hicks, who inherited Greenway,? he said. ?It?s possible that Lady Joyce gave the pictures as gifts, though her shell pictures are in fact still sold around the West Country.

?And though all items have come from Greenway and have the Christie family connection, they didn?t all necessarily belong to Agatha personally.?

Surplus items were carefully selected by Dame Agatha?s only grandchild Mathew Prichard, now chairman of Agatha Christie Ltd., for the sale scheduled to coincide with Agatha Christie Week in Britain, an annual tribute to the late author timed to include her birthday on September 15.

While visitors to Greenway may visit the gardens, work is still underway in the house which is not expected to be open to the public until 2008.

?It needs an awful lot of work and hopefully some proceeds from this sale may help a little towards paying for it,? said Mr. Bearnes.

I sighed and preferred to imagine Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan, aka romantic novelist Mary Westmacott, aka Dame Agatha, sitting bolt upright on the cross harbour ferry, studying fellow passengers and taking mental notes for her next murder mystery ?

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On the net:

www.bearnes.co.uk