Ernest Belcher

Major Ernest Albert Belcher CBE (1871 – 1949) was the Assistant general manager of the British Empire Exhibition which was held at Wembley in 1924 and 1925.

His father was Albert Belcher, a clerk in the General Post Office[2] and his mother was Maria Crossley.

[5] After this, he returned to England and became a teacher at Clifton College in Bristol where he met Archie Christie who was a pupil at this time.

In 1915 Belcher was promoted from captain to major in the 9th Battalion of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry.

He invited Archie and Agatha Christie to join him on a tour of the Empire counties to promote the forthcoming exhibition.

"Belcher's presence dominated the tour, to an extent that Agatha could not have imagined, that she found insufferable at the time and comical in retrospect.

"[11] Christie's assessment of Belcher seems to have been supported by an incident that happened in 1915, seven years before the tour when Belcher was invited as part of a group to visit former United States President Theodore Roosevelt at his home for a very short informal social gathering.

Belcher wrote up the event as if Roosevelt had given him an exclusive interview on foreign policy and gave it to the London Morning Post and several other newspapers.

The article was a complete fabrication of what Roosevelt had said and was so bad that the former President issued a statement to The New York Times rebutting the whole event.

In 1926 Belcher went to Canada on business and while he was there Gladys travelled from Australia to Vancouver on the ship Aorangi[14] to meet him.