It could have been called “The Mysterious Affair at All Saints”. Three times last month thieves clambered on to the roof of a church in Torquay and stole large quantities of lead.

Parishioners at the church, where Agatha Christie was a lifelong worshipper, complained to Exeter police, but to no avail. It was left to four churchwardens, with an average age of 74, to use their little grey cells to catch the thieves.

“We had to do something,” said Gerald Rosindale, 75, the head warden. “Those blighters stole £20,000 off our roof.”

He and three other wardens set up an allnight vigil at the 19th century church, which was built with money donated by Christie’s father, Frederick Miller.

“One of us would be inside at all times,” Mr Rosindale said. “If nothing else, we thought it would scare them off. “I stayed on Monday night until five in the morning. I made tea in the dark and played patience and read my book. I wasn’t scared. But we had a pact not to approach them. They were armed with Stanley knives to cut the lead.”

He added: “I ain’t going to go for a bloke with a Stanley knife. I’m 75.”

Mr Rosindale, a former teacher, survived the night. But the thieves struck again last Wednesday when Bill Ross-Johnston, who, at 78, is the oldest warden, was on duty.

At just after 5am, Mr Ross-Johnston heard a “clinking” noise above him. Slipping outside, he spotted someone on the roof and called the police.

They arrived in time to arrest a 42-year-old man on suspicion of theft, although other members of the gang got away in a van. “Given our famous patron, a little detective work seemed apt,” Mr Ross-Johnston said.

“The investigating officer was a bit surprised that we had three burglaries in three days,” he added. “He was even more shocked when we caught the culprit ourselves. No one from the police had come to see us, although the police station is just several hundred metres away.”

A police spokesman admitted that something appeared to have slipped through the net.

Agatha Christie worshipped in All Saints for more than 50 years and was baptised there when she was two months old. Every week during the sermon, Christie’s father would ask her, “Do you want to leave now?”, to which she decisively replied: “No”.

The disappearance of the roof lead came after the church underwent a £250,000 renovation three years ago. Parishioners raised a fifth of the funds for that. The bill for replacing the lead is now put at £25,000.

More than £3 million in lead was stolen from Anglican churches last year. Despite their success at detection, not all the wardens are fans of the crime writer. Mr Rosindale said he “had no time for her”, and “couldn’t stand that bloody Poirot”.

Christie’s church is just the latest victim of a spate of metal thefts across Europe over the past year.

The global price of metals such as lead and copper has more than doubled and opportunistic thieves are raiding school roofs, statues and powerlines for metal to sell on as scrap.

According to the specialist church insurers, Ecclesiastical, the number of claims has risen in direct correlation to metal prices. “We had more than 2,300 claims at a cost of £9 million in 2007 and had negligible claim numbers over the previous 20 years, so the trend has really shot up,” a spokesman for the company said.

In October last year a nationwide police taskforce was set up to tackle the issue, and last month Britain joined 11 other European countries in an international crack-down on metal theft.

Times Recommends

• The bright side of this winter rain
• Story behind the picture: Snow Leopard, 2008
• Times Charity Appeal: The Place2Be