Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot 10)

“Poor creature, she’s a Swede. As far as I can make out, she’s a kind of missionary—a teaching one. A nice creature, but doesn’t talk much English. She was most interested in what I told her about my daughter.”

Poirot, by now, knew all about Mrs. Hubbard’s daughter. Everyone on the train who could understand English did! How she and her husband were on the staff of a big American college in Smyrna and how this was Mrs. Hubbard’s first journey to the East, and what she thought of the Turks and their slipshod ways and the condition of their roads.

The door next to them opened and the thin, pale manservant stepped out. Inside Poirot caught a glimpse of Mr. Ratchett sitting up in bed. He saw Poirot and his face changed, darkening with anger. Then the door was shut.

Mrs. Hubbard drew Poirot a little aside.

“You know, I’m dead scared of that man. Oh, not the valet—the other—his master. Master, indeed! There’s something wrong about that man. My daughter always says I’m very intuitive. ‘When Momma gets a hunch, she’s dead right,’ that’s what my daughter says. And I’ve got a hunch about that man. He’s next door to me, and I don’t like it. I put my grips against the communicating door last night. I thought I heard him trying the handle. Do you know, I shouldn’t be surprised if that man turns out to be a murderer—one of these train robbers you read about. I dare say I’m foolish, but there it is. I’m downright scared of the man! My daughter said I’d have an easy journey, but somehow I don’t feel happy about it. It may be foolish, but I feel anything might happen. Anything at all. And how that nice young fellow can bear to be his secretary I can’t think.”

Colonel Arbuthnot and MacQueen were coming towards them down the corridor.

“Come into my carriage,” MacQueen was saying. “It isn’t made up for the night yet. Now what I want to get right about your policy in India is this—”

The men passed and went on down the corridor to MacQueen’s carriage.

Mrs. Hubbard said good night to Poirot.

“I guess I’ll go right to bed and read,” she said. “Good night.”

“Good night, Madame.”

Poirot passed into his own compartment, which was the next one beyond Ratchett’s. He undressed and got into bed, read for about half an hour and then turned out the light.

He awoke some hours later, and awoke with a start. He knew what it was that had wakened him—a loud groan, almost a cry, somewhere close at hand. At the same moment the ting of a bell sounded sharply.

Poirot sat up and switched on the light. He noticed that the train was at a standstill—presumably at a station.

That cry had startled him. He remembered that it was Ratchett who had the next compartment. He got out of bed and opened the door just as the Wagon Lit conductor came hurrying along the corridor and knocked on Ratchett’s door. Poirot kept his door open a crack and watched. The conductor tapped a second time. A bell rang and a light showed over another door farther down. The conductor glanced over his shoulder.

At the same moment a voice from within the next-door compartment called out:

“Ce n’est rien. Je me suis trompé.”

“Bien, Monsieur.” The conductor scurried off again, to knock at the door where the light was showing.

Poirot returned to bed, his mind relieved, and switched off the light. He glanced at his watch. It was just twenty-three minutes to one.

Five

THE CRIME

He found it difficult to go to sleep again at once. For one thing, he missed the motion of the train. If it was a station outside it was curiously quiet. By contrast, the noises on the train seemed unusually loud. He could hear Ratchett moving about next door—a click as he pulled down the washbasin, the sound of the tap running, a splashing noise, then another click as the basin shut to again. Footsteps passed up the corridor outside, the shuffling footsteps of someone in bedroom slippers.

Hercule Poirot lay awake staring at the ceiling. Why was the station outside so silent? His throat felt dry. He had forgotten to ask for his usual bottle of mineral water. He looked at his watch again. Just after a quarter past one. He would ring for the conductor and ask him for some mineral water. His finger went out to the bell, but he paused as in the stillness he heard a ting. The man couldn’t answer every bell at once.

Ting…ting…ting…

It sounded again and again. Where was the man? Somebody was getting impatient.

Ting…

Whoever it was was keeping their finger solidly on the push.

Suddenly with a rush, his footsteps echoing up the aisle, the man came. He knocked at a door not far from Poirot’s own.

Then came voices—the conductor’s, deferential, apologetic, and a woman’s—insistent and voluble.

Mrs. Hubbard.

Poirot smiled to himself.

The altercation—if it was one—went on for some time. It’s proportions were ninety per cent of Mrs. Hubbard’s to a soothing ten per cent of the conductor’s. Finally the matter seemed to be adjusted. Poirot heard distinctly:

“Bonne nuit, Madame,” and a closing door.

He pressed his own finger on the bell.

The conductor arrived promptly. He looked hot and worried.

“De l’eau minerale, s’il vous plait.”

“Bien, Monsieur.” Perhaps a twinkle in Poirot’s eye led him to unburden himself.

“La Dame Americaine—”

“Yes?”

He wiped his forehead.

“Imagine to yourself the time I have had with her! She insists—but insists—that there is a man in her compartment! Figure to yourself, Monsieur. In a space of this size.” He swept a hand round. “Where would he conceal himself? I argue with her. I point out that it is impossible. She insists. She woke up and there was a man there. And how, I ask, did he get out and leave the door bolted behind him? But she will not listen to reason. As though, there were not enough to worry us already. This snow—”

“Snow?”

“But yes, Monsieur. Monsieur has not noticed? The train has stopped. We have run into a snowdrift. Heaven knows how long we shall be here. I remember once being snowed up for seven days.”

“Where are we?”

“Between Vincovi and Brod.”

“Là là,” said Poirot vexedly.

The man withdrew and returned with the water.

“Bon soir, Monsieur.”

Poirot drank a glass of water and composed himself to sleep.

He was just dropping off when something again woke him. This time it was as though something heavy had fallen with a thud against the door.

He sprang up, opened it and looked out. Nothing. But to his right some way down the corridor a woman wrapped in a scarlet kimono was retreating from him. At the other end, sitting on his little seat, the conductor was entering up figures on large sheets of paper. Everything was deathly quiet.

“Decidedly I suffer from the nerves,” said Poirot and retired to bed again. This time he slept till morning.

When he awoke the train was still at a standstill. He raised a blind and looked out. Heavy banks of snow surrounded the train.

He glanced at his watch and saw that it was past nine o’clock.

At a quarter to ten, neat, spruce, and dandified as ever, he made his way to the restaurant car, where a chorus of woe was going on.

Any barriers there might have been between the passengers had now quite broken down. All were united by a common misfortune. Mrs. Hubbard was loudest in her lamentations.

“My daughter said it would be the easiest way in the world. Just sit in the train until I got to Parrus. And now we may be here for days and days

,” she wailed. “And my boat sails the day after tomorrow. How am I going to catch it now? Why, I can’t even wire to cancel my passage. I feel too mad to talk about it.”

The Italian said that he had urgent business himself in Milan. The large American said that that was “too bad, Ma’am,” and soothingly expressed a hope that the train might make up time.

“My sister—her children wait me,” said the Swedish lady and wept. “I get no word to them. What they think? They will say bad things have happen to me.”

“How long shall we be here?” demanded Mary Debenham. “Doesn’t anybody know?”

Her voice sounded impatient, but Poirot noted that there were no signs of that almost feverish anxiety which she had displayed during the check to the Taurus Express.

Mrs. Hubbard was off again.

“There isn’t anybody knows a thing on this train. And nobody’s trying to do anything. Just a pack of useless foreigners. Why, if this were at home, there’d be someone at least trying to do something.”

Arbuthnot turned to Poirot and spoke in careful British French.

“Vous êtes un directeur de la ligne, je crois, Monsieur. Vous pouvez nous dire—”

Smiling Poirot corrected him.

“No, no,” he said in English. “It is not I. You confound me with my friend M. Bouc.”

“Oh! I’m sorry.”

“Not at all. It is most natural. I am now in the compartment that he had formerly.”

M. Bouc was not present in the restaurant car. Poirot looked about to notice who else was absent.

Princess Dragomiroff was missing and the Hungarian couple. Also Ratchett, his valet, and the German lady’s maid.

The Swedish lady wiped her eyes.

“I am foolish,” she said. “I am baby to cry. All for the best, whatever happen.”