MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

SUMMARY

 

Here were some of the clues that were found around his body:

 

• A burnt piece of paper with the name “Armstrong” printed on it, and a match that did not match any matchbox in Ratchett’s belongings. This suggests that the crime was meant as revenge for the Armstrong case, and the killer tried to burn the letter to hide the incriminating evidence.

 

• A fancy handkerchief with the letter “H” embroidered on it was lying at Ratchett’s feet.

 

• A pipe cleaner was in the vicinity (even though Ratchett smoked cigars, not pipes).

 

• The window was lifted open (and wiped clean of any fingerprints, showing that the killer was careful), but there weren’t any footprints in the snow outside (so it doesn’t appear as though the killer left that way).

 

• The door was bolted and locked from the inside.

 

• A pocketwatch in Ratchett’s breast pocket was stopped at a quarter past one.

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Also aboard the train is Hercule Poirot, a world-class detective. He’s determined to solve the mystery before the next stop so that he can inform the Yugoslavian police of the verdict (instead of causing further delays as they investigate). 

 

As he interviews the other passengers, he discovers that some of them are lying and a surprising number of them have connections to the Armstrong family:

 

1.    Countess Helena Andrenyi is Daisy’s aunt. She tries to conceal her identity by dropping grease on her passport (to make it seem like her name is “Elena” and not “Helena”), seemingly to save herself from a long series of questions due to her relation to the Armstrong family and the handkerchief that isn’t hers. She was sound asleep at the time of Ratchett's death with the help of her sleeping medication.

 

2.     Count Andrenyi strongly defends the alibi of his wife, insisting that she is innocent.

 

3.     Princess Dragomiroff is an old, ugly, Russian princess who is Daisy’s godmother. She owns the “H” handkerchief (as the letters “H” and “N” correspond in the Russian alphabet?). She lied that she did not know the whereabouts of Helena, even though she knew Helena was on the train.

 

4.     Hildegarde Schmidt is Princess Dragomiroff’s dumb but loyal “maid” (who really was the Armstrong family’s cook). 

 

5.     Mrs. Hubbard (also known as Linda Arden) is a famous actress and also Daisy’s grandmother. Throughout the book, she gives a dramatic performance as she shares stories about her daughter, such as how her daughter had told her that the train ride should have been a simple one. Her room is next to Ratchett’s (and shares a connecting door). She claims that at night, she saw a man (the killer?) standing in her room, so she shut her eyes and only when she got her wits about her, she rang the bell for the conductor to investigate). The next morning, she “finds” a button (that matches the buttons of a train employee’s uniform). She claims that the door between her room and Ratchett’s should have been locked, but she wasn’t sure since “her sponge bag was covering the bolt” (when really, in rehearsal, they came up with that story in an even-numbered room, where the bolt was above the handle and not below it).

 

6.     Colonel Arbuthnot is a righteous Englishman whose life was saved by Daisy’s father in the war. He is the only man on board who admits to smoking pipes (and Ratchett only smoked cigars), and he says that he does not mark his pipe cleaners with any special markings to claim them as his. Even though the pipe-cleaner near Ratchett’s body might have been his, his polite demeanor makes him an unlikely suspect.

 

7.     Mary Debenham is Daisy Armstrong’s former governess. Poirot is suspicious of her because he overheard a conversation between her and Colonel Arbuthnot talking about “when this task is over and behind them”. When interviewed for the name of someone, she also suspiciously said “Mrs. Freebody” (which was the first name she came up with since “Debenham $ Freebody” is a famous English department store, and “Debenham” is a fake name to cover her identity).

 

8.     Greta Ohlsson was Daisy’s Swedish nurse. She is very sensitive, so she constantly weeps and appears distraught over the whole scenario (and thus doesn’t seem capable of murder).

 

9.     Antonio Foscanelli is a large Italian man who wouldn’t hurt a fly (even though Italians were stereotypically portrayed to use knives as their means of killing). He was the Armstrong family’s chauffeur. He had a soft spot for Daisy, who used to call him “Toni” and pretend to drive the car. 

 

10.     Hector McQueen is Ratchett’s secretary. He suspiciously emphasizes to Poiret that Ratchett did not speak any French (even though Ratchett was believed to say something in French at night) seemingly to cover tracks since “it couldn’t have been Ratchett then if he was killed at the time of his stopped pocketwatch.”

 

11.     Cyrus Hardman works at a well-known detective service in New York City. He was in love with Daisy’s French maid (who had committed suicide). He pretends as though Ratchett contacted him after he got threatening letters to keep an eye out for any foul play aboard the train. Hardman pretends as though he doesn’t have any connection to the Armstrong family and that he’s trying to help Poirot solve the case.

 

12.     Pierre Michel is the father of Daisy’s French maid (who had committed suicide). He is the conductor of the Orient Express and was thus able to arrange for Ratchett and the rest of the gang to end up on a train together.

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Monsieur Poirot comes up with two solutions:

 

• (What the passengers wanted Poirot to think): A short man with a weak, high-pitched voiced (according to the witness testimonies) snuck on board at the precious stop, put on a train official’s uniform, snuck into Ratchett’s room, drugged him with sleeping medication somehow (so that he was too drugged to put up a fight), and killed Ratchett before escaping.

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• (What actually happened): Even though it’s usually unlikely for all suspects to be involved, in this case they were. They were a self-appointed jury who took matters into their own hands to seek justice when the law failed to give Ratchett a punishment that he deserved.

 

The passengers admit that the second solution is correct, but Poirot agrees to tell the first solution to the Yoguslavian police (since Ratchett was indeed guilty, and no sense ruining all twelve lives who only wanted revenge on this one case that they were passionate about).

 

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QUOTES

 

When evidence is found near the crime scene, you must consider if they were left by accident or if they were planted on purpose for misdirection.

 

“We find a woman’s handkerchief. Did a woman drop it? Or did a man, committing the crime, say to himself: ‘I will make this look like a woman’s crime. I will stab my enemy an unnecessary number of times, making some of the blows feeble and ineffective, and I will drop this handkerchief where no one can miss it’? That is one possibility. Then there is another. Did a woman kill him, and did she deliberately drop a pipe-cleaner to make it look like a man’s work? Or are we seriously to suppose that two people, a man and a woman, were separately concerned, and that each was so careless as to drop a clue to his or her identity? It is a little too much of a coincidence, that! // …These clues -- the watch stopped at a quarter past one, the handkerchief, the pipe-cleaner -- they may be genuine, or they may be faked. As to that I cannot yet tell. But there is one clue here which -- though again I may be wrong -- I believe has not been faked. I mean this flat match, M. le docteur. I believe that that match was used by the murderer, not by Mr. Ratchett. It was used to burn an incriminating paper of some kind. Possibly a note. If so, there was something in that note, some mistake, some error, that left a possible clue to the assailant. I am going to try to discover what that something was” (52-53).

 

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Take witness testimonies with a grain of salt.

 

For example, testimonies of a short man with a weak, high-pitched voice and a woman dressed in a scarlet kimono with dragons embroidered and fruity perfume who supposedly passed by Ratchett’s room at night cannot be definitely confirmed. 

 

“You are inclined to put the cart before the horse. Before I ask myself, ‘Where did this man vanish to?’ I ask myself, ‘Did such a man really exist?’ Because, you see, if the man were an invention -- a fabrication -- how much easier to make him disappear! So I try to establish first that there really is such a flesh-and-blood person” (131).

 

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Everyone’s contribution helped confuse the issue (so that the evidence did not clearly point to any one person).

 

Some strikes indicated that the person was left-handed, others indicated that the killer was right-handed (which Poirot tried to size up by discreetly asking each suspect to write their name and permanent address for him).  

 

A dagger was the murder weapon, which could be used by anyone silently and despite the assailant’s strength level.

 

It seemed as though a random assortment of people of various ages and various nationalities who have never met covered for one another’s alibis in their individual interviews (since everything was rehearsed). Turns out that since America is a big mixing pot of all sorts of people, they had already crossed paths there.

 

“A perfect mosaic… The whole thing was a very cleverly planned jigsaw puzzle” (207).