Murder on the Orient Express (14 page)

She sighed—was lost a minute in thought. Then, as though rousing herself, she said:

“Those words had a meaning, Monsieur, but not one that I can tell you. I can only give you my solemn word of honour that I had never set eyes on this man Ratchett in my life until I saw him on this train.”

“And—you refuse to explain those words?”

“Yes—if you like to put it that way—I refuse. They had to do with—with a task I had undertaken.”

“A task that is now ended?”

“What do you mean?”

“It is ended, is it not?”

“Why should you think so?”

“Listen, Mademoiselle, I will recall to you another incident. There was a delay to the train on the day we were to reach Stamboul. You were very agitated, Mademoiselle. You, so calm, so self-controlled. You lost that calm.”

“I did not want to miss my connection.”

“So you said. But, Mademoiselle, the Orient Express leaves Stamboul every day of the week. Even if you had missed the connection it would only have been a matter of twenty-four hours' delay.”

Miss Debenham for the first time showed signs of losing her temper.

“You do not seem to realize that one may have friends awaiting one's arrival in London, and that a day's delay upsets arrangements and causes a lot of annoyance.”

“Ah, it is like that? There are friends awaiting your arrival? You do not want to cause them inconvenience?”

“Naturally.”

“And yet—it is curious—”

“What is curious?”

“On this train—again we have a delay. And this time a more serious delay, since there is no possibility of sending a telegram to your friends or of getting them on the long—the long—”

“The long distance? The telephone, you mean.”

“Ah, yes, the portmanteau call, as you say in England.”

Mary Debenham smiled a little in spite of herself.

“Trunk call,” she corrected. “Yes, as you say, it is extremely annoying not to be able to get any word through, either by telephone or telegraph.”

“And yet, mademoiselle,
this
time your manner is quite different. You no longer betray the impatience. You are calm and philosophical.”

Mary Debenham flushed and bit her lip. She no longer felt inclined to smile.

“You do not answer, Mademoiselle?”

“I am sorry. I did not know that there was anything to answer.”

“The explanation of your change of attitude, Mademoiselle.”

“Don't you think that you are making rather a fuss about nothing, M. Poirot?”

Poirot spread out his hands in an apologetic gesture.

“It is perhaps a fault with us detectives. We expect the behaviour to be always consistent. We do not allow for changes of mood.”

Mary Debenham made no reply.

“You know Colonel Arbuthnot well, Mademoiselle?”

He fancied that she was relieved by the change of subject.

“I met him for the first time on this journey.”

“Have you any reason to suspect that he may have known this man Ratchett?”

She shook her head decisively.

“I am quite sure he didn't.”

“Why are you sure?”

“By the way he spoke.”

“And yet, Mademoiselle, we found a pipe cleaner on the floor of the dead man's compartment. And Colonel Arbuthnot is the only man on the train who smokes a pipe?”

He watched her narrowly, but she displayed neither surprise nor emotion, merely said:

“Nonsense. It's absurd. Colonel Arbuthnot is the last man in the world to be mixed up in a crime—especially a theatrical kind of crime like this.”

It was so much what Poirot himself thought that he found himself on the point of agreeing with her. He said instead:

“I must remind you that you do not know him very well, Mademoiselle.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“I know the type well enough.”

He said very gently:

“You still refuse to tell me the meaning of those words—‘When it's behind us?'”

She said coldly:

“I have nothing more to say.”

“It does not matter,” said Hercule Poirot. “I shall find out.”

He bowed and left the compartment, closing the door after him.

“Was that wise, my friend?” asked M. Bouc. “You have put her on her guard—and through her you have put the Colonel on his guard also.”

“
Mon ami,
if you wish to catch a rabbit you put a ferret into the hole, and if the rabbit is there he runs. That is all I have done.”

They entered the compartment of Hildegarde Schmidt.

The woman was standing in readiness, her face respectful but unemotional.

Poirot took a quick glance through the contents of the small case on the seat. Then he motioned to the attendant to get down the bigger suitcase from the rack.

“The keys?” he said.

“It is not locked, Monsieur.”

Poirot undid the hasps and lifted the lid.

“Aha!” he said, and turning to M. Bouc, “You remember what I said? Look here a little moment!”

On the top of the suitcase was a hastily rolled up brown Wagon Lit uniform.

The stolidity of the German woman underwent a sudden change.

“Ach!” she cried. “That is not mine. I did not put it there. I have never looked in that case since we left Stamboul. Indeed, indeed, it is true.”

She looked from one to another pleadingly.

Poirot took her gently by the arm and soothed her.

“No, no all is well. We believe you. Do not be agitated. I am as sure you did not hide the uniform there as I am sure that you are a good cook. See. You are a good cook, are you not?”

Bewildered, the woman smiled in spite of herself.

“Yes, indeed, all my ladies have said so. I—”

She stopped, her mouth open, looking frightened again.

“No, no,” said Poirot. “I assure you all is well. See, I will tell you how this happened. This man, the man you saw in Wagon Lit uniform, comes out of the dead man's compartment. He collides with you. That is bad luck for him. He has hoped that no one will see him. What to do next? He must get rid of his uniform. It is now not a safeguard, but a danger.”

His glance went to M. Bouc and Dr. Constantine, who were listening attentively.

“There is the snow, you see. The snow which confuses all his plans. Where can he hide these clothes? All the compartments are full. No, he passes one where the door is open and shows it to be unoccupied. It must be the one belonging to the woman with whom he has just collided. He slips in, removes the uniform and jams it hurriedly into a suitcase on the rack. It may be some time before it is discovered.”

“And then?” said M. Bouc.

“That we must discuss,” said Poirot with a warning glance.

He held up the tunic. A button, the third down, was missing. Poirot slipped his hand into the pocket and took out a conductor's pass key, used to unlock the doors of the compartments.

“Here is the explanation of how our man was able to pass through locked doors,” said M. Bouc. “Your questions to Mrs. Hubbard were unnecessary. Locked or not locked, the man could easily get through the communicating door. After all, if a Wagon Lit uniform, why not a Wagon Lit key?”

“Why not, indeed,” said Poirot.

“We might have known it, really. You remember Michel said that the door into the corridor of Mrs. Hubbard's compartment was locked when he came in answer to her bell.”

“That is so, Monsieur,” said the conductor. “That is why I thought the lady must have been dreaming.”

“But now it is easy,” continued M. Bouc. “Doubtless he meant to relock the communicating door also, but perhaps he heard some movement from the bed and it startled him.”

“We have now,” said Poirot, “only to find the scarlet kimono.”

“True. And these last two compartments are occupied by men.”

“We will search all the same.”

“Oh! assuredly. Besides, I remember what you said.”

Hector MacQueen acquiesced willingly in the search.

“I'd just as soon you did,” he said with a rueful smile. “I feel I'm just definitely the most suspicious character on the train. You've only got to find a will in which the old man left me all his money, and that'll just about fix things.”

M. Bouc bent a suspicious glance upon him.

“That's just my fun,” said MacQueen hastily. “He'd never have
left me a cent, really. I was just useful to him—languages and so on. You're apt to be done down, you know, if you don't speak anything but good American. I'm no linguist myself, but I know what I call shopping and hotel snappy bits in French and German and Italian.”

His voice was a little louder than usual. It was as though he was slightly uneasy at the search in spite of his willingness.

Poirot emerged.

“Nothing,” he said. “Not even a compromising bequest!”

MacQueen sighed.

“Well, that's a load off my mind,” he said humorously.

They moved on to the last compartment. The examination of the luggage of the big Italian and of the valet yielded no result.

The three men stood at the end of the coach looking at each other.

“What next?” asked M. Bouc.

“We will go back to the dining car,” said Poirot. “We know now all that we can know. We have the evidence of the passengers, the evidence of their baggage, the evidence of our eyes. We can expect no further help. It must be our part now to use our brains.”

He felt in his pocket for his cigarette case. It was empty.

“I will join you in a moment,” he said. “I shall need the cigarettes. This is a very difficult, a very curious affair. Who wore that scarlet kimono? Where is it now? I wish I knew. There is something in this case—some factor—that escapes me! It is difficult because it has been made difficult. But we will discuss it. Pardon me a moment.”

He went hurriedly along the corridor to his own compartment. He had, he knew, a further supply of cigarettes in one of his valises.

He got it down and snapped back the lock.

Then he sat back on his heels and stared.

Neatly folded on the top of the case was a thin scarlet silk kimono embroidered with dragons.

“So,” he murmured. “It is like that. A defiance. Very well. I take it up.”

M
. Bouc and Dr. Constantine were talking together when Poirot entered the dining car. M. Bouc was looking depressed.

“Le voilà,”
said the latter when he saw Poirot.

Then he added as his friend sat down:

“If you solve this case,
mon cher,
I shall indeed believe in miracles!”

“It worries you, this case?”

“Naturally it worries me. I cannot make head or tail of it.”

“I agree,” said the doctor.

He looked at Poirot with interest.

“To be frank,” he said, “I cannot see what you are going to do next.”

“No?” said Poirot thoughtfully.

He took out his cigarette case and lit one of his tiny cigarettes. His eyes were dreamy.

“That, to me, is the interest of this case,” he said. “We are cut off from all the normal routes of procedure. Are these people whose
evidence we have taken speaking the truth or lying? We have no means of finding out—except such means as we can devise ourselves. It is an exercise, this, of the brain.”

“That is all very fine,” said M. Bouc. “But what have you to go upon?”

“I told you just now. We have the evidence of the passengers and the evidence of our own eyes.”

“Pretty evidence—that of the passengers! It told us just nothing at all.”

Poirot shook his head.

“I do not agree, my friend. The evidence of the passengers gave us several points of interest.”

“Indeed,” said M. Bouc sceptically. “I did not observe it.”

“That is because you did not listen.”

“Well, tell me—what did I miss?”

“I will just take one instance—the first evidence we heard—that of the young MacQueen. He uttered, to my mind, one very significant phrase.”

“About the letters?”

“No, not about the letters. As far as I can remember, his words were: ‘
We travelled about. Mr. Ratchett wanted to see the world. He was hampered by knowing no languages. I acted more as a courier than a secretary.
'”

He looked from the doctor's face to that of M. Bouc.

“What? You still do not see? That is inexcusable—for you had a second chance again just now when he said, ‘
You're apt to be done down if you speak nothing but good American.
'”

“You mean—?” M. Bouc still looked puzzled.

“Ah, it is that you want it given to you in words of one syllable.
Well, here it is!
M. Ratchett spoke no French.
Yet, when the conductor came in answer to his bell last night, it was a voice speaking in
French
that told him that it was a mistake and that he was not wanted. It was, moreover, a perfectly idiomatic phrase that was used, not one that a man knowing only a few words of French would have selected. ‘
Ce n'est rien. Je me suis trompé
.'”

“It is true,” cried Constantine excitedly. “We should have seen that! I remember your laying stress on the words when you repeated them to us. Now I understand your reluctance to rely upon the evidence of the dented watch. Already, at twenty-three minutes to one, Ratchett was dead—”

“And it was his murderer speaking!” finished M. Bouc impressively.

Poirot raised a deprecating hand.

“Let us not go too fast. And do not let us assume more than we actually know. It is safe, I think, to say that at that time, twenty-three minutes to one,
some other person
was in Ratchett's compartment and that that person was either French, or could speak the French language fluently.”

“You are very cautious,
mon vieux
.”

“One should advance only a step at a time. We have no actual
evidence
that Ratchett was dead at that time.”

“There is the cry that awakened you.”

“Yes, that is true.”

“In one way,” said M. Bouc thoughtfully, “this discovery does not affect things very much. You heard someone moving about next door. That someone was not Ratchett, but the other man. Doubtless he is washing blood from his hands, clearing up after the crime, burning the incriminating letter. Then he waits till all
is still, and when he thinks it is safe and the coast is clear he locks and chains Ratchett's door on the inside, unlocks the communicating door through into Mrs. Hubbard's compartment and slips out that way. In fact it is exactly as we thought—
with the difference that Ratchett was killed about half an hour earlier,
and the watch put on to a quarter past one to create an alibi.”

“Not such a famous alibi,” said Poirot. “The hands of the watch pointed to 1:15—the exact time when the intruder actually left the scene of the crime.”

“True,” said M. Bouc, a little confused. “What, then, does the watch convey to you?”

“If the hands were altered—I say
if
—then the time at which they were set
must
have a significance. The natural reaction would be to suspect anyone who had a reliable alibi for the time indicated—in this case 1:15.”

“Yes, Yes,” said the doctor. “That reasoning is good.”

“We must also pay a little attention to the time the intruder
entered
the compartment. When had he an opportunity of doing so? Unless we are to assume the complicity of the real conductor, there was only one time when he could have done so—during the time the train stopped at Vincovci. After the train left Vincovci the conductor was sitting facing the corridor and whereas any one of the passengers would pay little attention to a Wagon Lit attendant, the
one
person who would notice an imposter would be the real conductor. But during the halt at Vincovci the conductor is out on the platform. The coast is clear.”

“And, by our former reasoning, it
must
be one of the passengers,” said M. Bouc. “We come back to where we were. Which of them?”

Poirot smiled.

“I have made a list,” he said, “If you like to see it, it will, perhaps, refresh your memory.”

The doctor and M. Bouc pored over the list together. It was written out neatly in a methodical manner in the order in which the passengers had been interviewed.

 

Hector MacQueen
—American subject. Berth No. 6. Second Class.

Conductor—Pierre Michel
—French subject.

Edward Masterman
—English subject. Berth No. 4. Second Class

Mrs. Hubbard
—American subject. Berth No. 3. First Class.

Greta Ohlsson
—Swedish subject. Berth No. 10. Second Class.

Princess Dragomiroff
—Naturalized French subject. Berth No. 14. First Class.

Count Andrenyi
—Hungarian subject. Diplomatic passport. Berth No. 13. First Class.

Countess Andrenyi
—As above. Berth No. 12.

Colonel Arbuthnot
—British subject. Berth No. 15. First Class

Cyrus Hardman
—American subject. Berth No. 16. Second Class

Antonio Foscarelli
—American subject. (Italian birth.) Berth No. 5. Second Class

Mary Debenham
—British subject. Berth No. 11. Second Class

Hildegarde Schmidt
—German subject. Berth No. 8. Second Class.

“That document, you understand,” said Poirot, “is a mere
précis
of the evidence we heard, arranged that way for convenience.”

With a grimace M. Bouc handed it back.

“It is not illuminating,” he said.

“Perhaps you may find this more to your taste,” said Poirot with a slight smile as he handed him a second sheet of paper.