‘You will pardon me, M. Poirot, but I do not quite understand you.’
‘I do not understand myself,’ said Poirot. ‘I understand nothing at all. And, as you perceive, it worries me.’
(Part 1, Chapter 7)

‘I thought there were no detectives on the train when it passed through JugoSlavia – not until one got to Italy.’
‘I am not a Jugo-Slavian detective, Madame. I am an international detective.’
‘You belong to the League of Nations?’
‘I belong to the world, Madame,’ said Poirot dramatically.
(Part 2, Chapter 7)

‘My head, it whirls. Say something, then, my friend, I implore you. Show me how the impossible can be possible!’
‘It is a good phrase that,’ said Poirot. ‘The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.’
(2.13)

His eyes opened. They were green like a cat’s.
(The tell-tale sign that Poirot is having a brainwave, 3.3)

‘Murder on the Orient Express’ is the eighth Hercule Poirot novel and is possibly the most famous of Agatha Christie’s 72 novels. The most obvious reason for this might be its exotic setting, aboard the world’s most famous luxury train, with an exotic and cosmopolitan cast.

‘It lends itself to romance, my friend. All around us are people, of all classes, of all nationalities, of all ages. For three days these people, these strangers to one another, are brought together. They sleep and eat under one roof, they cannot get away from each other. At the end of three days they part, they go their several ways, never perhaps to see each other again…’ (1.3)

In fact this particular train doesn’t get very far before it gets caught in a snowdrift in what was then still an exotic and remote part of Europe (somewhere in Yugoslavia).

However, I think an equally or more important factor in its success is that it isn’t narrated by Poirot’s tiresomely dim sidekick, Captain Hastings. Instead it’s told by a third-person omniscient narrator in a brisk, to-the-point style which is closer to a spy thriller than the bumbling comedy of the usual Hastings narratives.

The no-nonsense style is connected to the way the entire story itself feels extremely logical and pared back. Many of the previous novels feel rambling and confusing, with no end of false trails and red herrings leading off in all directions, an excess of characters and possibilities which makes them not only confusing but sometimes feel over-stuffed, like a dinner with too many courses of over-rich dishes. By striking contrast ‘Orient’ has the stark simplicity of a problem in mathematics or logic.

This is reflected in the structure of the novel which is itself strikingly logical and schematic. It is in three parts.

Part One is titled ‘The Facts’ and consists of seven chapters with minimalist, functional titles such as The Crime and The Body. It describes how one winter day the Orient Express sets off from Istanbul on its three-day journey across Europe to London. On board are a dozen or so passengers, along with Poirot and, as it happens, a senior official from the railway company, a Monsieur Bouc. During the first night of the journey one of the passengers, a rich and unpleasant American, Mr Ratchett, is murdered. His body is discovered by a steward next morning when the train has itself become stuck in a deep snowdrift between stations. M. Bouc naturally calls upon his old friend, the world-famous detective Hercule Poirot, to solve the crime.

Since the train isn’t moving – is blocked in by a snowdrift miles from anywhere – none of the passengers can go anywhere, and so it is a ‘closed’ story: one murder, 12 suspects.

So after their initial examination of the compartment where the murdered man was found, and the discovery of half a dozen suggestive clues, Bouc, Poirot and the chef de train who, like the captain of a ship, is responsible for his passengers on this trip, convene a sort of court of enquiry. They set themselves up at a table in the dining car and call the twelve passengers in, one by one, using their passports to establish their names and ages, and then to question them about what they did and saw the night before, the night of the murder.

Which explains why Part Two is titled ‘The Evidence’ and consists of 15 chapters and how, with enjoyable logic and clarity, each of these chapters describes the interrogation of each of the 12 passengers on the Express, plus three at the end to give a) a summary of the evidence b) the evidence of the murder weapon and c) a little unexpectedly, the evidence of the passengers’ luggage.

The pared-back, no-nonsense, logical layout of the narrative is reflected in the way the titles of every one of these 15 chapters begin with the formula ‘The Evidence of…’

Once we are in command of all the facts, have seen the material evidence as Poirot himself discovered it, and have listened to the testimony of all the passengers, we ourselves know as much as the great detective, and the final part of the narrative, Part Three, is humorously titled ‘Hercule Poirot Sits Back and Thinks’.

‘It has been a little joke between us, has it not – this business of sitting back and thinking out the truth? Well, I am about to put my theory into practice – here before your eyes. You two must do the same. Let us all three close our eyes and think…’ (3.2)

Poirot himself points out the advantages of this particular story/crime for his particular approach:

‘We cannot investigate the bona fides of any of these people. We have to rely solely on deduction. That, to me, makes the matter very much more interesting. There is no routine work. It is all a matter of the intellect. (2.13)

This takes nine chapters to work through all possible permutations and leads up to Poirot proposing two possible solutions to his friend Bouc and the chef de train, and eventually the correct solution.

It is as if the orderly structure of Poirot’s mind – or of Christie’s behind him – is given cleaner, purer expression than ever before. And this clarity and paring back of redundant foliage also explains why the novel is her shortest. Most of them clock in at around 230 pages, while Orient is a zippy 180 pages long.

Cast

• Hercule Poirot – world famous detective, the ‘little Belgian’, former star of the Belgian police force
• M. Bouc – a fellow Belgian, director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons Lits, and old friend of Poirot’s, ‘a short stout elderly man, his hair cut en brosse‘, ‘rotund’
• Mr Ratchett – dodgy old American millionaire, tries to hire Poirot to protect him – ‘a man perhaps of between sixty and seventy. From a little distance he had the bland aspect of a philanthropist. His slightly bald head, his domed forehead, the smiling mouth that displayed a very white set of false teeth – all seemed to speak of a benevolent personality. Only the eyes belied this assumption. They were small, deep-set and crafty. Not only that. As the man, making some remark to his young companion, glanced across the room, his gaze stopped on Poirot for a moment and just for that second there was a strange malevolence, an unnatural tensity in the glance… the false benevolence of the brow and the small, cruel eyes…’
• Hector Willard MacQueen – Ratchett’s secretary, took the job a year ago in Persia after an oil deal fell through, served faithfully but didn’t like him
• Edward Henry Masterman – 39, Ratchett’s valet / manservant
• Dr Constantine – a small dark man, Greek – identifies cause and time of death, as doctors in Christie always do
• Mary Debenham – 26, young Englishwoman been working as a governess in Baghdad – ‘She was tall, slim and dark’, ‘She had poise and efficiency. He [Poirot] rather liked the severe regularity of her features and the delicate pallor of her skin. He liked the burnished black head with its neat waves of hair, and her eyes – cool, impersonal and grey’
• Colonel Arbuthnot – ‘an honourable, slightly stupid, upright Englishman.’
• Antonio Foscarelli – a big swarthy Italian, he ‘came into the dining-car with a swift, cat-like tread. His face beamed. It was a typical Italian face, sunny-looking and swarthy’
• Mr Cyrus Hardman – 41, brash, go-ahead travelling salesman for typewriting ribbons, ‘a big American in a loud suit.’ ‘He wore a somewhat loud check suit, a pink shirt, and a flashy tie-pin, and was rolling something round his tongue as he entered the dining-car. He had a big, fleshy, coarse-featured face, with a good-humoured expression.’ In a surprise revelation during his interview, Hardman reveals himself to be ‘an operative of a New York detective agency’
• Madame la Princesse Dragomiroff – ‘One of the ugliest old ladies he [Poirot] had ever seen. It was an ugliness of distinction – it fascinated rather than repelled. She sat very upright. Round her neck was a collar of very large pearls which, improbable though it seemed, were real. Her hands were covered with rings. Her sable coat was pushed back on her shoulders. A very small and expensive black toque was hideously unbecoming to the yellow, toad-like face beneath it.’ ‘She was certainly ugly, and yet, like the toad, she had eyes like jewels, dark and imperious, revealing latent energy and an intellectual force that could be felt at once.’
• Fräulein Hildegarde Schmidt – the Princess’s lady’s maid – ‘a middle-aged woman dressed in black with a broad, expressionless face’, German, ‘a placid creature altogether – eminently respectable, perhaps not over-intelligent.’
• Greta Ohlsson – 49, Swede, matron in a missionary school near Istanbul – ‘tall and middle-aged, in a plaid blouse and tweed skirt. She had a mass of faded yellow hair unbecomingly arranged in a large bun, wore glasses, and had a long mild amiable face rather like a sheep.’
• Mrs Caroline Martha Hubbard – American motormouth, ‘A stout, pleasant-faced, elderly person who was talking in a slow clear monotone which showed no signs of pausing for breath or coming to a stop’, endlessly talking about her daughter
• Count Andrenyi – ‘a very handsome man of thirty-odd with a big fair moustache’
• Countess Elena Andrenyi – the Count’s wife, 20 – ‘A tight-fitting little black coat and skirt, white satin blouse, small chic black toque perched at the fashionable outrageous angle. She had a beautiful foreign-looking face, dead white skin, large brown eyes, jet black hair. She was smoking a cigarette in a long holder. Her manicured hands had deep red nails. She wore one large emerald set in platinum. There was coquetry in her glance and voice.’
• Pierre Michel – the Wagon Lit conductor
• Pietro – the dining-car attendant
• the big blond conductor of the Athens to Paris coach
• the stout burly conductor of the Bucharest coach

Material clues

In the murdered man’s compartment are found a number of clues, carefully arranged to be either relevant or misleading:

• a pipe cleaner
• two different types of spent match
• a button from the uniform of a train employee
• two torn-off scraps of paper
• a handkerchief with the initial H sewn in

Behavioural clues

Before he even got on the Express, Poirot travelled by train from Syria to Istanbul. On this train were Miss Debenham and Colonel Arbuthnot. At one point he overheard them saying: ‘‘Not now. Not now. When it’s all over. When it’s behind us.’ Were they talking about the murder to come? Also, the Syria train was delayed and Miss Debenham became uncharacteristically flustered and anxious. Was this, too, because she had to make the connection with the Orient Express in order to carry out the murder?

On the night of the murder:

• Poirot’s compartment is on one side of the murdered man’s, Mrs Hubbard’s compartment on the other.
• At half past midnight the train ran into a snowdrift and stopped.
• Ratchett was last known to be alive at 12.37 am when he spoke to the Wagon Lit conductor through his compartment door.
• Mr Ratchett’s bell was ringing around the time of the murder but when a steward came to answer it, Poirot himself heard a voice from inside the murdered man’s compartment telling the steward there was no need to come in, he made a mistake. But he said this in idiomatic French and Ratchett spoke no French! This occurred, by Poirot’s watch, at 23 minutes to one.
• The murdered man’s watch which had stopped at 1.15 am, presumably damaged at the time of the murder – unless someone tampered with it to give a misleading time.
• The murdered man’s body showed signs of a dozen or so stab wounds i.e. a frenzied attack, not one quick stab. But Dr Constantine notices that some of the entry wounds indicated a right-handed attacker, while some can only have been delivered by a left-handed person. Were there two murderers?
• Half the witnesses claim to have seen a mysterious woman at the other end of the corridor which contained the murdered man’s compartment, wearing a red Chinese kimono embroidered with dragons. A search of the luggage of all 12 passengers reveals no such kimono. Where is it, and who was wearing it?
• Talkative Mrs Hubbard insists she woke in the middle of the night to discover a man in her compartment. In the dark she couldn’t see anything, just sensed his presence, then the compartment door opened, he left, and she furiously rang to bell to summon a steward. Who was it?
• Poirot himself heard a heavy thump against the outside, corridor-facing door of his compartment around the time of the murder. Who? What?
• In the middle of the night Fräulein Schmidt peeped out her door and saw a man wearing a Wagon Lit uniform coming out of the compartment of the murdered man. Was the murderer an employee of the train company (to M. Bouc’s horror) or someone impersonating such an employee?
• Why does Elena Andrenyi’s passport have a grease stain on it, in a strategic position?

The motive: the Armstrong case

Often in these novels motives are related to backstories which remain hidden or are only revealed by Poirot right at the end. ‘Orient Express’ is an exception. The scraps of paper found in his compartment bear the word ‘Armstrong’ and this persuades Poirot that the murdered man’s name, Ratchett, was an alias and that he was in hiding in Europe from an appalling crime he was implicated in back in the States. This is the so-called Armstrong case.

Some years earlier an American gangster named Cassetti had kidnapped three-year-old Daisy Armstrong and demanded a ransom from her middle class family. The ransom had been delivered only for the child to be found dead. The murdered girl’s mother, Sonia Armstrong, was pregnant with their second child, but the shock sent her into premature labour, and she died, along with the baby. Her grieving husband, Colonel Armstrong (an Englishman) shot himself. Their French nursemaid, Susanne, was accused by the cops of being in league with Cassetti, given a very tough grilling and, when released, killed herself, only to be found innocent afterwards.

The monster behind all this, Cassetti, escaped justice through corruption and legal technicalities, and fled the country. This theory of Ratchett’s real identity explains a) why Poirot found his eyes small and cunning and evil, and why b) Ratchett had tried to hire Poirot – because he had started to receive threatening notes from people claiming to know who he was and vowing to take revenge.

So the backstory and accompanying motive – taking revenge on an evil monster – is, for once, established early on in the narrative; and this throws all the interest of the novel onto Poirot trying to establish which one (or more) of the 12 passenger suspects, carried out the murder.

It is a closed, locked, delimited, highly defined puzzle – something like the chess puzzles you get in newspapers, with a number of possible moves but only one correct one. Which is why it delights Poirot so much:

‘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.’ (3.1)

And why, in the end, it is so satisfying:

‘I saw it as a perfect mosaic, each person playing his or her allotted part. It was so arranged that, if suspicion should fall on any one person, the evidence of one or more of the others would clear the accused person and confuse the issue… The passengers in the Stamboul carriage were in no danger. Every minute detail of their evidence was worked out beforehand. The whole thing was a very cleverly planned jigsaw puzzle, so arranged that every fresh piece of knowledge that came to light made the solution of the whole more difficult.’ (3.9)

Poirot’s method

1. Universal suspicion

‘So you pronounce one person at least innocent of the crime,’ said M. Bouc jovially. Poirot cast on him a look of reproach.
‘Me, I suspect everybody till the last minute.’ (1.6)

2. Order and method

‘Mon cher, it is my habit to be neat and orderly. I make here a little chronological table of events.’ (2.6)

Hence the chronological table of events which Poirot writes out in 2.5. And then the summary of interviews / profiles which he draws up at the end of the interview process, and shares in 3.1 in a sort of computer printout format:

HECTOR MACQUEEN, American subject, Berth No. 6, Second Class.
Motive – Possibly arising out of association with dead man?
Alibi – From midnight to 2 A.M. (Midnight to 1.30 vouched for by Col.
Arbuthnot, and 1. 15 to 2 vouched for by conductor.)
Evidence against him – None.
Suspicious circumstances – None.

One of these for each of the 12. And Poirot follows it up with a list of 10 questions.

So, certainly, order and method are an initial pre-requisite. But approaching everything with order and method is only half the process.

3. Psychology

Poirot like any other detective needs to investigate and establish physical clues, but his distinctive feature is giving much more importance to thinking through the psychology of the people involved. Hence Bouc’s half-humorous references early in the novel to him sitting in an armchair thinking, and the fact that the entire third part of the book is, indeed, titled ‘Hercule Poirot Sits Back and Thinks’.

‘See you, my dear doctor, me, I am not one to rely upon the expert procedure. It is the psychology I seek, not the fingerprint or the cigarette ash.’ (Chapter 7)

‘That is just it – it is impossible – quite impossible – that an honourable, slightly stupid, upright Englishman should stab an enemy twelve times with a knife! Do you not feel, my friends, how impossible it is?’
‘That is the psychology,’ said M. Bouc.
‘And one must respect the psychology. This crime has a signature, and it is certainly not the signature of Colonel Arbuthnot.’ (2.8)

And explains why he frames his questioning of each of the 12 passengers accordingly, shaping them to the character or psychology of each individual, as he explains to Mary Debenham:

‘Not so, you think, would an English inquiry be conducted. There everything would be cut and dried – it would be all kept to the facts – a well-ordered business. But I, Mademoiselle, have my little originalities. I look first at my witness, I sum up his or her character, and I frame my questions accordingly.’ (2.11)

So Poirot’s theories must fulfil two criteria: they must fit the facts and all the facts, with no discrepancies or ignoring inconvenient details which don’t fit the theory (as all his competitors and rivals do, people in a hurry to leap to conclusions such as, in their different ways, Hastings, Inspector Japp or, in this story, his friend Bouc).

And this final fact-fitting theory must also match the psychology of the suspect(s); it must fit ‘dans son caractère‘.

‘And when you have said that, you have said everything’ (2.13).

Techniques

That is the aim but it is not all Mr Spock-style logic. There are also techniques to ferret out the facts. The detective may use ploys, not least trying to scare the guilty person into betraying themselves or, as he tells M. Bouc:

‘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.’ (2.15)

Or direct confrontation.

‘If you confront anyone who has lied with the truth, he will usually admit it – often out of sheer surprise. It is only necessary to guess right to produce your effect.’ (3.5)

But this confrontation must be carefully, cunningly conceived and deployed. After much reflection on the weak or key point of a person’s story, thus:

‘I select each passenger in turn, consider his or her evidence, and say to myself, “If so and so is lying, on what point is he lying, and what is the reason for the lie?” And I answer, “If he is lying – if, you mark – it could only be for such a reason and on such a point.” We have done that once very successfully with Countess Andrenyi. We shall now proceed to try the same method on several other persons.’ (3.5)

Emphasising the story’s bookishness and filmishness

In previous reviews I’ve noted Christie’s habit of having her characters ironically mention how some scene or event reminds them of a detective novel. In the last few novels she’s added an awareness of movies, too, presumably reflecting the popularity of detective and crime movies as well as books, and so everyone’s awareness that many of the scenes, and even bits of dialogue, sound like crime novel and movie clichés.

The young man’s eyes twinkled suddenly. ‘This is where I’m supposed to go all goosefleshy down the back. In the words of a best seller, “You’ve nothing on me.”‘ (1.6)

‘Our friend the chef de train was right. There is a woman concerned in this.’
‘And most conveniently she leaves her handkerchief behind!’ said Poirot.
‘Exactly as it happens in the books and on the films –’ (1.7)

‘I told you there was nothing to it,’ said Arbuthnot, apologetically. ‘But you know what it is – early hours of the morning – everything very still. The thing had a sinister look – like a detective story. All nonsense really.’ (2.8)

‘To begin with, you must realise that the threatening letters were in the nature of a blind. They might have been lifted bodily out of an indifferently written American crime novel.’ (3.3)

‘Anyone might see through the watch business – it is a common enough device in detective stories.’ (3.9)

Emphasising melodrama, generally

This highlighting of the way the stories reference or vary well-established detective story tropes, extends further, to Christie having her own characters comment on the story’s wild improbability.

M. Bouc groaned and held his head again.
‘I know,’ said Poirot sympathetically. ‘I know exactly how you feel. The head spins, does it not?’
‘The whole thing is a fantasy!’ cried M. Bouc.
‘Exactly. It is absurd – improbable – it cannot be. So I myself have said. And yet, my friend, there it is! One cannot escape from the facts.’ (2.13)

Or as the very self-controlled Miss Debenham remarks, disapproving of the tone of the story she finds herself in:

‘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.’ (2.15)

Emphasising the puzzle’s difficulty

But the same principle can be extended to apply to the story’s complexity, with Poirot leading the three or four other characters who all queue up to tell each other, and the reader, how fiendishly puzzling the mystery is. And there’s an obvious element of the author ramping up the atmosphere, and complexity of her own product – if, that is, we allow ourselves to be persuaded by her characters’ repeated insistence.

‘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.’

In a sense Poirot, on the many occasions he says this kind of thing, in all his stories, is engaged in marketing. In a sense, he is promoting the story, its uniqueness and difficulty, flattering readers, and emphasising Christie’s ingenuity.

‘It is really a most extraordinary case,’ said Constantine. (3.8)

Or a phrase which combines promoting the story’s difficulty with its bookish feel:

‘This,’ said Dr Constantine, ‘is more wildly improbable than any roman policier I have ever read.’ (3.8)

Mocking the English

The more exotic, or plain foreign, the setting, the more likely we are to meet people who lampoon the British and English character, something Christie appeared to enjoy doing.

‘I don’t as a rule cotton to Britishers – they’re a stiff-necked lot.’ (Mr MacQueen, 2.2)

His [Colonel Arbuthnot’s] eyes rested for a moment on Hercule Poirot, but they passed on indifferently. Poirot, reading the English mind correctly, knew that he had said to himself. ‘Only some damned foreigner.’ (1.1)

True to their nationality, the two English people were not chatty. They exchanged a few brief remarks and presently the girl rose and went back to her compartment. (1.1)

‘About Miss Debenham,’ he said rather awkwardly. ‘You can take it from me that she’s all right. She’s a pukka sahib.’
Flushing a little, he withdrew.
‘What,’ asked Dr Constantine with interest, ‘does a pukka sahib mean?’
‘It means,’ said Poirot, ‘that Miss Debenham’s father and brothers were at the same kind of school as Colonel Arbuthnot.’ (2.8)

‘A miserable race, the English – not sympathetic.’ (Antonio Foscarelli in 2.10)

‘You are very Anglo-Saxon, Mademoiselle. Vous n’eprouvez pas d’emotion.’ (Poirot to Mary Debenham (2. 11)

‘I like to see an angry Englishman,’ said Poirot. ‘They are very amusing. The more emotional they feel, the less command they have of language.’ (3.7)

Daisy

Easy to forget but the whole thing is, in the end, about the murder of a child named Daisy.

Credit

‘Murder on the Orient Express’ by Agatha Christie was published in 1934 by the Collins Crime Club.

Related links

• Murder on the Orient Express online (PDF)
• Agatha Christie website

Related reviews

• Agatha Christie reviews
• 1930s reviews