Summary
Chapter 7
Next, Poirot interviews the Hungarian Count Andrenyi, who says that both he and his wife were fast asleep throughout the entire evening’s events. He appears to be unfamiliar with the Armstrong case and with the family: though he’s spent time in Washington, D.C., as a diplomat, he can’t recall whether he met any Armstrongs there. In any case, he says, he and his wife sat together in one of their two adjoining compartments the night before until around 11. When the conductor had finished making up the bed in the other of their compartments, they went to sleep, not waking until morning. His wife, the count says, takes a sleeping medicine called trional every night and therefore definitely did not wake at all. He writes down his and his wife’s full name and address, and then, despite the Count’s objections, Poirot insists on seeing his wife (whose name, according to what the Count has written, is Elena Maria, and whose maiden name is Goldenberg). As they wait for the Countess to enter, Bouc and Poirot examine her passport, which has a grease stain on it, and, noting that it’s a coveted diplomatic passport, Bouc warns Poirot not to ruffle the Andrenyis’ feathers. The beautiful Countess confirms that she was asleep all the night through, and gives a signature promising that the name and address her husband left for her are correct. She says that she’s only been married a year and therefore did not accompany her husband to Washington. She also confirms that her husband only smokes cigarettes and cigars, and that her own dressing-gown is “Corn-colored.” Then she turns the tables to ask why Poirot is interviewing her: is he part of the “Jugo-Slavian” police force? (The train is currently stalled in what was, at the time, Yugoslavia). He says he is not—he’s a detective for the world, not for any country. She leaves. Bouc and Poirot reflect that she and her husband haven’t been much help, but, for some reason, Poirot is closely examining the grease stain on her passport.
Chapter 8
Though Bouc is still sure the Italian man is the culprit, Poirot wants to interview all the first-class passengers first, so he calls in Arbuthnot. Arbuthnot, who is rather unfriendly, says he is on leave from a post in India, and stopped briefly in Baghdad. However, he denies meeting Mary Debenham—also traveling from Baghdad—prior to their boarding the train. Poirot tries to coax information about the Englishwoman out of him, but he won’t say much other than that she’s reputable and wouldn’t commit a crime.
Poirot asks what Arbuthnot was doing at 1:15 the night before, and he says that he and MacQueen were chatting in MacQueen’s compartment—MacQueen smoking cigarettes and he, Arbuthnot, smoking a pipe as they chatted. He went to sleep in his own compartment, no. 15, around 1:45. He saw the conductor sitting near compartment 15 as he walked there, but then MacQueen called the conductor in, presumably to make up his bed. He confirms that he stepped out at the Vincovci stop, but was too cold to stay out. Arbuthnot can’t remember much about who passed in the corridor while he sat with MacQueen, but he does recall that a woman passed shortly before he went to sleep. He isn’t sure how she looked, only that she smelled very fruity, as if wearing perfume. Poirot presses him for the exact time this happened, and he says that it was in the last half-hour before he left for his own bed, after the train had stalled. Furthermore, Arbuthnot says he’s heard of the Armstrong case but doesn’t know the family.
Poirot asks if he noticed anything suspicious, and he says he saw one small, probably irrelevant thing: just before Arbuthnot went to sleep, the man in compartment 16 opened the door, peeked out very furtively, and retreated back in. Before leaving he assures Poirot that Debenham is a “pukka sahib,” but Poirot tells Bouc this means nothing except that their families attended similar fancy schools. Poirot tells Bouc that Arbuthnot’s pipe-smoking is a big deal, because of the dropped pipe cleaner at the crime scene. And yet, he can’t envision Arbuthnot stabbing someone so violently.
Chapter 9
Poirot next calls in the large, blustering American. But when the man learns of Poirot’s identity, he drops a surprise of his own: he’s not an American business traveler, but rather a private detective from a well-known New York agency. He says he was abroad for an unrelated case, but while in Stamboul, about to go home, he received a letter from Ratchett. Ratchett wanted from him the same thing he’d wanted from Poirot: protection from enemies. But the man, whose name is Cyrus Hardman, accepted the job and learned a good deal about Ratchett’s enemies. He was afraid of a small, dark man with a womanly voice, who he thought might attack on the second or third night of his train trip. Because of these fears Cyrus accompanied him on the train, and was able to see any potential intruders from his compartment, no. 16. Yet he spotted nobody and, despite his expertise, his client was in fact murdered. Hardman is surprised to learn Ratchett’s real identity, but doesn’t know much about the Armstrong case or Cassetti.
Hardman says that he stayed up all night the previous night to watch for intruders and saw nobody at all enter, even from outside or from the other coaches. He could see the conductor as well, and his account of the conductor’s movements line up with Pierre Michel’s own: he answered various bells, disappeared for about 15 minutes (to see his colleague, we can infer), and came back when someone urgently rang (Mrs. Hubbard) before getting a bottle of water for someone else (Poirot himself). Other than that he stayed in his seat. Poirot asks Hardman to sign his initials, and asks whether anyone on the train can verify his true identity. He says nobody can, except maybe MacQueen, who might recognize him from New York. Most likely, though, Poirot will have to contact people in the outside world to ensure that Hardman is who he says he is. Poirot offers Hardman a cigarette, wondering out loud whether he’d rather smoke a pipe—but Hardman takes the cigarette and departs. After he leaves, Poirot, Bouc, and Constantine discuss the small, dark man with the womanly voice he mentioned. Nobody on the train fits this description.
Chapter 10
Finally, the time comes to talk to the Italian (whose name is Antonio Foscarelli)—a moment for which Bouc has been impatiently waiting. The man explains that he’s now an American citizen employed by Ford. He’s gregarious to the point of being rather overwhelming. In fact, it’s hard to get any information out of him, because every question sets him off on an only somewhat-relevant monologue. Regardless, it transpires that he hasn’t met Ratchett and that his knowledge of the Armstrong case is minimal. Foscarelli says that on the night of the crime, he chatted with the American man (Hardman, who he doesn’t know is a detective) over dinner. He returned to his compartment, which he shared with Masterman. But Masterman was out attending to Ratchett. He came back, looking stressed and sad, and read. Eventually both men went to sleep, with Foscarelli on the top berth and Masterman below, visibly miserable from his toothache. Foscarelli says that Masterman didn’t leave the compartment overnight, and that he would have been woken by it if he had. Foscarelli says that he smokes cigarettes rather than a pipe. Responding to Poirot’s questioning, he says that he’s visited Chicago but isn’t deeply familiar with it. He then signs his name and address at Poitot’s request. He leaves, and Bouc says that he’s sure Foscarelli is the killer: he claims not to trust Italians. But Poirot isn’t so sure. There’s no evidence, he says, and while an Italian might be capable of violence, this crime seems more like one of intense planning—one conceived by an “Anglo-Saxon” person.
Chapter 11
Miss Debenham, who is indeed “Anglo-Saxon,” is next on Poirot’s list. She is carefully composed as she writes her name and address out for the detective. Poirot asks her about what she saw the night before and she says that she was fast asleep the whole night. He asks whether she is distressed by the crime and she says, while any crime is distressing, she does not feel especially affected by this one. When prompted she says that she did not know the victim or have any strong impressions of him. Poirot tries to level with her, saying that he knows his questions seem irrelevant or silly, but that he has his own approach to solving crimes. Debenham still seems rather doubtful. She is, however, familiar with Ratchett’s real identity, simply because Mrs. Hubbard has wasted no time telling the other passengers. Miss Debenham confirms that she is returning from a job as a governess in Baghdad, but that she might not return, because she’d rather work in London. Poirot says that he thought she might have plans to get married, which she seems to find inappropriate.
She confirms that her dressing gown is mauve, but, when asked about a scarlet one, says, “that is not mine.” This, of course, implies that she knows of someone who does actually own such a dressing gown. Poirot asks her who this may be, but she doesn’t know—she merely woke up around 5 a.m. and, peeking into the corridor, spotted the retreating back of the woman in the scarlet kimono. Poirot complains out loud that the case is nonsensical. He rather suddenly dismisses his interviewee, but she has a concern of her own. The Swedish woman believes that she may be a suspect, according to Debenham, because she was perhaps the last person to see Ratchett alive. Debenham wants Poirot to reassure the kindly woman that she’s not being blamed. Poirot asks clarifying questions, and Miss Debenham says the Swedish woman went to fetch an aspirin around 10:30, was gone for five minutes, and didn’t leave again all night. Constantine says that the murder could not have taken place so early, to Miss Debenham’s relief.
Chapter 12
When Debenham leaves, Bouc asks Poirot about his strategy with her. Poirot says that he was trying to crack her cool demeanor, but that he isn’t sure he succeeded. Constantine and Bouc both express doubt that someone so composed would be a murderer, but Poirot says that’s precisely the point. This crime was obviously premeditated, and Debenham’s intelligence actually may implicate her. Also, Poirot says, he overheard her and Arbuthnot talking earlier in the journey in a way that seemed strange. They put the issue aside to interview Princess Dragomiroff’s maid. Rather than trying to surprise or confuse the woman, Hildegarde Schmidt, Poirot is very kind to her. He asks her to write her name and address down and speaks German to her.
She says that she was awoken by an attendant the night before to go wait on her mistress—a common occurrence because Dragomiroff sleeps badly. She did not wear a dressing gown, and in any case, hers is blue. After about half an hour massaging and reading to the Princess she returned to her own compartment, where she fetched a rug. She took the rug back to the Princess to keep her warm, poured her some water, and left again. She saw nobody, not even a woman in red, except for the conductor. The conductor, she says, emerged from a compartment in the middle of the coach, almost colliding with Hildegarde as she carried the rug towards the Princess’s seat. However, she says, this is not the conductor who woke her—that was a different one.
Hildegarde has not been to America, but she by now has heard about Ratchett’s past and is very upset as she thinks about it. Poirot asks her if the handkerchief from the crime scene is hers, since she has an H on it. She says it isn’t, and she doesn’t know who it belongs to, but Poirot notes a hesitant tone in her voice. He then summons all three conductors on the entire train: Pierre Michel and two others. But none are the man who woke Hildegarde. In fact, the description she gives is of a small, dark man with a high voice.
Analysis
As characters take turns being the center of the novel’s attention during these pages, it becomes clear that stereotypes—especially stereotypes about nationality—have a huge role to play in Christie’s characterization. For instance, the Italian man is talkative and passionate, the American is blunt and loud, and the Englishwoman is private and snobbish. The novel’s relationship to these cliches is complex. On the one hand, it’s taken as something of a given that people from different parts of the world have deep differences in intelligence and personality that go beyond mere cultural value. After all, murder goes against the values of both England and Italy, but Poirot and Bouc are in agreement that Englishmen are almost biologically unable to commit acts of random violence, while Italians are incapable of premeditated scheming. Poirot isn’t infallible, but he’s certainly supposed to be smart and more or less correct in his worldview. So the fact that he buys into these stereotypes is a hint to readers that, even if they find this kind of thinking abhorrent, they have to suspend disbelief and buy into it for a bit.
And yet, at the same time, it sometimes seems as if the individual passengers are using others’ preconceptions about them to navigate an uncomfortable situation. For instance, Foscarelli, the Italian, may simply have a hard time answering questions because he’s so chatty (as Italians are, according to the novel, supposed to be). But Christie also hints that he may be acting overly talkative as an avoidance tactic. After all, he is extraordinarily good at changing the subject. Readers never quite know how intelligent these characters are, or, as a matter of fact, how three-dimensional they’re supposed to be. Mystery novels don’t necessarily call for in-depth characterization, since the characters are mainly intended to help move the plot along. But, as we’ve discussed before, this mystery novel takes some of those conventions and turns them on their head. These characters inhabit a world in which the mystery plot is already a well-known bit of popular culture. As a result, they may in fact be playing dumb, faking not only facts about their activities but also about their personalities in order to confuse Poirot.
Indeed, we already know that at least one character is doing just that. Hardman, the American, acts as stereotypically American as possible while pretending to be a salesman. This fakery doesn’t implicate him as a suspect, since he has his own reasons for lying. But it does shed light on the possibility that other characters are playing up their own “roles,” hoping to make their motives and abilities appear simpler than they really are.
