Summary
Chapter 1
Bouc, Constantine, and Poirot sit together and discuss what they know. Bouc is feeling very pessimistic, but Poirot is confident. He draws his friends’ attention to MacQueen’s stories, about how his employer spoke only English and needed translation in every foreign country. Poirot points out that this is at odds with what he heard someone yell from Ratchett’s compartment at 12:37 a.m.: “‘Ce n’est rien. Je me suis trompé.” How would Ratchett, who spoke no French, know such an idiomatic phrase? This must have been yelled by someone else—an intruder. This means, says Bouc, that the clock saying 1:15 doesn’t reflect the time of the murder, and must have been purposely placed to mislead detectives. As a result, it makes sense to be suspicious of anyone who has a trustworthy-sounding alibi for their location at 1:15, since the killer wanted it to look as if that’s when the crime took place. Meanwhile, Poirot says, the killer must have entered the compartment while the train was stopped at Vincovci, since Pierre Michel was out on the platform. Otherwise, the (real) conductor would have seen the false one from his seat. Poirot, to help orient his friends, shows them a list he’s made of all the passengers. It lists any possible motives, their alibis, the possible evidence against them, and any suspicious circumstances. A note on the paper serves to remind everyone that the conductor saw nobody entering Ratchett’s compartment between midnight and 2 a.m., except for a brief break the conductor took to visit a colleague.
Chapter 2
Bouc finds the list of passengers’ information unhelpful, but Poirot gives him another piece of paper that frames the case differently. It contains ten questions central to the case. They encompass the following topics:
-The origin of the handkerchief, pipe cleaner, and kimono.
-The gender of the person disguised as a conductor.
-The watch set at 1:15, and whether this was actually the time of the murder.
-Ratchett’s unusual wounds, and whether they mean he was actually stabbed by two different people.
Poirot first discusses the handkerchief. Three women (Mrs. Hubbard, Hildegarde Schmidt, and Mary Debenham, whose middle name is Hermione) have “H” as one of their initials. Bouc and Constantine suspect Debenham or Hubbard, but think that Schmidt is unlikely to own such a luxurious handkerchief. But Poirot’s friends think that the pipe cleaner was dropped on purpose to incriminate Arbuthnot, partly because Arbuthnot’s willingness to admit that he smokes a pipe seems to imply his innocence. Bouc and Constantine are stumped on the kimono question, so they all move on to the fake conductor’s identity. A number of passengers are too tall or broad to fit the description given, leaving Mary Debenham, Masterman, Countess Andrenyi, and Princess Dragomiroff as options. However, all four have sound alibis.
The next questions concern the watch. Bouc concludes that it was set to 1:15 by the second murderer—the person in the scarlet kimono. This person, he imagines, entered the room, unaware that Ratchett was already dead, stabbed him, discovered his watch, and set it to 1:15. Poirot seems skeptical but is unsure what other explanation to believe. According to this explanation, the first killer came before 1:15, and the second came after.
Poirot explains that he gathered every passenger’s signature in order to find out which ones were left-handed, though, he acknowledges, many people use one hand to write and another for other activities (like stabbing). Everyone signed with their right hand except Dragomiroff, who refused to write at all. Constantine doubts that the elderly woman could have delivered the blows that killed Ratchett, though Poirot points out that her strong will may compensate for her frailty.
Finally, given the nature of Ratchett’s wounds, Constantine confirms that there simply have to have been two separate killers.
Now, Poirot says, they have all gathered, discussed, and evaluated all the possible evidence. The only work left to do is mental: they simply must close their eyes and think about what they know until they figure it out.
Chapter 3
Christie now lets us enter the brains of Bouc and Constantine as they quietly think. Both are easily distracted and find themselves thinking about things unrelated to the evidence. We don’t see what Poirot is thinking, but we know that he sits very still and quiet for a long while, eventually announcing that he has come up with a possible explanation for everything they know. He names a series of striking facts or circumstances, including the fact that this particular train is packed with a diverse group of passengers during an off-season.
Another odd fact is the grease stain on the Countess’s passport, which happens to cover part of her first name. Poirot connects this evidence to the handkerchief. Only two passengers are likely to own such an extravagant piece: Natalia Dragomiroff, or Elena Andrenyi. What if, Poirot posits, the grease stain covers an “H,” and the countess’s name is actually Helena? Oddly, the Countess has a water stain on her luggage label that obscures the very same initial. Now, Poirot says, if the train hadn’t gotten stuck in the snow, the murderer would have been able to make it all look like an outside job. It’s only the coincidence of the snow and the delay that have foiled that plan, making it clear that a passenger committed the crime.
He then jumps to the evidence of the threatening letters written to Ratchett. Most of them were oddly generic, and, he suspects, written on purpose for police to find. Only the destroyed letter, referencing Daisy Armstrong, was authentic and not intended to be found. Thus, the murderer faced two obstacles: the train’s delay, and the fact that Poirot successfully found and made sense of the destroyed letter. Since the killer did not want the letter about Daisy Armstrong discovered, this implies that one passenger has such a clear and undeniable connection to the Armstrong case that they would immediately become a suspect if Ratchett’s identity was discovered.
Poirot returns to the handkerchief. He isn’t sure it incriminates the Countess—it may have been placed there to frame her. Her attempts to disguise her name may not point to guilt, but instead to the fear anyone would feel when under investigation for murder. Now, Poirot posits, Helena Andrenyi (whose maiden name is Goldenberg) is actually the younger sister of Daisy Armstrong’s mother. Princess Dragomiroff claimed earlier to have lost touch with this sister. But Poirot thinks this was a lie to protect the countess. At this point, an attendant enters and asks whether he may call the passengers in to dinner. Poirot says yes.
Chapter 4
The very quiet and subdued passengers arrive to eat, and Poirot corners the Andrenyis after the others have finished and left the room. Poirot confronts the Countess with a handkerchief, telling her that he knows her real name, identity, and relationship to Daisy Armstrong. The couple’s horrified reaction shows that Poirot is right, but the Countess explains. She tells Poirot that, since her relationship to the Armstrongs made her an obvious suspect, and since she knew a handkerchief with her initial had been found at the crime scene, she and her husband disguised her real identity. However, she says, she is innocent—and moreover, the handkerchief is not hers. Poirot decides that, even if Helena Andrenyi isn’t the culprit, she might have helpful knowledge about the Armstrong case. He asks her about the nursemaid who committed suicide after Daisy’s death. Helena says that the maid was French, that she was named Susanne Stengelberg, and that she cared deeply for Daisy and her family. When Poirot asks who was caring for the Countess herself at the time of Daisy’s murder—given that she is many years younger than her late older sister, and was a child at the time—she recounts a Scottish woman named Miss Freebody. Poirot asks her whether she recognizes anyone on the train, and she says no, with the exception of her old family friend Natalia Dragomiroff.
Chapter 5
Bouc is sure that the Countess is the killer, but Poirot says that he believes her claims to innocence. At that moment, Princess Dragomiroff enters and admits that the handkerchief is hers. Her name is Natalia, which does not start with an H—but when written in Russian, her native language, it does. The Princess says that she knows how it looks: not only was her handkerchief found next to Ratchett’s body, but she previously lied about Helena Andrenyi’s identity. However, she says, she doesn’t know how the handkerchief wound up at the crime scene, and she only lied to protect her dear friend’s daughter. The Princess is pleased to discover that her own maid lied out of loyalty to her, choosing not to share that the handkerchief belonged to her. She then leaves.
The men reflect on whether the Princess could physically have wounded Ratchett, and Constantine concedes that she may have delivered shallow blows, but not the fatal ones. He also points out that the count keeps his own handkerchief in his right breast pocket. Bouc is awestruck and horrified at the number of passengers who have lied to his face, but Poirot says that’s not so bad. A liar will usually own up to the truth if you manage to guess it to their face, he says, and that is what he plans to do with the others. At that, he calls in Colonel Arbuthnot.
Analysis
In this section of the book, Agatha Christie must convincingly show us the inner workings of Poirot’s mind, letting us see how he turns a tangle of evidence and intuition into a real theory of the case. Once again, Bouc and Constantine are absolutely essential intermediaries between the reader and the detective. Their presence gives Poirot an excuse to explain his methods and thought processes, inviting the reader in. It’s all due to these companions that Poirot shows off his list of passengers’ evidence and his list of questions. These materials actually give the reader a chance to think about the case so far and look at all the relevant facts in one place, even if they haven’t been taking notes themselves.
Moreover, readers are allowed to access Bouc and Constantine’s internal monologues. Poirot’s point of view is closed to us, partly because it’s important for the detective to maintain his mystique, and partly because it would be very difficult for a reader to keep up with a character as almost supernaturally observant as Poirot. Thus, when Poirot simply sits back and thinks in silence about the case at hand, the minds of Bouc and Constantine offer a place of rest and refuge. While waiting for the protagonist to come back with a brilliant pronouncement, readers can relax alongside these less-mysterious characters, amused by the entertaining banality of their thoughts.
Of course, the sitting-silently-and-thinking method is also available to readers. Someone sitting in their house reading a novel can’t search for evidence, and certainly can’t use special tools or technology to figure out who the killer is. If they want to try and work things out alongside the book’s hero, they can only use the very limited amount of evidence before them. Their biggest tool is simply their own innate sense of logic. For this reason, it’s no coincidence that Poirot is such a believer in the power of quiet, careful thinking. Agatha Christie has designed a hero who opts to use the same resources available to readers—no more, no less. As such, the reader has, in a sense, the same chance that Poirot does of solving Ratchett’s murder. At the same time, it's unlikely they’ll actually be able to do so, simply because they would have to have truly excellent logical skills. This makes Poirot’s ability all the more impressive and tantalizing: readers feel very close to reaching the conclusions at which Poirot arrives, but aren’t ultimately able to do so most of the time.
One of the unusual things about Poirot’s logical abilities is that he always accounts for emotional complexity. While some writers might position logic and emotion as polar opposites, Christie emphasizes emotional nuance and empathy as one component of thorough logical thinking. Therefore, rather than assuming that Helena Andrenyi has lied about her identity simply because she’s the murderer (or that the Princess has lied for the same reason) he acknowledges the full range of reactions someone in these women’s positions might have. In other words, part of his rational process consists of recognizing that people aren’t always rational, especially when they’re grieving, angry, or panicked.
