Murder on the Orient Express: Part Two: Chapters 1-10

“We can open our Court of Inquiry without more ado. First, I think, we should take the evidence of the Wagon Lit conductor. You probably know something about the man. What character has he? Is he a man in whose word you would place reliance?”

“I should be more inclined to suspect you, M. MacQueen, if you displayed an inordinate sorrow at your employer’s decease.”

“Did your master ever take a sleeping draught?”

He could visualize the scene—the large voluble Italian, and the snub direct administered by the gentleman’s gentleman.

Yes, well, I just lay there with my eyes closed, and I thought whatever should I do, and I thought, ‘Well, I’m just thankful that my daughter doesn’t know the plight I’m in.’

She took out in turn two large clean handkerchiefs, a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, a bottle of aspirin, a packet of Glauber’s salts, a celluloid tube of bright green peppermints, a bunch of keys, a pair of scissors, a book of American Express cheques, a snapshot of an extraordinarily plain-looking child, some letters, five strings of pseudo Oriental beads and a small metal object—a button.

“Yes, indeed I do. And how the wretch that did it escaped scot free! My, I’d have liked to get my hands on him.”

She was, she told him, matron in a missionary school near Stamboul. She was a trained nurse.

“A pale mauve abba such as you buy in the East.”

“Do so, Monsieur, I implore you, do so.”

“How you harp on your Italian! No, we will start at the top of the tree. Perhaps Madame la Princesse will be so good as to spare us a few moments of her time. Convey that message to her, Michel.”

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.

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.

I read until the hour of eleven, when I turned out my light. I was unable to sleep owing to certain rheumatic pains from which I suffer.

“Be easy, mon vieux, I will be most tactful. A mere formality.”

Poirot rose gallantly, bowed her into the seat opposite him.

“Perhaps you will sign this memorandum to that effect, then.”

Colonel Arbuthnot, uninterested in what a pack of foreigners called anything, replied with true British brevity: “Yes.”

“And that,” his manner seemed to say, “is one for you, you interfering little jackanapes.”

“So you do not think that she is likely to be implicated in this crime?”

“Well, the door of it was not quite closed. And the fellow inside peered out in a furtive sort of way. Then he pulled the door to quickly. Of course, I know there’s nothing in that—but it just struck me as a bit odd. I mean, it’s quite usual to open a door and stick your head out if you want to see anything. But it was the furtive way he did it that caught my attention.”

He fell into a reverie, beating a light tattoo on the table.

The resonant nasal tones of his voice became modified.

“No, he was kinder reticent about that part of it. Just said the fellow was out for his blood and meant to get it.”

“I’m plumb certain. Nobody got on that train from outside and nobody came along the train from the rear carriages. I’ll take my oath on that.”

There was a bell ringing like mad and he came back running. I stepped out into the corridor to see what it was all about—felt a mite nervous, you understand—but it was only the American dame.

A voluble exposition followed. At the end of it, anything that the three men did not know about Foscarelli’s business methods, his journeys, his income, and his opinion of the United States and most European countries seemed a negligible factor.

“During your sojourn in the United States did you ever come across the deceased?”

“Did he ever speak of his master? Ever express any animus against him?”

The Italian wrote with a flourish.