Murder on the Orient Express

Agatha Christie 
™
 MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS 
134
the extraordinary crowd travelling in the Stamboul-Calais coach at a slack time of year—this was 
explained. 
“Ratchett had escaped justice in America. There was no question as to his guilt. I visualised a 
self-appointed jury of twelve people who had condemned him to death and who by the 
exigencies of the case had themselves been forced to be his executioners. And immediately, on 
that assumption, the whole case fell into beautiful shining order. 
“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. Hardman’s evidence was necessary in case some 
outsider should be suspected of the crime and be unable to prove an alibi. 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. As my 
friend M. Bouc remarked, the case seemed fantastically impossible! That was exactly the 
impression intended to be conveyed. 
“Did this solution explain everything? Yes, it did. The nature of the wounds—each inflicted 
by a different person. The artificial threatening letters—artificial since they were unreal, written 
only to be produced as evidence. (Doubtless there 
were
real letters, warning Ratchett of his fate, 
which MacQueen destroyed, substituting for them these others.) Then Hardman’s story of being 
called in by Ratchett—a lie, of course, from beginning to end. The description of the mythical 
‘small dark man with a womanish voice’—a convenient description since it had the merit of not 
incriminating any of the actual Wagon Lit conductors and would apply equally well to a man or 
a woman. 
“The idea of stabbing is at first sight a curious one, but on reflection nothing else would fit the 
circumstances so well. A dagger was a weapon that could be used by everyone—strong or 
weak—and it made no noise. I fancy, though I may be wrong, that each person in turn entered 
Ratchett’s darkened compartment through that of Mrs. Hubbard—and struck! They themselves 
would never know which blow actually killed him. 
“The final letter which Ratchett had probably found on his pillow was carefully burnt. With 
no clue pointing to the Armstrong case there would be absolutely no reason for suspecting any of 
the passengers on the train. It would be put down as an outside job, and the ‘small dark man with 
the womanish voice’ would actually have been seen by one or more of the passengers leaving the 
train, at Brod! 
“I do not know exactly what happened when the conspirators discovered that this part of their 
plan was impossible owing to the accident to the train. There was, I imagine, a hasty 
consultation, and then they decided to go through with it. It was true that now one and all of the 
passengers were bound to come under suspicion, but that possibility had already been foreseen 
and provided for. The only additional thing to be done was to confuse the issue even further. 
Two so-called ‘clues’ were dropped in the dead man’s compartment—one incriminating Colonel 
Arbuthnot (who had the strongest alibi and whose connection with the Armstrong family was 
probably the hardest to prove); and the second clue, the handkerchief, incriminating Princess 
Dragomiroff who, by virtue of her social position, her particularly frail physique and the alibi 
given her by her maid and the conductor, was practically in an unassailable position. 
“Further to confuse the issue, a red herring was drawn across the trail—the mythical woman 
in the red kimono. Again I am to bear witness to this woman’s existence. There is a heavy bang 
at my door. I get up and look out—and see the scarlet kimono disappearing in the distance. A 

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