Murder on the Orient Express

Agatha Christie 
™
 MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS 
24
“Where are we?” 
“Between Vincovci and Brod.” 
“Là-là,” said Poirot vexedly. 
The man withdrew and returned with the water. 
“
Bon soir, Monsieur
.” 
Poirot drank a glass of water and composed himself to sleep. 
He was just dropping off when something again woke him. This time it was as though 
something heavy had fallen with a thud against the door. 
He sprang up, opened it and looked out. Nothing. But to his right, some distance down the 
corridor, a woman wrapped in a scarlet kimono was retreating from him. At the other end, sitting 
on his little seat, the conductor was entering up figures on large sheets of paper. Everything was 
deathly quiet. 
“Decidedly I suffer from the nerves,” said Poirot and retired to bed again. This time he slept 
till morning. 
When he awoke the train was still at a standstill. He raised a blind and looked out. Heavy 
banks of snow surrounded the train. 
He glanced at his watch and saw that it was past nine o’clock. 
At a quarter to ten, neat, spruce and dandified as ever, he made his way to the restaurant car, 
where a chorus of woe was going on. 
Any barriers there might have been between the passengers had now quite broken down. All 
were united by a common misfortune. Mrs. Hubbard was loudest in her lamentations. 
“My daughter said it would be the easiest way in the world. Just sit in the train until I got to 
Parrus. And now we may be here for days and days,” she wailed. “And my boat sails day after 
to-morrow. How am I going to catch it now? Why, I can’t even wire to cancel my passage. I’m 
just too mad to talk about it!” 
The Italian said that he had urgent business himself in Milan. The large American said that 
that was “too bad, Ma’am,” and soothingly expressed a hope that the train might make up time. 
“My sister—her children wait me,” said the Swedish lady, and wept. “I get no word to them. 
What they think? They will say bad things have happen to me.” 
“How long shall we be here?” demanded Mary Debenham. “Doesn’t anybody 
know
?” 
Her voice sounded impatient, but Poirot noted that there were no signs of that almost feverish 
anxiety which she had displayed during the check to the Taurus Express. 
Mrs. Hubbard was off again. 
“There isn’t anybody knows a thing on this train. And nobody’s trying to 
do
anything. Just a 
pack of useless foreigners. Why, if this were at home, there’d be someone at least 
trying
to do 
something!” 
Arbuthnot turned to Poirot and spoke in careful British French. 
“
Vous êtes un directeur de la ligne, je crois, Monsieur. Vous pouvez nous dire
—” 
Smiling, Poirot corrected him. 
“No, no,” he said in English. “It is not I. You confound me with my friend, M. Bouc.” 
“Oh, I’m sorry” 
“Not at all. It is most natural. I am now in the compartment that he had formerly.” 
M. Bouc was not present in the restaurant car. Poirot looked about to notice who else was 
absent. 
Princess Dragomiroff was missing, and the Hungarian couple. Also Ratchett, his valet, and 
the German lady’s-maid. 

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