Murder on the Orient Express

Agatha Christie 
™
 MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS 
111
“
Me
, then. Her Christian name on her passport is disfigured by a blob of grease. just an 
accident, anyone would say. But consider that Christian name. Elena. Suppose that, instead of 
Elena, it were 
Helena
. That capital H could be turned into a capital E and then run over the small 
e 
next to it quite easily—and then a spot of grease dropped to cover up the alteration.” 
“Helena!” cried M. Bouc. “It is an idea, that.” 
“Certainly it is an idea! I look about for any confirmation, however slight, of my idea—and I 
find it. One of the luggage labels on the Countess’s baggage is slightly damp. It is one that 
happens to run over the first initial on top of the case. That label has been soaked off and put on 
again in a different place.” 
“You begin to convince me,” said M. Bouc. “But the Countess Andrenyi—surely—” 
“Ah, now, 
mon vieux
, you must turn yourself round and approach an entirely different angle 
of the case. How was this murder intended to appear to everybody? Do not forget that the snow 
has upset all the murderer’s original plan. Let us imagine, for a little minute, that there is no 
snow, that the train proceeded on its normal course. What, then, would have happened? 
“The murder, let us say, would still have been discovered in all probability at the Italian 
frontier early this morning. Much of the same evidence would have been given to the Italian 
police. The threatening letters would have been produced by M. MacQueen; M. Hardman would 
have told his story; Mrs. Hubbard would have been eager to tell how a man passed through her 
compartment; the button would have been found. I imagine that two things only would have been 
different. The man would have passed through Mrs. Hubbard’s compartment just before one 
o’clock—and the Wagon Lit uniform would have been found cast off in one of the toilets.” 
“You mean?” 
“I mean that the murder was 
planned to look like an outside job
. It would have been presumed 
that the assassin had left the train at Brod where it is timed to arrive at 0.58. Somebody would 
probably have passed a strange Wagon Lit conductor in the corridor. The uniform would be left 
in a conspicuous place so as to show clearly just how the trick had been played. No suspicion 
would have attached to the passengers. That, my friends, was how the affair was intended to 
appear to the outside world. 
“But the accident to the train changes everything. Doubtless we have here the reason why the 
man remained in the compartment with his victim so long. He was waiting for the train to go on. 
But at last he realised that 
the train was not going on
. Different plans would have to be made. 
The murderer would now be 
known
to be still on the train.” 
“Yes, yes,” said M. Bouc impatiently. “I see all that. But where does the handkerchief come 
in?” 
“I am returning to it by a somewhat circuitous route. To begin with, you must realise that the 
threatening letters were in the nature of a blind. They might have been lifted bodily out of an 
indifferently written American crime novel. They are not 
real
. They are, in fact, simply intended 
for the police. What we have to ask ourselves is: ‘Did they deceive Ratchett?’ On the face of it, 
the answer seems to be No. His instructions to Hardman seem to point to a definite ‘private’ 
enemy, of whose identity he was well aware. That is, if we accept Hardman’s story as true. But 
Ratchett certainly received 
one
letter of a very different character—the one containing a 
reference to the Armstrong baby, a fragment of which we found in his compartment. In case 
Ratchett had not realised it sooner, this was to make sure that he understood the reason of the 
threats against his life. That letter, as I have said all along, was 
not
intended to be found. The 
murderer’s first care was to destroy it. This, then, was the second hitch in his plans. The first was 
the snow, the second was our reconstruction of that fragment. 

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