The Case of the Missing Men Read Online

  Agatha Christie

Murder on the Orient Express

A Hercule Poirot Mystery

To M.Due east.Fifty.One thousand. Arpachiya, 1933

Contents

Cover

Championship Folio

Dedication

Part One: The Facts

1. An Of import Passenger on the Taurus Express

two. The Tokatlian Hotel

3. Poirot Refuses a Example

4. A Cry in the Nighttime

five. The Crime

6. A Adult female?

7. The Body

eight. The Armstrong Kidnapping Instance

Part Two: The Show

1. The Evidence of the Railroad vehicle Lit Usher

ii. The Testify of the Secretary

3. The Evidence of the Valet

four. The Evidence of the American Lady

v. The Testify of the Swedish Lady

6. The Evidence of the Russian Princess

vii. The Evidence of Count and Countess Andrenyi

8. The Show of Colonel Arbuthnot

ix. The Evidence of Mr. Hardman

10. The Prove of the Italian

eleven. The Evidence of Miss Debenham

12. The Evidence of the High german Lady's Maid

13. Summary of the Passengers' Evidence

xiv. The Testify of the Weapon

fifteen. The Testify of the Passengers' Luggage

Role Three: Hercule Poirot Sits Dorsum and Thinks

1. Which of Them?

ii. Ten Questions

three. Certain Suggestive Points

iv. The Grease Spot on a Hungarian Passport

5. The Christian Proper name of Princess Dragomiroff

6. A Second Interview with Colonel Arbuthnot

7. The Identity of Mary Debenham

viii. Further Surprising Revelations

ix. Poirot Propounds Ii Solutions

Nearly the Author

Other Books by Agatha Christie

Copyright

About the Publisher

PART One

THE FACTS

One

AN IMPORTANT Rider ON THE TAURUS EXPRESS

It was five o'clock on a winter's forenoon in Syria. Alongside the platform at Aleppo stood the train grandly designated in railway guides as the Taurus Express. It consisted of a kitchen and dining automobile, a sleeping car and two local coaches.

By the step leading up into the sleeping automobile stood a young French lieutenant, resplendent in compatible, conversing with a pocket-size lean man, muffled up to the ears, of whom nix was visible but a pink-tipped nose and the two points of an upward curled moustache.

It was freezingly cold, and this job of seeing off a distinguished stranger was not one to be envied, but Lieutenant Dubosc performed his office manfully. Graceful phrases fell from his lips in polished French. Not that he knew what it was all almost. At that place had been rumours, of course, every bit in that location e'er were in such cases. The Full general—his General'south—atmosphere had grown worse and worse. And so there had come this Belgian stranger—all the fashion from England, it seemed. At that place had been a week—a calendar week of curious tensity. And then certain things had happened. A very distinguished officer had committed suicide, another had resigned—anxious faces had of a sudden lost their anxiety, certain military precautions were relaxed. And the General—Lieutenant Dubosc'south own particular General—had suddenly looked x years younger.

Dubosc had overheard part of a conversation between him and the stranger. "You lot have saved us, monday cher," said the General emotionally, his peachy white moustache trembling as he spoke. "You have saved the honour of the French Army—yous have averted much bloodshed! How can I cheers for acceding to my request? To have come so far—"

To which the stranger (by name Yard. Hercule Poirot) had made a fitting reply including the phrase, "Merely indeed do I not remember that once you lot saved my life?" So the General had fabricated another fitting answer to that disclaiming any merit for that by service, and with more mention of France, of Belgium, of glory, of honour and of such kindred things they had embraced each other heartily and the conversation had ended.

As to what it had all been about, Lieutenant Dubosc was withal in the night, just to him had been delegated the duty of seeing off Yard. Poirot by the Taurus Express, and he was conveying information technology out with all the zeal and ardour befitting a young officer with a promising career ahead of him.

"Today is Lord's day," said Lieutenant Dubosc. "Tomorrow, Monday evening, y'all will be in Stamboul."

Information technology was non the get-go time he had fabricated this observation. Conversations on the platform, before the departure of a train, are apt to be somewhat repetitive in grapheme.

"That is and so," agreed M. Poirot.

"And you intend to remain there a few days, I think?"

"Mais oui. Stamboul, it is a city I accept never visited. It would exist a pity to laissez passer through—comme ça." He snapped his fingers descriptively. "Nothing presses—I shall remain at that place as a tourist for a few days."

"La Sainte Sophie, it is very fine," said Lieutenant Dubosc, who had never seen information technology.

A cold wind came whistling down the platform. Both men shivered. Lieutenant Dubosc managed to cast a underground glance at his sentinel. Five minutes to 5—but v minutes more than!

Fancying that the other human being had noticed his secret glance, he hastened once more into oral communication.

"There are few people travelling this fourth dimension of year," he said, glancing up at the windows of the sleeping car above them.

"That is and then," agreed M. Poirot.

"Let us hope y'all volition not be snowed up in the Taurus!"

"That happens?"

"It has occurred, yeah. Not this yr, as however."

"Permit us hope, and then," said M. Poirot. "The weather reports from Europe, they are bad."

"Very bad. In the Balkans there is much snow."

"In Germany too, I have heard."

"Eh bien," said Lieutenant Dubosc hastily every bit another break seemed to exist nearly to occur. "Tomorrow evening at seven-xl you volition exist in Constantinople."

"Yes," said Thousand. Poirot, and went on desperately, "La Sainte Sophie, I have heard it is very fine."

"Magnificent, I believe."

To a higher place their heads the blind of i of the sleeping car compartments was pushed aside and a young woman looked out.

Mary Debenham had had little sleep since she left Baghdad on the preceding Thursday. Neither in the train to Kirkuk, nor in the Rest House at Mosul, nor final night on the train had she slept properly. Now, weary of lying wakeful in the hot stuffiness of her overheated compartment, she got up and peered out.

This must be Aleppo. Nothing to see, of course. Just a long, poor-lighted platform with loud furious altercations in Arabic going on somewhere. Ii men below her window were talking French. One was a French officer, the other was a trivial man with enormous moustaches. She smiled faintly. She had never seen anyone quite so heavily muffled up. It must exist very cold outside. That was why they heated the train so terribly. She tried to force the window down lower, simply it would not go.

The Wagon Lit usher had come upward to the two men. The train was nigh to depart, he said. Monsieur had amend mount. The little man removed his chapeau. What an egg-shaped head he had. In spite of her preoccupations Mary Debenham smiled. A ridiculous-looking lilliputian man. The sort of little man 1 could never take seriously.

Lieutenant Dubosc was saying his departing oral communication. He had idea information technology out beforehand and had kept it till the concluding minute. It was a very beautiful, polished oral communication.

Not to be outdone, One thousand. Poirot replied in kind.

"En voiture, Monsieur," said the Wagon Lit conductor.

With an air of space reluctance Grand. Poirot climbed

aboard the train. The conductor climbed after him. M. Poirot waved his hand. Lieutenant Dubosc came to the salute. The railroad train, with a terrific jerk, moved slowly forward.

"Enfin!" murmured M. Hercule Poirot.

"Brrrrr," said Lieutenant Dubosc, realizing to the full how cold he was….

Ii

"Voilà, Monsieur." The conductor displayed to Poirot with a dramatic gesture the beauty of his sleeping compartment and the neat arrangement of his luggage. "The footling valise of Monsieur, I have placed it here."

His outstretched hand was suggestive. Hercule Poirot placed in information technology a folded note.

"Merci, Monsieur." The usher became brisk and businesslike. "I have the tickets of Monsieur. I will besides have the passport, please. Monsieur breaks his journeying in Stamboul, I understand?"

M. Poirot assented.

"In that location are not many people travelling, I imagine?" he said.

"No, Monsieur. I accept only two other passengers—both English. A Colonel from India, and a young English lady from Baghdad. Monsieur requires anything?"

Monsieur demanded a small bottle of Perrier.

Five o'clock in the morning is an awkward time to board a train. There was even so ii hours earlier dawn. Conscious of an inadequate dark's sleep, and of a fragile mission successfully accomplished, M. Poirot curled up in a corner and barbarous asleep.

When he awoke it was half-past nine, and he sallied forth to the restaurant auto in search of hot coffee.

There was only one occupant at the moment, obviously the young English lady referred to by the conductor. She was alpine, slim and dark—possibly twenty-eight years of age. There was a kind of cool efficiency in the way she was eating her breakfast and in the way she called to the attendant to bring her more coffee, which bespoke a knowledge of the world and of travelling. She wore a dark-coloured travelling dress of some thin material eminently suitable for the heated atmosphere of the train.

M. Hercule Poirot, having nothing better to do, amused himself by studying her without actualization to do and then.

She was, he judged, the kind of young woman who could have care of herself with perfect ease wherever she went. She had poise and efficiency. He rather liked the severe regularity of her features and the delicate pallor of her peel. He liked the burnished black head with its corking waves of hair, and her eyes, cool, impersonal and grey. Merely she was, he decided, just a little too efficient to exist what he chosen "jolie femme."

Presently another person entered the restaurant car. This was a alpine man of between forty and fifty, lean of figure, chocolate-brown of skin, with hair slightly grizzled round the temples.

"The colonel from India," said Poirot to himself.

The newcomer gave a niggling bow to the girl.

"Morning, Miss Debenham."

"Good morning, Colonel Arbuthnot."

The Colonel was standing with a mitt on the chair opposite her.

"Any objection?" he asked.

"Of course non. Sit down downwards."

"Well, you know, breakfast isn't always a chatty meal."

"I should hope non. Just I don't bite."

The Colonel sat down.

"Boy," he called in peremptory fashion.

He gave an order for eggs and coffee.

His optics rested for a moment on Hercule Poirot, but they passed on indifferently. Poirot, reading the English mind correctly, knew that he had said to himself, "Merely some damned foreigner."

True to their nationality, the two English people were not chatty. They exchanged a few cursory remarks, and shortly the girl rose and went back to her compartment.

At lunch time the other two over again shared a tabular array and again they both completely ignored the tertiary passenger. Their conversation was more animated than at breakfast. Colonel Arbuthnot talked of the Punjab, and occasionally asked the girl a few questions about Baghdad where it became clear that she had been in a mail as governess. In the course of conversation they discovered some mutual friends which had the immediate effect of making them more than friendly and less stiff. They discussed former Tommy Somebody and Jerry Someone Else. The Colonel inquired whether she was going straight through to England or whether she was stopping in Stamboul.

"No, I'yard going directly on."

"Isn't that rather a pity?"

"I came out this way two years ago and spent three days in Stamboul then."

"Oh, I see. Well, I may say I'm very glad you lot are going right through, considering I am."

He made a kind of clumsy little bow, flushing a little equally he did so.

"He is susceptible, our Colonel," thought Hercule Poirot to himself with some amusement. "The train, it is as unsafe every bit a body of water voyage!"

Miss Debenham said evenly that that would be very dainty. Her manner was slightly repressive.

The Colonel, Hercule Poirot noticed, accompanied her back to her compartment. Later they passed through the magnificent scenery of the Taurus. Every bit they looked down towards the Cilician Gates, standing in the corridor side past side, a sigh came of a sudden from the girl. Poirot was continuing near them and heard her murmur:

"It'due south and so beautiful! I wish—I wish—"

"Yes?"

"I wish, I could bask it!"

Arbuthnot did not reply. The square line of his jaw seemed a lilliputian sterner and grimmer.

"I wish to Heaven you were out of all this," he said.

"Hush, please. Hush."

"Oh! it's all right." He shot a slightly annoyed glance in Poirot's management. Then he went on: "Simply I don't similar the thought of your being a governess—at the beck and telephone call of tyrannical mothers and their tiresome brats."

She laughed with just a hint of uncontrol in the audio.

"Oh! you mustn't think that. The downtrodden governess is quite an exploded myth. I tin can assure you that it's the parents who are afraid of existence bullied by me."

They said no more than. Arbuthnot was, peradventure, ashamed of his flare-up.

"Rather an odd little comedy that I watch hither," said Poirot to himself thoughtfully.

He was to remember that idea of his afterwards.

They arrived at Konya that dark about half-by eleven. The two English travellers got out to stretch their legs, pacing up and downwardly the snowy platform.

K. Poirot was content to sentry the teeming activity of the station through a window pane. Later about x minutes, however, he decided that a jiff of air would not possibly be a bad affair, after all. He made careful preparations, wrapping himself in several coats and mufflers and encasing his neat boots in goloshes. Thus attired he descended gingerly to the platform and began to pace its length. He walked out beyond the engine.

It was the voices which gave him the clue to the two indistinct figures standing in the shadow of a traffic van. Arbuthnot was speaking.

"Mary—"

The girl interrupted him.

"Not now. Non now. When it's all over. When it's behind the states—then—"

Discreetly Grand. Poirot turned away. He wondered.

He would hardly have recognized the cool, efficient voice of Miss Debenham….

"Curious," he said to himself.

The side by side day he wondered whether, perhaps, they had quarrelled. They spoke little to each other. The daughter, he thought, looked broken-hearted. There were dark circles under her eyes.

It was about half-past ii in the afternoon when the railroad train came to a halt. Heads were poked out of windows. A little knot of men were clustered past the side of the line looking and pointing at something under the dining car.

Poirot leaned out and spoke to the Wagon Lit conductor who was hurrying past. The man answered and Poirot drew back his head and, turning, almost collided with Mary Debenham who was standing just backside him.

"What is the matter?" she asked rather breathlessly in French. "Why are we stopping?"

"Information technology is null, Mademoiselle. It is something that has defenseless burn down under the dining automobile. Nothing serious. I

t is put out. They are now repairing the damage. In that location is no danger, I assure y'all."

She made a little precipitous gesture, as though she were waving the thought of danger aside as something completely unimportant.

"Yes, yes, I understand that. Only the fourth dimension!"

"The time?"

"Yeah, this volition filibuster us."

"It is possible—yes," agreed Poirot.

"But we tin't afford delay! The train is due in at half dozen:55 and one has to cross the Bosphorus and grab the Simplon Orient Express the other side at nine o'clock. If there is an 60 minutes or two of filibuster we shall miss the connection."

"It is possible, yes," he admitted.

He looked at her curiously. The mitt that held the window bar was non quite steady, her lips as well were trembling.

"Does information technology affair to you lot very much, Mademoiselle?" he asked.

"Yes. Yeah, it does. I—I must catch that train."

She turned away from him and went downwards the corridor to join Colonel Arbuthnot.

Her anxiety, however, was needless. Ten minutes later the train started once again. Information technology arrived at Haydapassar merely five minutes tardily, having made upward time on the journey.

The Bosphorus was crude and M. Poirot did not enjoy the crossing. He was separated from his travelling companions on the boat, and did not run into them again.

On arrival at the Galata Bridge he drove straight to the Tokatlian Hotel.

Two

THE TOKATLIAN HOTEL

At the Tokatlian, Hercule Poirot asked for a room with bathroom. So he stepped over to the concierge'south desk-bound and inquired for letters.

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