Murder on the Orient Express

Summary

Murder on the Orient Express is a detective novel by Agatha Christie, published in Britain by Collins Crime Club on 1 January 1934 and in the United States the same year as Murder in the Calais Coach. It is one of the best-known cases of her Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. Poirot, returning from a case in Syria, secures a berth on the Simplon-Orient Express from Istanbul thanks to his friend M. Bouc, a director of the railway company. The winter coach is unusually full. An American passenger, Ratchett, asks Poirot to protect him from threats, and Poirot refuses because he dislikes the man. That night, after leaving Belgrade, the train is stopped by a snowdrift in Yugoslavia, and in the morning Ratchett is found dead in his locked compartment, stabbed twelve times. With Bouc and a Greek doctor, Constantine, Poirot investigates while the train waits for rescue. A scrap of burned paper reveals that Ratchett was really Cassetti, the kidnapper who had murdered the small daughter of the wealthy Armstrong family in America and escaped conviction; the crime had led to the deaths of Daisy Armstrong's mother, her father and a nursemaid wrongly suspected. Poirot interviews the passengers, a varied group including an English governess, a colonel from India, a Russian princess, a Hungarian count and countess, an American widow, a valet and a secretary. The clues contradict one another: a conductor's uniform, a scarlet kimono, a pipe cleaner and a handkerchief marked with an initial. In the final chapter Poirot assembles the passengers and offers two explanations. In the first, an unknown intruder boarded at the last station, killed Ratchett and escaped. In the second, the passengers, each connected to the Armstrong household, acted together, each striking a blow. When Poirot's reasoning is confirmed, he leaves the choice to Bouc, who prefers the first solution for the Yugoslav police, and Poirot withdraws from the case. The novel drew on the 1932 kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's son and on Christie's own journeys on the Orient Express, including a delay caused by floods. Its ending raises questions about justice outside the law that readers continue to debate, and it has been adapted for film, television, radio and the stage.

Top Lessons

• Justice and the law

  The novel asks whether a killing can be just when the law has failed. Readers can examine Poirot's decision without the book telling them what to conclude.

• The logic of detection

  Poirot reasons from inconsistencies in testimony and evidence. Students can follow how he tests each clue.

• A closed world

  The snowbound train isolates suspects and detective alike. The setting shapes the mystery's structure.

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