Chapter V
The Crime

Poirot turned off the light but couldn't sleep. The train still didn't move. If it was a station outside, it was curiously quiet. And inside the train the noises seemed unusually loud. He could hear Ratchett moving about next door – the sound of the washbasin pulled down, the sound of the tap water running, a splashing noise, then the sound of the basin shut again. Footsteps of someone in bedroom slippers passed up the corridor outside.

Poirot felt thirsty and decided to ring for the conductor and ask for some mineral water. He looked at his watch again. Just after a quarter past one. His finger went out to the bell, but another bell rang at that moment. The conductor couldn't answer every bell at once, so Hercule Poirot waited.

The bell rang and rang, again and again. Where was the conductor? Somebody was getting impatient.

At last the conductor's running footsteps were heard. He knocked at a door not far from Poirot's own.

Then he heard the conductor's apologetic voice and a torrent of words from a woman.

Mrs. Hubbard!

Poirot smiled to himself.

Finally he heard a “Bonne nuit, Madame,” and a closing door. He pressed his own finger on the bell.

The conductor arrived immediately. He looked hot and worried. Poirot asked for mineral water.

Perhaps a glint in Poirot's eye made him unburden himself. “La dame americaine —”

“Yes?”

He wiped his forehead. “She insists – but insists – that there is a man in her compartment! Just imagine, Monsieur. In so small a space, where would he hide? But she will not listen. She insists. She woke up, and there was a man there. And how, I ask, did he get out and leave the door bolted behind him? As though there were not enough to worry us already. This snow —”

“Snow?”

“But yes, Monsieur. We have run into a snowdrift. I remember once being snowed up for seven days.”

“Where are we?”

“Between Vincovci and Brod.”

When the man brought the water, Poirot drank a glass and was just falling asleep when something again woke him. This time it was as though something heavy had fallen outside his door.

He jumped up, opened it and looked out. There was nothing on the floor. But to his right, some distance down the corridor, a woman in a scarlet kimono was moving away from him. At the other end, sitting on his little seat, the conductor was writing down figures on large sheets of paper. Everything was absolutely quiet.

“Definitely I suffer from the nerves,” decided Poirot and went to bed again. This time he slept till morning.

He awoke after nine o'clock and raised a blind. Heavy mounds of snow surrounded the train.

At a quarter to ten, neat and dandified as ever, he went to the restaurant car, where a chorus of lamenting voices was heard. As usual, Mrs. Hubbard was loudest in her lamentations.

“My boat sails day after tomorrow. And we may be here for days and days. And I can't even wire to cancel my passage!”

The Italian man said he was needed urgently in Milan. The Swedish lady wept because she couldn't let her relatives know about the delay in her journey.

Mary Debenham asked impatiently if anybody knew how long the delay would be. Poirot noticed that she was not so worried as she had been during the delay of the Taurus Express.

Mrs. Hubbard began again.

“Nobody knows a thing on this train. And nobody's trying to do anything. Just a crowd of useless foreigners. Why, if this were at home, there'd be someone at least trying to do something!”

Arbuthnot addressed Poirot in careful British French as if he were the director of the rail way line.

Poirot corrected him, smiling.

“No, no,” he said in English. “You confuse me with my friend, M. Bouc. I am just in the compartment that he had formerly.”

M. Bouc was not present in the restaurant car. Poirot looked around to see who else was absent.

He didn't see Princess Dragomiroff, the Hungarian couple, Ratchett, his valet, and the German lady's maid.

The Swedish lady wiped her eyes.

“I should not cry,” she said. “All is for the best, whatever happens.”

“That's all very well,” said MacQueen restlessly. “We may be here for days.”

“What is this country anyway?” demanded Mrs. Hubbard tearfully.

On being told it was Jugoslavia, she said, “Oh! One of these Balkan things. What can you expect?”

“You are the only patient one, Mademoiselle,” said Poirot to Miss Debenham.

She shrugged her shoulders slightly. “What can one do?”

“You are a philosopher, Mademoiselle.”

“I think my attitude is more selfish. I have learned to save myself useless emotion.”

She was speaking more to herself than to him. She was not even looking at him. Her gaze went past him, out of the window to where the snow lay in heavy masses.

“You are a strong character, Mademoiselle,” said Poirot gently. “I think you are the strongest character amongst us.”

“Oh! I know a character much stronger than I am.”

“And that is —?”

It seemed she suddenly realized that she was talking to a stranger and foreigner, with whom, until this morning, she had exchanged only a few phrases.

She laughed politely but with estrangement.

“Well, that old lady, for example. A very ugly old lady but rather charming. She has only to lift a little finger and ask for something in a polite voice – and the whole train runs.”

“It runs also for my friend M. Bouc,” said Poirot. “But that is because he is a director of the line, not because he has a strong character.”

Mary Debenham smiled.

One of the sleeping-car conductors came into the car and stood at Poirot's elbow.

“Pardon, Monsieur.”

“Yes?”

“M. Bouc would be glad if you would be so kind as to come to him for a few minutes.”

Poirot asked to excuse him and followed the man out of the dining-car. It was a big fair man, not his own conductor.

M. Bouc was not in his own compartment. It was a second – class one – chosen because of its slightly larger size.

Besides M. Bouc and a small dark man, who were sitting, the chief of the train and his own sleeping-car conductor were standing there.

By the expression on M. Bouc's face Poirot understood that something out of the ordinary had happened.

“We need you, my friend. An American called Ratchett lies dead in his berth – stabbed,” said M. Bouc.

“Brr!” said Poirot. “This is serious!”

“And the unusual circumstances make it even more serious. First, may be here for days because of the snow; another circumstance – in Jugoslavia we have no police on the train. You see?”

“It is a position of great difficulty,” said Poirot.

“Moreover, Dr. Constantine – I forgot, I have not introduced you. Dr. Constantine, M. Poirot.”

The little dark man bowed, and Poirot returned the bow.

“Dr. Constantine thinks that the man was stabbed at about 1 a.m.”

“It is difficult to judge exactly,” said the doctor, “but I think I can say definitely that death occurred between midnight and two in the morning.”

“When was this M. Ratchett last seen alive?” asked Poirot.

M. Bouc said that the man had spoken to the conductor at about twenty minutes to one.

“Yes, I myself heard that,” said Poirot. “That is the last thing known?”

“Yes.”

The doctor told Poirot that the window of M. Ratchett's compartment had been wide open, but there were no traces in the snow under the window, so the murderer could not have escaped that way.

“When was the crime discovered?” asked Poirot.

M. Bouc ordered Michel, the sleeping-car conductor to tell them exactly how it had been.

The man told them that Ratchett's valet had knocked on his door several times that morning, but received no answer.

Then, at eleven o'clock, the waiter came from the restaurant car and asked if Monsieur would have breakfast. Michel opened the door for him with his key, but the door was chained on the inside.

“There is no answer and it is very still in there, and cold. With the window open and snow drifting in,” the conductor went on. “I thought the gentleman had had a heart attack, perhaps. I got the chief of the train. We broke the chain and went in. He was – Ah! So terrible!”

“The door was closed and chained. It was not suicide – eh?” said Poirot.

The Greek doctor laughed with sarcasm. “Does a man who commits suicide stab himself in ten-twelve-fifteen places?” he asked.

Poirot's eyes opened wide. “That is great cruelty,” he said.

“Surely, it was a woman,” said the chief of the train, speaking for the first time. “Only a woman would stab like that.”

“She must have been a very strong woman,” Dr. Constantine said thoughtfully. “One or two of the blows were delivered with enormous force.”

“It was clearly not a scientific crime,” said Poirot.

“It was most unscientific,” confirmed Dr. Constantine. “It seems the blows have been delivered at random. Some have done hardly any damage. It is as if somebody had closed his eyes and then in a frenzy struck blindly again and again.”

“It is a woman,” said the chief of the train again. “Women are like that. When they are enraged, they have great strength.” He spoke so confidently that everyone suspected a personal experience of his own.

“I have, perhaps, something to add to your knowledge,” said Poirot. “M. Ratchett told me yesterday that his life was in danger.”

“Then it is not a woman. It is a 'gangster' or a 'gunman',” said M. Bouc.

The chief of the train was disappointed that his theory had come to nothing.

“If so,” said Poirot, “it has been done very amateurishly.”

In M. Bouc's opinion, a large American in terrible clothes, who chews the gum (and that is not done in good society), might be the murderer.

The sleeping-car conductor said it was impossible.

“I would have seen him enter or leave the compartment.”

“You might not. But we will go into that later. The question is, what to do?” He looked at Poirot.

Poirot looked back at him.

“I know your abilities, my friend,” said M. Bouc. “Take command of this investigation! Please, do not refuse. It is very important for my Company. It will be so simple if by the time the Jugoslavian police arrive, we can say 'A murder has occurred – this is the criminal!' Otherwise delays, annoyances, a million and one inconveniences.”

“And suppose I do not solve the mystery?”

“Ah, my dear!” M. Bouc said gently. “This is the ideal case for you. Have I not heard you say often that to solve a case a man has only to lie back in his chair and think? Do that. Use (as you say so often) the little grey cells of the mind – and you will know! I have faith in you!”

He looked affectionately at the detective.

“I'm touched by your faith, my friend,” said Poirot emotionally. “In truth, this problem intrigues me. Instead of many hours of boredom while we are stuck here, a problem lies ready to my hand.”

Poirot agreed to take the case and asked for the plan of the Istanbul – Calais carriage, with a note of the people who occupied the several compartments, and he also wanted to see their passports and their tickets. The conductor went to fetch them.

Poirot asked about other passengers on the train. From what he was told it seemed that the murderer could only be in the Istanbul – Calais carriage.

The doctor said, “At half an hour after midnight we ran into the snowdrift. No one can have left the train since then.”

M. Bouc said solemnly, “The murderer is with us – on the train now…”