Murder on the Orient Express is a mystery novel with a closed circle of suspects, written by English writer Agatha Christie and featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 1 January 1934. In the United States, it was published on 28 February 1934, under the title of Murder in the Calais Coach, by Dodd, Mead and Company. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.
The elegant train of the 1930s, the Orient Express, is stopped by heavy snowfall. A murder is discovered, and Poirot's trip home to London from the Middle East is interrupted to solve the case. The opening chapters of the novel take place primarily in Istanbul. The rest of the novel takes place in Yugoslavia, with the train trapped between Vinkovci and Brod, in what is now northeastern Croatia.
The American title of Murder in the Calais Coach was used to avoid confusion with the 1932 Graham Greene novel Stamboul Train, which had been published in the United States as Orient Express.
Plot Although the Orient Express is fully booked (unusual for the season), detective Hercule Poirot obtains a sleeping berth through his friend and fellow passenger: Bouc, director of the luxury train company Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. Aboard are a shady American businessman named Ratchett, his secretary and translator Hector MacQueen, and Ratchett's English valet Edward Masterman. Other passengers include: American widow Caroline Hubbard; English governess Mary Debenham; Swedish missionary Greta Ohlsson; Italian-American car salesman Antonio Foscarelli; Russian Princess Dragomiroff and her German maid Hildegarde Schmidt; the Hungarian count Rudolph Andrenyi and his wife Helena; English colonel John Arbuthnot; American salesman Cyrus Hardman; and Greek medical doctor Stavros Constantine. +Wagon Constantinople CalaisDining Car rowspan=13 4. Masterman5. Foscarelli6. MacQueen7.8. Schmidt9.10. Ohlsson11. Debenham1. Poirot2. Ratchett3. Hubbard12. H. Andrenyi13. R. Andrenyi14. Dragomiroff15. Arbuthnot16. HardmanMichelAthens Coach Ratchett has been receiving death threats so, when he recognises Poirot, he tries to hire him for protection but Poirot refuses. Early in the morning, Poirot is awakened by a cry from Ratchett's compartment next door. The train's conductor Pierre Michel knocks on the door, but a voice from inside pacifies him in French. Hubbard nervously tells Michel that a man has passed through her room. Michel informs Poirot that the train is now stuck in a snowdrift, caught far beyond Vinkovci station in Yugoslavia (today Croatia), before Poirot, hearing a loud thump nearby, observes a woman in a scarlet kimono moving down the corridor. He goes back to sleep.
Later, with the train still stalled, Bouc informs Poirot that Ratchett has been murdered and the murderer must still be aboard, having no way to escape in the heavy snow. With Dr. Constantine, Poirot examines Ratchett's compartment, discovering the following: an open window, Ratchett's body with twelve inconsistent stab wounds, a handkerchief with the initial "H", a pipe cleaner, a flat match different from the ones Ratchett used, and a charred piece of paper with "-member little Daisy Armstrong" written on it. Many years earlier, American gangster Cassetti kidnapped three-year-old Daisy Armstrong for a ransom from the wealthy Armstrong family. The child was killed and her mother, Sonia, who was pregnant, died during a premature labor. Her grieving husband, Colonel Armstrong, shot himself, and Daisy's French nursemaid, Susanne, was accused of aiding Cassetti and killed herself, only to be found innocent afterwards. Cassetti escaped justice, fleeing the country. Poirot deduces that "Ratchett" is an alias for the kidnapper Cassetti: the dead man on the train. Whoever had answered Pierre Michel earlier could not have been Cassetti, as Cassetti did not speak French.
Poirot begins interviewing everyone on the train, but they all provide suitable alibis for one another. Poirot notes that, though some of them observed the woman in the scarlet kimono the previous night, no one admits to owning such a kimono. Further, their emotional reactions to certain questions or inconsistencies in their stories causes Poirot to become further suspicious. Hardman admits that he too is a detective, hired to tail an assassin stalking Cassetti.
While inspecting the passengers' luggage, Poirot discovers that the label on Countess Andrenyi's luggage is wet and her passport smudged, Schmidt's bag contains the uniform in question, and Poirot's own luggage now contains the red kimono. Hubbard finds the murder weapon hidden in her sponge bag. Poirot, going into a trance-like state, ponders a solution to Cassetti's murder.
He calls in the suspects to the dining car and reveals their true identities: they were all connected to the Armstrong tragedy in some way. Countess Andrenyi is Daisy's aunt: a child herself at the time of the tragedy. Rudolph, her loving husband, smudged her luggage label and obscured her name to keep her above suspicion. Debenham was Helena's and Daisy's governess. Foscarelli was the Armstrongs' chauffeur. Masterman was Colonel Armstrong's valet. Michel is Susanne's father and the person who procured the false second uniform. Hubbard is actually an actress (Daisy's grandmother and Sonia's and Helena's mother). Schmidt was the Armstrongs' cook, and Ohlsson was Daisy's nurse. Princess Dragomiroff, who has already admitted to being Sonia's godmother, owns the monogrammed handkerchief, saying that her forename is Natalia, and the "H" is actually a Cyrillic letter "N". Arbuthnot is there on Debenham's behalf and his own, as he was a personal friend of Colonel Armstrong. Hardman is an ex-policeman who admits he was in love with Susanne. MacQueen, who had feelings for Sonia, was the son of the lawyer who represented the Armstrongs. Other than Poirot, the only passengers not involved in the murder are Bouc and Dr. Constantine, both having slept in the other coach, which was locked.
Poirot propounds two possible solutions, and permits Bouc and Dr. Constantine to choose the best one. The first is that an unidentified "enemy", who Cassetti had mentioned to Poirot earlier, boarded the train when it stopped at Vinkovci, wore a train conductor's disguise, and killed Cassetti, disembarking just before the train started off again. The second solution is that all the clues except the note about Daisy Armstrong were planted and that a conspiracy exists: Michel and most or all passengers in the coach stabbed Cassetti, taking revenge as a symbolic jury of twelve executioners. Hubbard confesses to the second solution and offers to take responsibility as the mastermind. Sympathetic towards Cassetti's justice-seeking avengers, however, Bouc and Dr. Constantine decide the first solution will be the one relayed to the police.
Characters Hercule Poirot: world-famous detective from Belgium. Monsieur Bouc: Poirot's Belgian friend and a director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. Samuel Ratchett/Cassetti: an American gangster who kidnapped and murdered three-year-old Daisy Armstrong. Dr. Stavros Constantine: a Greek physician, who, after the murder, determines Ratchett's time of death. Mrs. Caroline Hubbard: originally presenting as a loud and foolish American widow returning from visiting her daughter, she is revealed to be the American actress Linda Arden, Sonia Armstrong's mother and Daisy Armstrong's maternal grandmother. Mary Debenham: an English governess returning from Baghdad who was formerly Daisy Armstrong's governess. Colonel John Arbuthnot: Colonel Armstrong's English best friend, in love with Mary Debenham. Princess Natalia Dragomiroff: a Russian princess, Sonia Armstrong's godmother. Hector MacQueen: Ratchett's American secretary and translator, whose father was the Armstrongs' lawyer. Countess Helena Andrenyi: Sonia Armstrong's sister, notable as the only one of the thirteen suspects who did not participate in the murder. Count Rudolph Andrenyi: Countess Andrenyi's Hungarian husband, who took his wife's place as the twelfth murderer. Antonio Foscarelli: an Italian-American car salesman who was formerly the Armstrongs' chauffeur and had doted on Daisy. Greta Ohlsson: a Swedish missionary who was formerly Daisy Armstrong's nurse. Hildegarde Schmidt: Princess Dragomiroff's German maid, formerly the Armstrongs' cook Edward Henry Masterman: Ratchett's English valet, a remote and haughty man, who was Col. Armstrong's batman in the war and valet in New York. Cyrus Hardman: an American ex-policeman who was in love with Daisy Armstrong's French nursery maid, Susanne, who killed herself after being falsely accused of aiding Cassetti. Pierre Michel: the French train conductor and father of Daisy Armstrong's nursery maid, Susanne, who killed herself after being falsely accused of aiding Cassetti. A conductor of the same name previously appeared in The Mystery of the Blue Train.
Writing The kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh's son in 1932 inspired that element in Christie's novel two years later. The novel used many elements of the real life case: a young child, firstborn of the family, was kidnapped for ransom directly from the crib, the parents were famous, the father was a well-known pilot and the mother pregnant, and the ransom was paid but the child found dead soon after. An innocent, but perhaps loose-lipped, maid employed by Lindbergh's parents was suspected of involvement in the crime. After being harshly interrogated by police, she killed herself.
Two less notable events helped inspire her novel: Agatha Christie's first journey on the Orient Express in late 1928, and a blizzard near Çerkezköy, Turkey, that thwarted the Orient Express's progress for six days just a few months later, in February 1929.
Flooding from rainfall that washed sections of track away in December 1931 halted Christie's return from her husband's archaeological dig at Nineveh aboard an Orient Express for 24 hours. Her authorised biography details that event in a complete quotation of a letter to her husband, which describes several passengers on her train who inspired both the plot and the characters in her novel, including an American, Mrs. Hilton, who inspired Mrs. Hubbard.
Reception The Times Literary Supplement of 11 January 1934 outlined the plot and concluded that "The little grey cells solve once more the seemingly insoluble. Mrs Christie makes an improbable tale very real, and keeps her readers enthralled and guessing to the end."
In The New York Times Book Review of 4 March 1934, Isaac Anderson wrote, "The great Belgian detective's guesses are more than shrewd; they are positively miraculous. Although both the murder plot and the solution verge upon the impossible, Agatha Christie has contrived to make them appear quite convincing for the time being, and what more than that can a mystery addict desire?"
The reviewer in The Guardian of 12 January 1934 noted that the murder would have been "perfect" (i.e. a perfect crime) had Poirot not been on the train and also overheard a conversation between Miss Debenham and Colonel Arbuthnot before he boarded; however, Poirot's little grey cells' worked admirably, and the solution surprised their owner as much as it may well surprise the reader, for the secret is well kept and the manner of the telling is in Mrs Christie's usual admirable manner."