Four Queens: little Daisy Armstrong

Murder on the Orient Express and Enter a Murderer

Murder on the Orient Express (1934) was another Christie coup. I can’t possibly describe this without revealing the twist, so if you don’t want to know then wait for next week.

We begin Part One with Poirot catching a train from Aleppo to Stamboul [sic], having saved the French Army. Colonel Arbuthnot and Mary Debenham seem not to be strangers despite pretending otherwise. Once in Stamboul, however, a telegram summons Poirot to London; fortunately, he bumps into M. Bouc of the Compagnie des Wagon-Lits, who promises him a berth on the Orient Express, it being a slow time of year. And yet there is no space! Happily, Mr Harris doesn’t turn up so Poirot can spend a night sharing a second-class compartment with Hector McQueen, secretary to the evil-looking Ratchett. There are 13 other passengers on the Calais Coach.

Ratchet offers to hire Poirot as protection for $20k, but Poirot refuses as he doesn’t like Ratchett’s face (because it reveals the inner man). He is woken by a cry at 12.37a.m. and hears Ratchett reassure the conductor. Mrs Hubbard bothers the conductor as the train halts in a snowdrift between Vincovci and Brod (modern-day eastern Croatia, then Yugoslavia).

The following morning, M. Bouc tells Poirot that Ratchett has been stabbed to death. There are many wounds, which are strangely inconsistent. McQueen is not surprised, telling Poirot that Ratchett received death threats and was a dubious character.

C7 reveals that the stab wounds were both deep and shallow, left- and right-handed and some delivered post-mortem. There are many clues at the scene: a pipe-cleaner, a square of cambric with the letter H, some burnt fragments… using the wire frame from a hat-box, Poirot brings a charred fragment to life, revealing the name Daisy Armstrong.

Daisy Armstrong was a little girl in America, kidnapped by the Cassetti gang who obtained a huge ransom but killed her anyway. Mrs Armstrong died after a miscarriage and Colonel Armstrong shot himself. A nursemaid, suspected, cast herself from a window and died. Corruption acquitted Cassetti on a technicality. Ratchet was Cassetti. And so ends the tremendously exciting Part One.

Part Two begins with Pierre-Michel, the conductor, recounting events of the previous nights (some of which Poirot can confirm). And the passengers do likewise in turn:

McQueen talked to Arbuthnot, who confirms Poirot’s sighting of a scarlet kimono. Masterman, Ratchett’s valet, knew Ratchett had enemies but has nothing to add. Mrs Hubbard insists there was a man in her compartment; moreover, she heard a woman in Ratchett’s compartment, next door. Greta Ohlsson, a missionary, borrowed aspirin from Mrs Hubbard. No conductor lost the button found in Mrs Hubbard’s compartment. The Princess Natalia Dragomiroff was Sonia Armstrong’s godmother but is far too feeble to have killed Ratchett. The Count and Countess Andrenyi heard nothing; the Countess has a grease spot on her passport (this was 1934, remember, when this wouldn’t prevent you passing a port). Arbuthnot smelt a ‘fruity’ scent and saw a man peer furtively from compartment 16; mostly he was chatting to McQueen and has never been to America. Mr Hardman is an undercover detective hired to protect Ratchett from a ‘small, dark man with a womanish voice.’ Antonio Foscarelli, Italian-American, confirms the evidence of Masterman. Mary Debenham has also seen the scarlet kimono. Hildegarde Schmidt, maid to the princess, was woken by a conductor who resembled Ratchett’s pursuer!

All of which leads Poirot to an extraordinary prophecy regarding the kimono and the uniform of the mysterious extra conductor.

In C14, Mrs Hubbard finds the murder weapon in her sponge bag and moves into the Athens coach. Mary Debenham insists that she knew neither Ratchett nor Arbuthnot. And none of these people, bar the Princess, knew the Armstrongs.

The uniform is found in Hildegarde Schmidt’s luggage, as Poirot predicted, and the scarlet kimono in his own, which he didn’t.

We have a locked-room mystery – the snow precluding an outsider – and an apparently impossible set of facts. How is Agatha going to get out of this one?

Part Three begins by pointing out that the man who reassured the conductor in French cannot have been Ratchett, who knew no foreign languages. But all alibis are solid for 12.37. Poirot conjures a list of ten questions, suggesting… two murderers? Ambidextrousness? A faked time of death?

In C3 Poirot suggests that the greasespot turned Helena into Elena Andrenyi. Assuming that the note referring to Daisy Armstrong had to be destroyed, and was therefore pertinent, could Helena be Sonia Armstrong’s younger sister? She admits her true identity but the Count swears she never left her compartment. The handkerchief actually belongs to the princess, as N is written as H in Cyrillic (the alert reader may remember a similar trick from ‘The Double Clue’).

And so it begins to unwind… Poirot calls Arbuthnot on Mary Debenham’s position as the Armstrongs’ governess, the Countess’ word association – remembering the governess as ‘Freebody’ – giving Poirot the clue. (Debenham & Freebody was a British department store). Foscarelli was the chauffeur, Masterman the valet, Greta Ohlsson the nurse, Hildegarde Schmidt the nurse… and Mrs Hubbard was the great actress Linda Arden, Sonia’s mother.

“Then, Messieurs, I saw light. They were all in it.”

The explanation that will be given to the police states that the assassin nipped on and off the train and Belgrade, or possibly Vincovci.

Apart from the audacity of admitting the claims of higher justice – the real ‘jury of twelve’ – over the fallible human system, the novel is nearly as breathtaking as Roger Ackroyd in its brilliant use, yet defiance, of the generic conventions. As a narrative, next to nothing actually happens; it is merely a mass of conflicting information that leads the reader through a hall of mirrors before the extraordinary final flourish. As a whodunit, however, it is a work of genius.

Roderick Alleyn returned in Enter a Murderer (1935), which as you may infer is set in a theatre.

‘The Rat and the Beaver’ promises trouble at the Unicorn. Arthur loves Stephanie, but she loves Felix… and Arthur only got the part through his uncle Jacob, whom he is blackmailing. Trouble afoot.

Nigel Bathgate takes Alleyn to the theatre to meet his ‘varsity mate Felix. Alleyn is very aware of serious backstage tension, focused on Arthur. In the final scene, Felix’s character shoots Arthur’s character, with the latter’s gun, and Alleyn is first to realise that the shot was actually fatal. He sorts everyone out within 20 minutes, herding the cast into one room and scoping the stage.

In C5 we begin the investigation. Simpson the Stage Manager placed the dummy cartridges in a drawer for Arthur and is rather panicky about the Props Master’s very convincing fakes. Uncle Jacob seems very unfussed and wants to take the remarkably fussed actress Janet Emerald home; Alleyn is having none of their nonsense. Veteran actress Susan Max gives an excellent account of Janet’s movements before the lights rose, much to the discomfiture of the latter. Alleyn is still annoyingly arch towards Nigel.

The chandelier falls, but only as a clumsy attempt by Props to distract their attention from his dummy cartridges. Or possibly the real cartridges, found in the same desk. They are stained with a white cosmetic and smell like Jacob. Felix lets slip that someone trod on his foot in the blackout and a pair of grey suede gloves is found in Susan’s character’s knitting bag. All pleasingly mysterious, especially as they carry the same cosmetic and scent as the cartridges.

Stephanie has a bruised right shoulder and says that Arthur did it. Bathgate’s notes – and a journalist doing police work must be legally dubious – are very helpful for the reader.

In C10 it is revealed that Jacob won a libel case six years previously against a newspaper that suggested he was a drug-pusher, around the time that Arthur was sent down from Cambridge. Jacob’s ex-footman, Mincing, sneaks to the police regarding an argument between Jacob and Arthur over the former’s will. We are halfway through and suitably interested.

C11 reveals that the white cosmetic was made especially for Stephanie. It is suggested that Arthur wrote the libellous article, forging the work of the regular journalist, and has been blackmailing Jacob ever since. Searching his flat, Alleyn is rather appalled by Arthur’s taste in interior design as well as the evidence of dope, women and a series of letters from Stephanie. He also finds evidence of the forged signature and a letter implicating Jacob.

Felix tells Bathgate that he encouraged Arthur to write the article and receives a note warning him to mind his business. Stephanie is foiled by Alleyn in her attempt to search Arthur’s flat. She very nearly gets through his defences (again, this would have turned out very differently today but this was 1935 and even fictional characters were allowed to behave like real people).

The inquest returns a verdict of Murder by Persons Unknown, to nobody’s surprise. Bathgate overhears Stephanie say to Felix ‘I did it for you.’ Alleyn seems unimpressed by this as a confession of murder.

Alleyn arrests Jacob for dope-trading, which provokes a heart attack in the latter. Props leaves a note for Alleyn telling him that Jacob is innocent of murder. Alleyn tries to warn Bathgate, in a rather vague manner, whilst the police keep an eye on Props. Except they don’t, which results in Props hanged above the stage. C21 is designed entirely to tantalise the reader, which is mildly irritating but acceptable at this point in the narrative.

C22 is the great denouement. Just like A Man Lay Dead, the suspects are gathered at the scene of the crime. In a fine piece of writing, Marsh creates a genuinely disturbing chapter that ends when Felix ‘discovers’ the corpse of Props, which of course has been removed, thereby incriminating himself. His ‘accidental’ murder was a clever double-bluff. And he caused the bruise on Stephanie, the swine.

All credit to Ngaio Marsh as this is a great improvement on A Man Lay Dead, not least because she clearly knows a lot about theatre. The stage is littered with Shakespeare references. Alleyn is still a little too facetious and almost all of the suspects are essentially invisible and therefore not plausible as suspects, so it’s really an extended novella, but it’s a decent extended novella.