Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie [51]
‘Keep her head so,’ said the doctor. ‘If she revives give her a little cognac. You understand?’
Then he hurried off after the other two. His interest lay wholly in the crime—swooning middle-aged ladies did not interest him at all.
It is possible that Mrs Hubbard revived rather quicker with these methods than she might otherwise have done. A few minutes later she was sitting up, sipping cognac from a glass proffered by the attendant, and talking once more.
‘I just can’t say how terrible it was. I don’t suppose anybody on this train can understand my feelings. I’ve always been vurry, vurry sensitive ever since a child. The mere sight of blood—ugh—why even now I come over queer when I think about it.’
The attendant proffered the glass again.
‘Encore un peu, Madame.’
‘D’you think I’d better? I’m a lifelong teetotaller. I just never touch spirits or wine at any time. All my family are abstainers. Still perhaps as this is only medical—’
She sipped once more.
In the meantime Poirot and M. Bouc, closely followed by Dr Constantine, had hurried out of the restaurant-car and along the corridor of the Stamboul coach towards Mrs Hubbard’s compartment.
Every traveller on the train seemed to be congregated outside the door. The conductor, a harrassed look on his face, was keeping them back.
‘Mais il n’y a rien à voir,’ he said, and repeated the sentiment in several other languages.
‘Let me pass, if you please,’ said M. Bouc.
Squeezing his rotundity past the obstructing passengers, he entered the compartment, Poirot close behind him.
‘I am glad you have come Monsieur,’ said the conductor with a sigh of relief. ‘Everyone has been trying to enter. The American lady—such screams as she gave—ma foi! I thought she too had been murdered! I came at a run and there she was screaming like a mad woman, and she cried out that she must fetch you and she departed, screeching at the top of her voice and telling everybody whose carriage she passed what had occurred.’
He added, with a gesture of the hand:
‘It is in there, Monsieur. I have not touched it.’
Hanging on the handle of the door that gave access to the next compartment was a large-size checked rubber sponge-bag. Below it on the floor, just where it had fallen from Mrs Hubbard’s hand, was a straight-bladed dagger—a cheap affair, sham Oriental, with an embossed hilt and a tapering blade. The blade was stained with patches of what looked like rust.
Poirot picked it up delicately.
‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘There is no mistake. Here is our missing weapon all right—eh, docteur?’
The doctor examined it.
‘You need not be so careful,’ said Poirot. ‘There will be no fingerprints on it save those of Mrs Hubbard.’
Constantine’s examination did not take long.
‘It is the weapon all right,’ he said. ‘It would account for any of the wounds.’
‘I implore you, my friend, do not say that.’
The doctor looked astonished.
‘Already we are heavily overburdened by coincidence. Two people decide to stab M. Ratchett last night. It is too much of a good thing that each of them should select an identical weapon.’
‘As to that, the coincidence is not, perhaps, so great as it seems,’ said the doctor. ‘Thousands of these sham Eastern daggers are made and shipped to the bazaars of Constantinople.’
‘You console me a little, but only a little,’ said Poirot. He looked thoughtfully at the door in front of him, then, lifting off the sponge-bag, he tried the handle. The door did not budge. About a foot above the handle was the door bolt, Poirot drew it back and tried again, but still the door remained fast.
‘We locked it from the other side, you remember,’ said the doctor.
‘That is true,’ said Poirot absently. He seemed to be thinking about something else. His brow was furrowed as though in perplexity.
‘It agrees, does it not?’ said M. Bouc. ‘The man passes through this carriage. As he shuts the communicating door behind him he feels the sponge-bag. A thought comes to him and