Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie [7]
‘And yet,’ said Poirot, ‘suppose an accident—’
‘Ah no, my friend—’
‘From your point of view it would be regrettable, I agree. But nevertheless let us just for one moment suppose it. Then, perhaps, all these here are linked together—by death.’
‘Some more wine,’ said M. Bouc, hastily pouring it out. ‘You are morbid, mon cher. It is, perhaps, the digestion.’
‘It is true,’ agreed Poirot, ‘that the food in Syria was not, perhaps, quite suited to my stomach.’
He sipped his wine. Then, leaning back, he ran his eye thoughtfully round the dining-car. There were thirteen people seated there and, as M. Bouc had said, of all classes and nationalities. He began to study them.
At the table opposite them were three men. They were, he guessed, single travellers graded and placed there by the unerring judgment of the restaurant attendants. A big, swarthy Italian was picking his teeth with gusto. Opposite him a spare, neat Englishman had the expressionless disapproving face of the well-trained servant. Next to the Englishman was a big American in a loud suit—possibly a commercial traveller.
‘You’ve got to put it over big,’ he was saying in a loud nasal voice.
The Italian removed his toothpick to gesticulate with it freely.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘That whatta I say alla de time.’
The Englishman looked out of the window and coughed.
Poirot’s eye passed on.
At a small table, sitting very upright, was one of the ugliest old ladies he had ever seen. It was an ugliness of distinction—it fascinated rather than repelled. She sat very upright. Round her neck was a collar of very large pearls which, improbable though it seemed, were real. Her hands were covered with rings. Her sable coat was pushed back on her shoulders. A very small expensive black toque was hideously unbecoming to the yellow, toad-like face beneath it.
She was speaking now to the restaurant attendant in a clear, courteous but completely autocratic tone.
‘You will be sufficiently amiable to place in my compartment a bottle of mineral water and a large glass of orange juice. You will arrange that I shall have chicken cooked without sauces for dinner this evening—also some boiled fish.’
The attendant replied respectfully that it should be done.
She gave a slight gracious nod of the head and rose. Her glance caught Poirot’s and swept over him with the nonchalance of the uninterested aristocrat.
‘That is Princess Dragomiroff,’ said M. Bouc in a low tone. ‘She is a Russian. Her husband realized all this money before the Revolution and invested it abroad. She is extremely rich. A cosmopolitan.’
Poirot nodded. He had heard of Princess Dragomiroff.
‘She is a personality,’ said M. Bouc. ‘Ugly as sin, but she makes herself felt. You agree?’
Poirot agreed.
At another of the large tables Mary Debenham was sitting with two other women. One of them was a tall middle-aged woman in a plaid blouse and tweed skirt. She had a mass of faded yellow hair unbecomingly arranged in a large bun, wore glasses, and had a long, mild, amiable face rather like a sheep. She was listening to the third woman, a stout, pleasant-faced, elderly woman who was talking in a slow clear monotone which showed no signs of pausing for breath or coming to a stop.
‘…And so my daughter said, “Why,” she said “you just can’t apply Amurrican methods in this country. It’s just natural to the folks here to be indolent,” she said. “They just haven’t got any hustle in them.” But all the same you’d be surprised to know what our college there is doing. They’ve gotten a fine staff of teachers. I guess there’s nothing like education. We’ve got to apply our Western ideals and teach the East to recognize them. My daughter says—’
The train plunged into a tunnel. The calm monotonous voice was drowned.
At the next table, a small one, sat Colonel Arbuthnot—alone. His gaze was fixed upon the back of Mary Debenham’s head. They were not sitting together. Yet it could easily have been managed. Why?
Perhaps, Poirot thought, Mary Debenham had demurred. A