Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie [82]
‘My daughter’s husband had to know, of course, and he insisted on coming on the train with her. Hector wangled it so that Ratchett selected the right day for travelling when Michel would be on duty. We meant to engage every carriage in the Stamboul-Calais coach, but unfortunately there was one carriage we couldn’t get. It was reserved long beforehand for a director of the company. Mr Harris, of course, was a myth. But it would have been awkward to have any stranger in Hector’s compartment. And then, at the last minute, you came…’
She stopped.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘You know everything now, M. Poirot. What are you going to do about it? If it must all come out, can’t you lay the blame upon me and me only? I would have stabbed that man twelve times willingly. It wasn’t only that he was responsible for my daughter’s death and her child’s, and that of the other child who might have been alive and happy now. It was more than that. There had been other children before Daisy—there might be others in the future. Society had condemned him; we were only carrying out the sentence. But it’s unnecessary to bring all these others into it. All these good faithful souls—and poor Michel—and Mary and Colonel Arbuthnot—they love each other…’
Her voice was wonderful echoing through the crowded space—that deep, emotional, heart-stirring voice that had thrilled many a New York audience.
Poirot looked at his friend.
‘You are a director of the company, M. Bouc,’ he said, ‘What do you say?’
M. Bouc cleared his throat.
‘In my opinion, M. Poirot,’ he said, ‘the first theory you put forward was the correct one—decidedly so. I suggest that that is the solution we offer to the Yugo-Slavian police when they arrive. You agree, Doctor?’
‘Certainly I agree,’ said Dr Constantine. ‘As regards the medical evidence, I think—er—that I made one or two fantastic suggestions.’
‘Then,’ said Poirot, ‘having placed my solution before you, I have the honour to retire from the case…’
E-Book Extras
The Poirots
Essay by Charles Osborne
The Poirots
The Mysterious Affair at Styles; The Murder on the Links; Poirot Investigates; The Murder of Roger Ackroyd; The Big Four; The Mystery of the Blue Train; Black Coffee; Peril at End House; Lord Edgware Dies; Murder on the Orient Express; Three-Act Tragedy; Death in the Clouds; The ABC Murders; Murder in Mesopotamia; Cards on the Table; Murder in the Mews; Dumb Witness; Death on the Nile; Appointment with Death; Hercule Poirot’s Christmas; Sad Cypressv One, Two, Buckle My Shoe; Evil Under the Sun; Five Little Pigs; The Hollow; The Labours of Hercules; Taken at the Flood; Mrs McGinty’s Dead; After the Funeral; Hickory Dickory Dock; Dead Man’s Folly; Cat Among the Pigeons; The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding; The Clocks; Third Girl; Hallowe’en Party; Elephants Can Remember; Poirot’s Early Cases; Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
1. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
Captain Arthur Hastings, invalided in the Great War, is recuperating as a guest of John Cavendish at Styles Court, the ‘country-place’ of John’s autocratic old aunt, Emily Inglethorpe—she of a sizeable fortune, and so recently remarried to a man twenty years her junior. When Emily’s sudden heart attack is found to be attributable to strychnine, Hastings