“Ah! mon cher, that would be indeed stretching coincidence a little too far,” said M. Bouc. “They cannot all be in it.”
Poirot looked at him.
“You do not understand,” he said. “You do not understand at all. Tell me, do you know who killed Ratchett?”
“Do you?” countered M. Bouc.
Poirot nodded.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I have known for some time. It is so clear that I wonder you have not seen it also.” He looked at Hardman and asked: “And you?”
The detective shook his head. He stared at Poirot curiously.
Poirot was silent a minute. Then he said:
“If you will be so good, M. Hardman, assemble everyone here. There are two possible solutions of this case. I want to lay them both before you all.”
Chapter 9Poirot Propounds Two Solutions
The passengers came crowding into the restaurant car and took their seats round the tables. They all bore more or less the same expression, one of expectancy mingled with apprehension. The Swedish lady was still weeping, and Mrs. Hubbard was comforting her.
“Now you must just take a hold on yourself, my dear. Everything’s going to be perfectly all right. You mustn’t lose your grip on yourself. If one of us is a nasty murderer, we know quite well it isn’t you. Why, anyone would be crazy even to think of such a thing. You sit here, and I’ll stay right by you – and don’t you worry any.”
Her voice died away as Poirot stood up.
The Wagon Lit conductor was hovering in the doorway.
“You permit that I stay, Monsieur?”
“Certainly, Michel.”
Poirot cleared his throat.
“Messieurs et mesdames, I will speak in English since I think all of you know a little of that language. We are here to investigate the death of Samuel Edward Ratchett – alias Cassetti. There are two possible solutions of the crime. I shall put them both before you, and I shall ask M. Bouc, and Dr. Constantine here to judge which solution is the right one.
“Now you all know the facts of the case. Mr. Ratchett was found stabbed this morning. He was last known to be alive at 12.37 last night when he spoke to the Wagon Lit conductor through the door. A watch in his pyjama pocket was found to be badly dented, and it had stopped at a quarter past one. Dr. Constantine, who examined the body when found, puts the time of death as having been between midnight and two in the morning. At half an hour after midnight, as you all know, the train ran into a snowdrift. After that time it was impossible for anyone to leave the train.
“The evidence of Mr. Hardman, who is a member of a New York detective agency—” (Several heads turned, to look at Mr. Hardman.) —“shows that no one could have passed his compartment (No. 16 at the extreme end) without being seen by him. We are therefore forced to the conclusion that the murderer is to be found among the occupants of one particular coach— the Stamboul – Calais coach.“That, I will say, was our theory.”
“Comment?” ejaculated M. Bouc, startled.
“But I will put before you an alternative theory. It is very simple. Mr. Ratchett had a certain enemy whom he feared. He gave Mr. Hardman a description of this enemy and told him that the attempt, if made at all, would most probably be made on the second night out from Stamboul.
“Now I put it to you, ladies and gentlemen, that Mr. Ratchett knew a good deal more than he told. The enemy, as Mr. Ratchett expected, joined the train at Belgrade or else at Vincovci by the door left open by Colonel Arbuthnot and Mr. MacQueen, who had just descended to the platform. He was provided with a suit of Wagon Lit uniform, which he wore over his ordinary clothes, and a pass-key which enabled him to gain access to Mr. Ratchett’s compartment in spite of the door’s being locked. Mr. Ratchett was under the influence of a sleeping draught. This man stabbed him with great ferocity and left the compartment through the communicating door leading to Mrs. Hubbard’s compartment —”
“That’s so,” said Mrs. Hubbard, nodding her head.
“He thrust the dagger he had used into Mrs. Hubbard’s sponge-bag in passing. Without knowing it, he lost a button of his uniform. Then he slipped out of the compartment and along the corridor. He hastily thrust the uniform into a suitcase in an empty compartment, and a few minutes later, dressed in ordinary clothes, he left the train just before it started off, using the same means for egress – the door near the dining-car.”
Everybody gasped.
“What about that watch?” demanded Mr. Hardman.
“There you have the explanation of the whole thing. Mr. Ratchett had omitted to put his watch back an hour as he should have done at Tzaribrod. His watch still registered Eastern European time, which is one hour ahead of Central European time. It was a quarter past twelve when Mr. Ratchett was stabbed – not a quarter past one.”
“But it is absurd, that explanation!” cried M. Bouc. “What of the voice that spoke from the compartment at twenty-three minutes to one? It was either the voice of Ratchett – or else that of his murderer.”
“Not necessarily. It might have been – well – a third person. One who had gone in to speak to Ratchett and found him dead. He rang the bell to summon the conductor; then, as you express it, the wind rose in him – he was afraid of being accused of the crime, and he spoke pretending to be Ratchett.”
“C’est possible,” admitted M. Bouc grudgingly.
Poirot looked at Mrs. Hubbard. “Yes, Madame, you were going to say—”
“Well, I don’t quite know what I was going to say. Do you think I forgot to put my watch back too?”
“No, Madame. I think you heard the man pass through – but unconsciously. Later you had a nightmare of a man being in your compartment and woke up with a start and rang for the conductor.”
“Well, I suppose that’s possible,” admitted Mrs. Hubbard.
Princess Dragomiroff was looking at Poirot with a very direct glance.
“How do you explain the evidence of my maid, Monsieur?”
“Very simply, Madame. Your maid recognised the handkerchief I showed her as yours. She somewhat clumsily tried to shield you. She did encounter the man, but earlier – while the train was at Vincovci station. She pretended to have seen him at a later hour, with a confused idea of giving you a water-tight alibi.”
The Princess bowed her head.
“You have thought of everything, Monsieur. I–I admire you.”
There was a silence. Then everyone jumped as Dr. Constantine suddenly hit the table a blow with his fist.
“But no,” he said. “No, no, and again no! That is an explanation that will not hold water. It is deficient in a dozen minor points. The crime was not committed so – M. Poirot must know that perfectly well.”
Poirot turned a curious glance on him.
“I see,” he said, “that I shall have to give you my second solution. But do not abandon this one too abruptly. You may agree with it later.”
He turned back again to face the others.
“There is another possible solution of the crime. This is how I arrived at it.
“When I had heard all the evidence, I leaned back and shut my eyes, and began to think. Certain points presented themselves to me as worthy of attention. I enumerated these points to my two colleagues. Some I have already elucidated – such as a grease spot on a passport, and so on. I will run over the points that remain. The first and most important is a remark made to me by M. Bouc in the restaurant car at lunch on the first day after leaving Stamboul – to the effect that the company assembled was interesting because it was so varied – representing as it did all classes and nationalities.
“I agreed with him, but when this particular point came into my mind, I tried to imagine whether such an assembly was ever likely to be collected under any other conditions. And the answer I made to myself was – only in America. In America there might be a household composed of just such varied nationalities – an Italian chauffeur, an English governess, a Swedish nurse, a German lady’s-maid, and so on. That led me to my scheme of ‘guessing’—that is, casting each person for a certain part in the Armstrong drama much as a producer casts a play. Well, that gave me an extremely interesting and satisfactory result.
“I had also examined in my own mind each separate person’s evidence, with some curious results. Take first the evidence of Mr. MacQueen. My first interview with him was entirely satisfactory. But in my second he made rather a curious remark. I had described to him the finding of a note mentioning the Armstrong case. He said, ‘But surely —’ and then paused and went on, ‘I mean – that was rather careless of the old man.’
“Now I could feel that that was not what he had started out to say. Supposing what he had meant to say was ‘But surely that was burnt!’ In which case, MacQueen knew of the note and of its destruction – in other words, he was either the murderer or an accomplice of the murderer. Very good.
“Then the valet. He said his master was in the habit of taking a sleeping draught when travelling by train. That might be true, but would Ratchett have taken one last night? The automatic under his pillow gave the lie to that statement. Ratchett intended to be on the alert last night. Whatever narcotic was administered to him must have been given without his knowledge. By whom? Obviously by MacQueen or the valet.
“Now we come to the evidence of Mr. Hardman. I believed all that he told me about his own identity, but when it came to the actual methods he had employed to guard Mr. Ratchett, his story was neither more nor less than absurd. The only way to have protected Ratchett effectively was to pass the night actually in his compartment or in some spot where he could watch the door. The one thing that his evidence did show plainly was that no one in any other part of the train could possibly have murdered Ratchett. It drew a clear circle round the Stamboul – Calais carriage. That seemed to me a rather curious and inexplicable fact, and I put it aside to think over.