Linda Arden

Linda Arden was one of the greatest tragic actresses of her day, renowned for her performances as Lady Macbeth and Magda, and known to audiences around the world under her stage name. Her real name was not Linda Arden; she had Central European blood in her veins, possibly a strain of Jewish, and many nationalities drifted to America. She was the mother of Sonia Armstrong, who married Colonel Armstrong, a V.C. and half-American heir to the W. K. Van der Halt fortune. When the Armstrongs' three-year-old daughter Daisy was kidnapped and murdered by Cassetti, the tragedy destroyed the family: Sonia died in premature childbirth after the shock, Colonel Armstrong shot himself, and the French nursemaid Susanne, falsely suspected of complicity, threw herself from a window. Linda Arden was left "just crazy with grief."

Role in the Conspiracy

Linda Arden played the most important part in the drama. By occupying compartment No. 3, which communicated directly with Ratchett's compartment, she was more open to suspicion than anyone else, and in the nature of things she could not have an alibi to fall back upon. To play the part she played—the perfectly natural, slightly ridiculous American fond mother—an artist was needed, and she was that artist. She adopted the persona of Mrs. Caroline Martha Hubbard, a widow from America traveling to visit her daughter in Smyrna, and maintained the disguise with such skill that even Hercule Poirot initially accepted her as a genuine, if tiresome, passenger. Her performance included a constant stream of chatter about her daughter, her late husband's habits, and her opinions on foreign travel, all delivered in a slow, clear monotone that showed no signs of pausing for breath. She later admitted, "I always fancied myself in comedy parts."

The Plan and Its Execution

The conspiracy was born on the day of the Armstrong tragedy. Linda Arden, Colonel Arbuthnot (John Armstrong's best friend), and the servants decided then and there that the sentence of death that Cassetti had escaped had to be carried out. There were twelve of them—or rather eleven; Susanne's father, Pierre Michel, was over in France. The chauffeur, Antonio Foscarelli, first suggested the method of multiple stabbers, and Mary Debenham worked out all the details later with Hector MacQueen, who had always adored Sonia. It took a long time to perfect the plan. They tracked Ratchett down through Hardman, got Masterman and MacQueen into his employment, and arranged for the murder to take place on the Orient Express, where Pierre Michel worked as a conductor. They meant to engage every compartment in the Stamboul-Calais coach, but one was reserved for a director of the company, and at the last minute Hercule Poirot boarded the train. Linda Arden's compartment was the key: each of the twelve conspirators entered Ratchett's darkened compartment through hers and struck with a dagger, so that no one would ever know which blow actually killed him. She herself took part in the stabbing.

The Disguise and Its Flaws

Linda Arden's disguise as Mrs. Hubbard was nearly flawless, but it contained one critical error. When she claimed that she had been unable to see whether the communicating door was bolted because her sponge-bag was hanging on the door-handle, she did not realize that in compartment No. 3—an uneven number—the bolt is well above the handle and could not be masked by a sponge-bag. She later acknowledged, "That slip about the sponge-bag was silly. It shows that you should always rehearse property. We tried it on the way out—I was in an even-number compartment then, I suppose. I never thought of the bolts being in different places." This mistake, along with the discovery of the scarlet kimono in Poirot's suitcase and the charred note fragment mentioning "little Daisy Armstrong," gradually led Poirot to the truth.

Confession and Resolution

When Poirot presented his second solution—that all twelve passengers were the murderers—Linda Arden dropped her disguise. In a soft, rich, dreamy voice quite unlike the one she had used throughout the journey, she confirmed his deductions and told the full story. She described the day of the tragedy, the decision to take justice into their own hands, and the long planning that followed. She then made a final appeal: "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'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, echoing through the crowded dining-car, was the same deep, emotional, heart-stirring voice that had thrilled many a New York audience. M. Bouc, the director of the company, chose to accept Poirot's first, false solution—that an outside assassin had committed the crime—and Linda Arden was allowed to go free, her identity and her role in the murder forever concealed from the official record.