Antonio Foscarelli was the driver of Armstrong's family.

Antonio Foscarelli, a naturalized American of Italian birth travelling second-class on the Orient Express, was far more than the voluble Ford car salesman he appeared to be. Beneath his sunny, talkative exterior lay a crucial link to the Armstrong kidnapping case: he had been the family's chauffeur, a man who adored the murdered child Daisy Armstrong and who, years later, became one of the twelve conspirators who brought her killer to justice.

Identity and Background

Foscarelli entered the dining-car with a swift, cat-like tread and a beaming face, speaking French fluently with only a slight accent. He was a naturalised American subject who had spent the last ten years on and off in the United States, working as an agent for Ford motor cars. His testimony was a torrent of information about his business methods, his journeys, his income, and his opinions of the United States and most European countries—a man who did not have information dragged from him but let it gush out. He described himself as up to date, a master of salesmanship, and claimed to have learned in America the proper way to sell. Yet this same man, when confronted, revealed a very different past: he had been the chauffeur in the Armstrong household, where little Daisy Armstrong called him "Tonio" and would sit in the car pretending to hold the wheel. "All the household worshipped her," he said, his voice softening, tears coming into his eyes.

Role in the Conspiracy

Foscarelli's part in the murder plot was not that of the lone assassin but of one juror among twelve. It was he, according to Linda Arden's confession, who first suggested the method of multiple stabbers—that each person in turn should enter Ratchett's darkened compartment and strike, so that no one would ever know which blow actually killed him. This idea solved the central problem of their vigilante justice: how to ensure that no single person bore the full moral and legal weight of execution. The plan, as Poirot reconstructed it, required each conspirator to play an allotted part, and Foscarelli's role was to provide an alibi for his compartment-mate, the valet Masterman. Masterman swore that Foscarelli never left their compartment during the night, and Foscarelli in turn swore that Masterman never left—a mutual alibi between two men who, on the surface, seemed unlikely to have any prior connection. This was precisely the pattern Poirot noticed: alibis came from "unlikely" pairs, and the very improbability of so many coincidences pointed to design.

Concealment and Confrontation

When first interviewed, Foscarelli lied about his connection to the Armstrong case. He claimed never to have come across the deceased, though he volunteered that he knew the type—"the big crook"—and that his experience in America had taught him to read faces. When Poirot mentioned the Armstrong kidnapping, Foscarelli said he did not quite remember it, then dismissed it philosophically: "Ah! well, these things they happen." This studied ignorance was a performance. Later, when Poirot summoned him again, the big Italian's assurance and geniality had vanished. He shot nervous glances like a trapped animal, struck his hand on the table, and protested that he had nothing more to tell. Poirot quietly accused him: "That was in the Armstrong case, was it not? You were the chauffeur?" The bluster went out of him like a pricked balloon. He admitted the truth, explaining that he had lied for business reasons and because he did not trust the Jugo-Slav police, who hated Italians. But he insisted he had nothing to do with the murder itself, and Masterman could swear he never left the carriage.

Thematic Significance

Foscarelli's presence on the train embodies the novel's central theme: that justice, when failed by the legal system, can be reclaimed by a community of the wronged. He was not a hardened criminal but a man whose love for a murdered child transformed him into an executioner. His suggestion of the multiple-stabber method reveals the conspirators' need for shared responsibility—a way to distribute guilt so that no one person bore the full weight of killing. In Poirot's final solution, Foscarelli stands as one of the twelve jurors, each of whom struck a blow, and his role—like that of the others—was both an act of vengeance and a ritual of collective judgment. The novel ultimately leaves his fate ambiguous: M. Bouc and Dr. Constantine agree to accept Poirot's first, false solution, allowing the conspirators to go free, and Foscarelli, the former chauffeur who loved little Daisy, returns to the anonymity of ordinary life, his secret preserved by the silence of the law.