Poirot Propounds Two Solutions

Poirot Propounds Two Solutions is the culminating scene of Murder on the Orient Express, in which Hercule Poirot, having completed his investigation, lays two alternative explanations for the murder of Samuel Edward Ratchett before the assembled passengers, M. Bouc, and Dr. Constantine. The scene resolves the novel's central mystery and reveals the extraordinary truth behind the crime: that the murder was not the work of a single assassin but a collective execution carried out by twelve passengers, each of whom stabbed Ratchett once, acting as a self-appointed jury to avenge the Armstrong kidnapping case.

The First Solution: An Outside Job

Poirot begins by presenting a conventional theory. He proposes that Ratchett's feared enemy, a small dark man with a womanish voice, boarded the train at Belgrade or Vincovci using a door left open by Colonel Arbuthnot and Hector MacQueen. Disguised in a Wagon Lit uniform and armed with a pass-key, this intruder entered Ratchett's compartment while he was drugged, stabbed him, and escaped through Mrs. Hubbard's compartment, dropping a uniform button and hiding the dagger in her sponge-bag. He then discarded the uniform in an empty compartment and left the train before it departed. Poirot explains the watch stopped at 1:15 by suggesting Ratchett had failed to set it back an hour at Tzaribrod, so the actual time of death was 12:15, not 1:15. The voice that spoke French at 12:37, he suggests, was a third person who discovered the body and pretended to be Ratchett out of fear. This solution, Poirot notes, is neat and would satisfy the police, but it is immediately rejected by Dr. Constantine, who declares it deficient in a dozen minor points.

The Second Solution: The Jury of Twelve

Poirot then presents his true solution, which he arrived at by shutting his eyes and thinking. He recalls M. Bouc's remark that the passengers represented all classes and nationalities, and realizes such an assembly would only occur naturally in a single household—specifically, the Armstrong household. He had already guessed that each passenger played a role in the Armstrong drama: Mary Debenham was the governess, Greta Ohlsson the nurse, Antonio Foscarelli the chauffeur, Masterman the valet, and so on. The key insight came when he noticed that every alibi was provided by an unlikely person—MacQueen and Arbuthnot vouched for each other, Masterman and Foscarelli did the same, and Ohlsson and Debenham did likewise. This led him to the conclusion that they were all in it together. The twelve passengers constituted a self-appointed jury, and Ratchett was stabbed twelve times, once by each of them. The wounds varied in strength and direction because each person struck differently. The threatening letters were fakes, designed to be produced as evidence. Hardman's story of being hired by Ratchett was a lie from beginning to end. The description of the small dark man was a convenient fiction that would not incriminate any actual conductor. The scarlet kimono was a red herring, planted to confuse the investigation. The watch was deliberately placed in Ratchett's pocket and dented to mislead. The voice speaking French at 12:37 was a staged performance, intended to make Poirot believe Ratchett was already dead. The real murder occurred close to 2:00 AM, the latest possible time.

The Confession and the Verdict

As Poirot finishes his second solution, Mrs. Hubbard—revealed to be Linda Arden, the famous actress and mother of Sonia Armstrong—confirms his account. She explains that the plan was conceived in the aftermath of the Armstrong tragedy, when she was "crazy with grief." The chauffeur Antonio suggested the method of multiple stabbers, and Mary Debenham and Hector MacQueen worked out the details. They tracked Ratchett down, placed MacQueen and Masterman in his employment, and coordinated with Pierre Michel, who was the father of Susanne, the French nursemaid who had committed suicide after being wrongly suspected. The plan was to make the murder look like an outside job, but the snowdrift forced them to improvise. Linda Arden asks Poirot to lay the blame on her alone, but M. Bouc, as a director of the company, declares that the first solution is the correct one to offer the Jugo-Slavian police. Dr. Constantine agrees, retracting his earlier medical suggestions. Poirot then retires from the case, having placed his solution before them. The scene thus ends with the conspirators' secret preserved and the official record set to reflect the simpler, outside-job theory.