The Crime

The Crime is the pivotal event of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express: the meticulously planned, collective execution of Samuel Edward Ratchett, the man who as Cassetti had kidnapped and murdered three-year-old Daisy Armstrong and escaped legal punishment. The murder is not the work of a single assassin but of twelve passengers, each of whom stabs the victim once in a darkened compartment, acting as a self-appointed jury to carry out a sentence that American justice had failed to deliver.

Causes and Background

The crime is rooted in the Armstrong kidnapping case, a tragedy that destroyed a family. Cassetti, the mastermind behind the kidnapping of Daisy Armstrong, had been acquitted on a technicality despite overwhelming evidence. The child's father, Colonel Armstrong, shot himself; her mother, Sonia Armstrong, died after a premature stillbirth brought on by the shock; and a French nursemaid, Susanne, who was wrongly suspected of complicity, threw herself from a window in despair. The twelve people on the Orient Express who had been connected to the Armstrong household—family, servants, friends, and the father of the dead nursemaid—decided that Cassetti must not escape again. As Linda Arden, the actress mother of Sonia Armstrong and the passenger known as Mrs. Hubbard, later explained, "We decided then and there (perhaps we were mad—I don't know) that the sentence of death that Cassetti had escaped had got to be carried out." The plan was conceived by the chauffeur Antonio Foscarelli, elaborated by Mary Debenham and Hector MacQueen, and took months to perfect. They tracked Ratchett down, placed MacQueen and the valet Masterman in his employment, and arranged for Pierre Michel, Susanne's father, to be the Wagon Lit conductor on the train.

What Happens

On the second night of the journey, after the Simplon Orient Express has been halted by a snowdrift between Vincovci and Brod, the twelve conspirators put their plan into action. Ratchett, who had been given a sleeping draught by his valet, lies drugged and helpless in his compartment. One by one, each of the twelve passengers enters the darkened compartment through the communicating door from Mrs. Hubbard's adjoining compartment and stabs the sleeping man. The blows are delivered haphazardly—some feeble, some with great force, some right-handed, some left-handed—because each person strikes independently, never knowing which wound actually kills him. As Poirot later reconstructs, "each person in turn entered Ratchett's darkened compartment through that of Mrs. Hubbard—and struck! They themselves would never know which blow actually killed him." The victim is stabbed twelve times, corresponding to the twelve members of the jury. The murder is staged to look like the work of an outside assassin: a Wagon Lit uniform is planted, a button is dropped in Mrs. Hubbard's compartment, and a handkerchief initialed H is left behind to mislead. A woman in a scarlet kimono is glimpsed in the corridor to further confuse the trail. The conspirators also fake the time of death by placing Ratchett's dented watch, stopped at 1:15, in his pyjama pocket, and they stage a voice speaking French from the compartment at 12:37 to create the impression that Ratchett was still alive then.

Consequences and Aftermath

The snowdrift, which the conspirators had not anticipated, traps the train and forces them to remain on the scene, making them all suspects. The discovery of the body the next morning triggers an investigation by Hercule Poirot, who is on the train by chance. As Poirot interviews the passengers, he gradually uncovers the web of connections to the Armstrong case. The charred fragment of a letter mentioning "member little Daisy Armstrong" leads him to identify Ratchett as Cassetti. One by one, the passengers' lies are exposed: Countess Andrenyi is revealed as Helena Goldenberg, Mrs. Armstrong's sister; Mary Debenham as the family's governess; Greta Ohlsson as Daisy's nurse; Antonio Foscarelli as the chauffeur; Masterman as Colonel Armstrong's batman; and Mrs. Hubbard as Linda Arden herself. Poirot eventually realizes that the crime is not the work of one person but of all twelve, each striking a single blow. He presents two solutions to the assembled passengers: the first, a false explanation involving an outside assassin who left the train; the second, the true account of the collective execution. M. Bouc and Dr. Constantine choose to accept the first solution, allowing the conspirators to go free. The crime thus ends not with a conviction but with a tacit agreement to conceal the truth, a verdict that the novel itself endorses as a form of rough justice.