12. The Evidence of the German Lady’s-Maid

M. Bouc was looking at his friend curiously.

‘I do not quite understand you, mon vieux. You were trying to do—what?’

‘I was searching for a flaw, my friend.’

‘A flaw?’

‘Yes—in the armour of a young lady’s self-possession. I wished to shake her sang-froid.’ Did I succeed? I do not know. But I know this—she did not expect me to tackle the matter as I did.’

‘You suspect her,’ said M. Bouc slowly. ‘But why? She seems a very charming young lady—the last person in the world to be mixed up in a crime of this kind.’

‘I agree,’ said Constantine. ‘She is cold. She has not emotions. She would not stab a man; she would sue him in the law courts.’

Poirot sighed ‘You must, both of you, get rid of your obsession that this is an unpremeditated and sudden crime. As for the reason why I suspect Miss Debenham, there are two. One is because of something that I overheard, and that you do not as yet know.’

He retailed to them the curious interchange of phrases he had overheard on the journey from Aleppo.

‘That is curious, certainly,’ said M. Bouc when he had finished.

‘It needs explaining. If it means what you suspect it means, then they are both of them in it together—she and the stiff Englishman.’

Poirot nodded.

‘And that is just what is not borne out by the facts,’ he said. ‘See you, if they were both in this together, what should we expect to find—that each of them would provide an alibI for the other. Is not that so? But no—that does not happen. Miss Debenham’s alibi is provided by a Swedish woman whom she has never seen before, and Colonel Arbuthnot’s alibI is vouched for by MacQueen, the dead man’s secretary. No, that solution of the puzzle is too easy.’

‘You said there was another reason for your suspicions of her,’ M. Bouc reminded him.

Poirot smiled.

‘Ah! but that is only psychological. I ask myself, is it possible for Miss Debenham to have planned this crime? Behind this business, I am convinced, there is a cool, intelligent, resourceful brain. Miss Debenham answers to that description.’

M. Bouc shook his head.

‘I think you are wrong, my friend. I do not see that young English girl as a criminal.’

‘Ah, well,’ said Poirot, picking up the last passport, ‘to the final name on our list. Hildegarde Schmidt, lady’s-maid.’

Summoned by the attendant, Hildegarde Schmidt came into the restaurant-car and stood waiting respectfully.

Poirot motioned her to sit down.

She did so, folding her hands and waiting placidly till he questioned her. She seemed a placid creature altogether— eminently respectable—perhaps not over intelligent.

Poirot’s methods with Hildegarde Schmidt were a complete contrast to his handling of Mary Debenham.

He was at his kindest and most genial, setting the woman at her ease. Then, having got her to write down her name and address, he slid gently into his questions.

The interview took place in German.

‘We want to know as much as possible about what happened last night,’ he said. ‘We know that you cannot give us much information bearing on the crime itself, but you may have seen or heard something that, while conveying nothing to you, may be valuable to us. You understand?’

She did not seem to. Her broad, kindly face remained set in its expression of placid stupidity as she answered:

‘I do not know anything, Monsieur.’

‘Well, for instance, you know that your mistress sent for you last night?’

‘That, yes.’

‘Do you remember the time?’

‘I do not, Monsieur. I was asleep, you see, when the attendant came and told me.’

‘Yes, yes. Was it usual for you to be sent for in this way?’

‘It was not unusual, Monsieur. The gracious lady often required attention at night. She did not sleep well.’

‘Eh bien, then, you received the summons and you got up. Did you put on a dressing-gown?’

‘No, Monsieur, I put on a few clothes. I would not like to go in to her Excellency in my dressing-gown.’

‘And yet it is a very nice dressing-gown—scarlet, is it not?’

She stared at him.

‘It is a dark-blue flannel dressing-gown, Monsieur.’

‘Ah! continue. A little pleasantry on my part, that is all. So you went along to Madame la Princesse. And what did you do when you got there?’

‘I gave her massage, Monsieur, and then I read aloud. I do not read aloud very well, but her Excellency says that is all the better. So it sends her better to sleep. When she became sleepy, Monsieur, she told me to go, so I closed the book and I returned to my own compartment.’

‘Do you know what time that was?’

‘No, Monsieur.’

‘Well, how long had you been with Madame la Princesse?’ ‘About half an hour, Monsieur.’

‘Good, continue.’

‘First, I fetched her Excellency an extra rug from my compartment. It was very cold in spite of the heating. I arranged the rug over her and she wished me goodnight. I poured her out some mineral water. Then I turned out the light and left her.’

‘And then?’

‘There is nothing more, Monsieur. I returned to my carriage and went to sleep.’

‘And you met no one in the corridor?’

‘No, Monsieur.’

‘You did not, for instance, see a lady in a scarlet kimono with dragons on it?’

Her mild eyes bulged at him.

‘No, indeed, Monsieur. There was nobody about except the attendant. Everyone was asleep.’

‘But you did see the conductor?’

‘Yes, Monsieur.’

‘What was he doing?’

‘He came out of one of the compartments, Monsieur.’

‘What?’ M. Bouc leaned forward. ‘Which one?’

Hildegarde Schmidt looked frightened again and Poirot cast a reproachful glance at his friend.

‘Naturally,’ he said. ‘The conductor often has to answer bells at night. Do you remember which compartment it was?’

‘It was about the middle of the coach, Monsieur. Two or three doors from Madame la Princesse.’

‘Ah! tell us, if you please, exactly where this was and what happened.’

‘He nearly ran into me, Monsieur. It was when I was returning from my compartment to that of the Princess with the rug.’

‘And he came out of a compartment and almost collided with you? In which direction was he going?’

‘Towards me, Monsieur. He apologized and passed on down the corridor towards the dining-car. A bell began ringing, but I do not think he answered it.’

She paused and then said:

‘I do not understand. How is it—?’

Poirot spoke reassuringly.

‘It is just a question of times,’ he said. ‘All a matter of routine. This poor conductor, he seems to have had a busy night—first waking you and then answering bells.’

‘It was not the same conductor who woke me, Monsieur. It was another one.’

‘Ah, another one! Had you seen him before?’

‘No. Monsieur.’

‘Ah! Do you think you would recognize him if you saw him?’

‘I think so, Monsieur.’

Poirot murmured something in M. Bouc’s ear. The latter got up and went to the door to give an order.

Poirot was continuing his questions in an easy friendly manner.

‘Have you ever been to America, Frau Schmidt?’

‘Never, Monsieur. It must be a fine country.’

‘You have heard, perhaps, of who this man who was killed really was—that he was responsible for the death of a little child.’

‘Yes, I have heard, Monsieur. It was abominable— wicked. The good God should not allow such things. We are not so wicked as that in Germany.’

Tears had come into the woman’s eyes. Her strong motherly soul was moved.

‘It was an abominable crime,’ said Poirot gravely.

He drew a scrap of cambric from his pocket and handed it to her.

‘Is this your handkerchief, Frau Schmidt?’

There was a moment’s silence as the woman examined it. She looked up after a minute. The colour had mounted a little in her face.

‘Ah! no, indeed. It is not mine, Monsieur.’

‘It has the initial H, you see. That is why I thought it was yours.’

‘Ah! Monsieur, it is a lady’s handkerchief, that. A very expensive handkerchief. Embroidered by hand. It comes from Paris, I should say.’

‘It is not yours and you do not know whose it is?’

‘I? Oh, no, Monsieur.’

Of the three listening, only Poirot caught the nuance of hesitation in the reply.

M. Bouc whispered in his ear. Poirot nodded and said to the woman:

‘The three sleeping-car attendants are coming in. Will you be so kind as to tell me which is the one you met last night as you were going with the rug to the Princess?’

The three men entered. Pierre Michel, the big blond conductor of the Athens-Paris coach, and the stout burly conductor of the Bucharest one.

Hildegarde Schmidt looked at them and immediately shook her head.

‘No, Monsieur,’ she said. ‘None of these is the man I saw last night.’

‘But these are the only conductors on the train. You must be mistaken.’

‘I am quite sure, Monsieur. These are all tall, big men. The one I saw was small and dark. He had a little moustache. His voice when he said “Pardon” was weak like a woman’s. Indeed, I remember him very well, Monsieur.’

13. Summary of the Passengers’ Evidence

‘A small dark man with a womanish voice,’ said M. Bouc.

The three conductors and Hildegarde Schmidt had been dismissed.

‘But I understand nothing—but nothing of all this! The enemy that this Ratchett spoke of, he was then on the train after all? But where is he now? How can he have vanished into thin air? My head, it whirls. Say something, then, my friend, I implore you. Show me how the impossible can be possible!’

‘It is a good phrase that,’ said Poirot. ‘The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.’

‘Explain to me then, quickly, what actually happened on the train last night.’

‘I am not a magician, mon cher. I am, like you, a very puzzled man. This affair advances in a very strange manner.’

‘It does not advance at all. It stays where it was.’

Poirot shook his head.

‘No, that is not true. We are more advanced. We know certain things. We have heard the evidence of the passengers.’

‘And what has that told us? Nothing at all.’

‘I would not say that, my friend.’

‘I exaggerate, perhaps. The American, Hardman, and the German maid—yes, they have added something to our knowledge. That is to say, they have made the whole business more unintelligible than it was.’

‘No, no, no,’ said Poirot soothingly.

M. Bouc turned upon him.

‘Speak, then, let us hear the wisdom of Hercule Poirot.’

‘Did I not tell you that I was, like you, a very puzzled man? But at least we can face our problem. We can arrange such facts as we have with order and method.’

‘Pray continue, Monsieur,’ said Dr Constantine.

Poirot cleared his throat and straightened a piece of blotting-paper.

‘Let us review the case as it stands at this moment. First, there are certain indisputable facts. This man Ratchett, or Cassetti, was stabbed in twelve places and died last night. That is fact one.’

‘I grant it to you—I grant it, mon vieux,’ said M. Bouc with a gesture of irony.

Hercule Poirot was not at all put out’. He continued calmly.

‘I will pass over for the moment certain rather peculiar appearances which Dr Constantine and I have already discussed together. I will come to them presently. The next fact of importance, to my mind, is the time of the crime.’

‘That, again, is one of the few things we do know,’ said M. Bouc. ‘The crime was committed at a quarter-past one this morning. Everything goes to show that that was so.’

‘Not everything. You exaggerate. There is, certainly, a fair amount of evidence to support that view.’

‘I am glad you admit that at least.’

Poirot went on calmly, unperturbed by the interruption.

‘We have before us three possibilities:

‘One: That the crime was committed, as you say, at a quarter-past one. This is supported by the evidence of the German woman, Hildegarde Schmidt. It agrees with the evidence of Dr Constantine.

‘Possibility two: The crime was committed later and the evidence of the watch was deliberately faked.

‘Possibility three: The crime was committed earlier and the evidence faked for the same reason as above.

‘Now, if we accept possibility one as the most likely to have occurred and the one supported by most evidence, we must also accept certain facts arising from it. To begin with, if the crime was committed at a quarter-past one, the murderer cannot have left the train, and the question arises: Where is he? And who is he?

‘To begin with, let us examine the evidence carefully. We first hear of the existence of this man—the small dark man with a womanish voice—from the man Hardman. He says that Ratchett told him of this person and employed him to watch out for the man. There is no evidence to support this—we have only Hardman’s word for it. Let us next examine the question: Is Hardman the person he pretends to be—an operative of a New York Detective Agency?

‘What to my mind is so interesting in this case is that we have none of the facilities afforded to the police. We cannot investigate the bona fides of any of these people. We have to rely solely on deduction. That, to me, makes the matter very much more interesting. There is no routine work. It is a matter of the intellect. I ask myself, “Can we accept Hardman’s account of himself?” I make my decision and I answer, “Yes.” I am of the opinion that we can accept Hardman’s account of himself.’

‘You rely on the intuition—what the Americans call the hunch?’ said Dr Constantine.

‘Not at all. I regard the probabilities. Hardman is travelling with a false passport—that will at once make him an object of suspicion. The first thing that the police will do when they do arrive upon the scene is to detain Hardman and cable as to whether his account of himself is true. In the case of many of the passengers, to establish their bona fides will be difficult; in most cases it will probably not be attempted, especially since there seems nothing in the way of suspicion attaching to them. But in Hardman’s case it is simple. Either he is the person he represents himself to be or he is not. Therefore I say that all will prove to be in order.’

‘You acquit him of suspicion?’

‘Not at all. You misunderstand me. For all I know, any American detective might have his own private reasons for wishing to murder Ratchett. No, what I am saying is that I think we can accept Hardman’s own account of himself. This story, then, that he tells of Ratchett’s seeking him out and employing him, is not unlikely and is most probably, though not of course certainly, true. If we are going to accept it as true, we must see if there is any confirmation of it. We find it in rather an unlikely place—in the evidence of Hildegarde Schmidt. Her description of the man she saw in Wagon Lit uniform tallies exactly. Is there any further confirmation of these two stories? There is. There is the button found in her compartment by Mrs Hubbard. And there is also another corroborating statement which you may not have noticed.’

‘What is that?’

‘The fact that both Colonel Arbuthnot and Hector MacQueen mention that the conductor passed their carriage. They attached no importance to the fact, but Messieurs, Pierre Michel has declared that he did not leave his seat except on certain specified occasions, none of which would take him down to the far end of the coach past the compartment in which Arbuthnot and MacQueen were sitting.

‘Therefore this story, the story of a small dark man with a womanish voice dressed in Wagon Lit uniform, rests on the testimony—direct or indirect—of four witnesses.’

‘One small point,’ said Dr Constantine. ‘If Hildegarde Schmidt’s story is true, how is it that the real conductor did not mention having seen her when he came to answer Mrs Hubbard’s bell?’

‘That is explained, I think. When he arrived to answer Mrs Hubbard, the maid was in with her mistress. When she finally returned to her own compartment, the conductor was in with Mrs Hubbard.’

M. Bouc had been waiting with difficulty until they had finished.

‘Yes, yes, my friend,’ he said impatiently to Poirot. ‘But whilst I admire your caution, your method of advancing a step at a time, I submit that you have not yet touched the point at issue. We are all agreed that this person exists. The point is—where did he go?’

Poirot shook his head reprovingly.

‘You are in error. You are inclined to put the cart before the horse. Before I ask myself, “Where did this man vanish to?” I ask myself, “Did such a man really exist?” Because, you see, if the man were an invention—a fabrication—how much easier to make him disappear! So I try to establish first that there really is such a flesh and blood person.’

‘And having arrived at the fact that there is—eh bien– where is he now?’

‘There are only two answers to that, mon cher. Either he is still hidden on the train in a place of such extraordinary ingenuity that we cannot even think of it, or else he is, as one might say, two persons. That is, he is both himself—the man feared by M. Ratchett—and a passenger on the train so well disguised that M. Ratchett did not recognize him.’

‘It is an idea, that,’ said M. Bouc, his face lighting up. Then it clouded over again. ‘But there is one objection—’

Poirot took the words out of his mouth.’

‘The height of the man. It is that you would say? With the exception of M. Ratchett’s valet, all the passengers are big men—the Italian, Colonel Arbuthnot, Hector MacQueen, Count Andrenyi. Well, that leaves us the valet—not a very likely supposition. But there is another possibility. Remember the “womanish” voice. That gives us a choice of alternatives. The man may be disguised as a woman, or, alternatively, he may actually be a woman. A tall woman dressed in man’s clothes would look small.’

‘But surely Ratchett would have known—’

‘Perhaps he did know. Perhaps, already this woman had attempted his life wearing men’s clothes the better to accomplish her purpose. Ratchett may have guessed that she would use the same trick again, so he tells Hardman to look for a man. But he mentions, however, a womanish voice.’

‘It is a possibility,’ said M. Bouc. ‘But—’

‘Listen, my friend, I think that I should now tell you of certain inconsistencies noticed by Dr Constantine.’

He retailed at length the conclusions that he and the doctor had arrived at together from the nature of the dead man’s wounds. M. Bouc groaned and held his head again.

‘I know,’ said Poirot sympathetically. ‘I know exactly how you feel. The head spins,’ does it not?’

‘The whole thing is a fantasy,’ cried M. Bouc.

‘Exactly. It is absurd—improbable—it cannot be. So I myself have said. And yet, my friend, there it is! One cannot escape from the facts.’

‘It is madness!’

‘Is it not? It is so mad, my friend, that sometimes I am haunted by the sensation that really it must be very simple…

‘But that is only one of my “little ideas.”…’

‘Two murderers,’ groaned M. Bouc. ‘And on the Orient Express.’

The thought almost made him weep.

‘And now let us make the fantasy more fantastic,’ said Poirot cheerfully. ‘Last night on the train there are two mysterious strangers. There is the Wagon Lit attendant answering to the description given us by M. Hardman, and seen by Hildegarde Schmidt, Colonel Arbuthnot and M. MacQueen. There is also a woman in a red kimono—a tall, slim woman—seen by Pierre Michel, by Miss Debenham, by M. MacQueen and by myself—and smelt, I may say, by Colonel Arbuthnot! Who was she? No one on the train admits to having a scarlet kimono. She, too, has vanished. Was she one and the same with the spurious Wagon Lit attendant? Or was she some quite distinct personality? Where are they, these two? And, incidentally, where is the Wagon Lit uniform and the scarlet kimono?’

‘Ah! that is something definite.’ M. Bouc sprang up eagerly. ‘We must search all the passengers’ luggage. Yes, that will be something.’

Poirot rose also.

‘I will make a prophecy,’ he said.

‘You know where they are?’

‘I have a little idea.’

‘Where, then?’

‘You will find the scarlet kimono in the baggage of one of the men and you will find the uniform of the Wagon Lit conductor in the baggage of Hildegarde Schmidt.’

‘Hildegarde Schmidt? You think—’

‘Not what you are thinking. I will put it like this. If Hildegarde Schmidt is guilty, the uniform might be found in her baggage—but if she is innocent it certainly will be.’

‘But how—’ began M. Bouc and stopped.

‘What is this noise that approaches?’ he cried. ‘It resembles a locomotive in motion.’

The noise drew nearer. It consisted of shrill cries and protests in a woman’s voice. The door at the end of the dining-car flew open. Mrs Hubbard burst in.

‘It’s too horrible,’ she cried. ‘It’s just too horrible. In my sponge-bag. My sponge-bag. A great knife—all over blood.’

And, suddenly toppling forward, she fainted heavily on M. Bouc’s shoulder.