6. A Woman?

‘First of all,’ said Poirot, ‘I should like a word or two with young M. MacQueen. He may be able to give us valuable information.’

‘Certainly,’ said M. Bouc.

He turned to the chef de train.

‘Get M. MacQueen to come here.’

The chef de train left the carriage.

The conductor returned with a bundle of passports and tickets. M. Bouc took them from him.

‘Thank you, Michel. It would be best now, I think, if you were to go back to your post. We will take your evidence formally later.’

‘Very good, Monsieur.’

Michel in his turn left the carriage.

‘After we have seen young MacQueen,’ said Poirot, ‘perhaps M. le docteur will come with me to the dead man’s carriage.’

‘Certainly.’

‘After we have finished there—’

But at this moment the chef de train returned with Hector MacQueen.

M. Bouc rose.

‘We are a little cramped here,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Take my seat, M. MacQueen. M. Poirot will sit opposite you—so.’

He turned to the chef de train.

‘Clear all the people out of the restaurant-car,’ he said, ‘and let it be left free for M. Poirot. You will conduct your interviews there, mon cher?’

‘It would be the most convenient, yes,’ agreed Poirot.

MacQueen had stood looking from one to the other, not quite following the rapid flow of French.

‘Qu’est ce qu’il y a?’ he began laboriously. ‘Pourquoi—?’

With a vigorous gesture Poirot motioned him to the seat in the corner. He took it and began once more.

‘Pourquoi—?’ then, checking himself and relapsing into his own tongue, ‘What’s up on the train? Has anything happened?’

He looked from one man to another.

Poirot nodded.

‘Exactly. Something has happened. Prepare yourself for a shock. Your employer, M. Ratchett, is dead!’

MacQueen’s mouth pursed itself in a whistle. Except that his eyes grew a shade brighter, he showed no signs of shock or distress.

‘So they got him after all,’ he said.

‘What exactly do you mean by that phrase, M. MacQueen?’

MacQueen hesitated.

‘You are assuming,’ said Poirot, ‘that M. Ratchett was murdered?’

‘Wasn’t he?’ This time MacQueen did show surprise. ‘Why, yes,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s just what I did think. Do you mean he just died in his sleep? Why, the old man was as tough as—as tough—’

He stopped, at a loss for a simile.

‘No, no,’ said Poirot. ‘Your assumption was quite right. Mr Ratchett was murdered. Stabbed. But I should like to know why you were so sure it was murder, and not just—death.’

MacQueen hesitated.

‘I must get this clear,’ he said. ‘Who exactly are you? And where do you come in?’

‘I represent the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons Lits.’ He paused, then added, ‘I am a detective. My name is Hercule Poirot.’

If he expected an effect he did not get one. MacQueen said merely, ‘Oh, yes?’ and waited for him to go on.

‘You know the name, perhaps.’

‘Why, it does seem kind of familiar—only I always thought it was a woman’s dressmaker.’

Hercule Poirot looked at him with distaste.

‘It is incredible!’ he said.

‘What’s incredible?’

‘Nothing. Let us advance with the matter in hand. I want you to tell me, M. MacQueen, all that you know about the dead man. You were not related to him?’

‘No. I am—was—his secretary.’

‘For how long have you held that post?’

‘Just over a year.’

‘Please give me all the information you can.’

‘Well, I met Mr Ratchett just over a year ago when I was in Persia—’

Poirot interrupted.

‘What were you doing there?’

‘I had come over from New York to look into an oil concession. I don’t suppose you want to hear all about that. My friends and I had been let in rather badly over it. Mr Ratchett was in the same hotel. He had just had a row with his secretary. He offered me the job and I took it. I was at a loose end, and glad to find a well-paid job ready made, as it were.’

‘And since then?’

‘We’ve travelled about. Mr Ratchett wanted to see the world. He was hampered by knowing no languages. I acted more as a courier than as a secretary. It was a pleasant life.’

‘Now tell me as much as you can about your employer.’

The young man shrugged his shoulders. A perplexed expression passed over his face.

‘That’s not so easy.’

‘What was his full name?’

‘Samuel Edward Ratchett.’

‘He was an American citizen?’

‘Yes.’

‘What part of America did he come from?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, tell me what you do know.’

‘The actual truth is, Mr Poirot, that I know nothing at all! Mr Ratchett never spoke of himself, or of his life in America.’

‘Why do you think that was?’

‘I don’t know. I imagined that he might have been ashamed of his beginnings. Some men are.’

‘Does that strike you as a satisfactory solution?’

‘Frankly, it doesn’t.’

‘Has he any relations?’

‘He never mentioned any.’

Poirot pressed the point.

‘You must have formed some theory, M. MacQueen.’

‘Well, yes, I did. For one thing, I don’t believe Ratchett was his real name. I think he left America definitely in order to escape someone or something. I think he was successful—until a few weeks ago.’

‘And then?’

‘He began to get letters—threatening letters.’

‘Did you see them?’

‘Yes. It was my business to attend to his correspondence. The first letter came a fortnight ago.’

‘Were these letters destroyed?’

‘No, I think I’ve got a couple still in my files—one I know Ratchett tore up in a rage. Shall I get them for you?’

‘If you would be so good.’

MacQueen left the compartment. He returned a few minutes later and laid down two sheets of rather dirty notepaper before Poirot.

The first letter ran as follows:

‘Thought you’d doublecross us and get away with it, did you? Not on your life. We’re out to GET you, Ratchett, and we WILL get you!’

There was no signature.

With no comment beyond raised eyebrows, Poirot picked up the second letter.

‘We’re going to take you for a ride, Ratchett. Some time soon. We’re going to GET you, see?’

Poirot laid the letter down.

‘The style is monotonous!’ he said. ‘More so than the handwriting.’

MacQueen stared at him.

‘You would not observe,’ said Poirot pleasantly. ‘It requires the eye of one used to such things. This letter was not written by one person, M. MacQueen. Two or more persons wrote it—each writing a letter of a word at a time. Also, the letters are printed. That makes the task of identifying the handwriting much more difficult.’

He paused, then said:

‘Did you know that M. Ratchett had applied for help to me?’

‘To you?’

MacQueen’s astonished tone told Poirot quite certainly that the young man had not known of it. He nodded.

‘Yes. He was alarmed. Tell me, how did he act when he received the first letter?’

MacQueen hesitated.

‘It’s difficult to say. He—he—passed it off with a laugh in that quiet way of his. But somehow’—he gave a slight shiver—‘I felt that there was a good deal going on underneath the quietness.’

Poirot nodded. Then he asked an unexpected question.

‘Mr MacQueen, will you tell me, quite honestly, exactly how you regarded your employer? Did you like him?’

Hector MacQueen took a moment or two before replying.

‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I did not.’

‘Why?’

‘I can’t exactly say. He was always quite pleasant in his manner.’ He paused, then said, ‘I’ll tell you the truth, Mr Poirot. I disliked and distrusted him. He was, I am sure, a cruel and a dangerous man. I must admit, though, that I have no reasons to advance for my opinion.’

‘Thank you, M. MacQueen. One further question—when did you last see M. Ratchett alive?’

‘Last evening about’—he thought for a minute—‘ten o’clock, I should say. I went into his compartment to take down some memoranda from him.’

‘On what subject?’

‘Some tiles and antique pottery that he bought in Persia. What was delivered was not what he had purchased. There has been a long, vexatious correspondence on the subject.’

‘And that was the last time M. Ratchett was seen alive?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘Do you know when M. Ratchett received the last threatening letter?’

‘On the morning of the day we left Constantinople.’

‘There is one more question I must ask you, M. MacQueen: were you on good terms with your employer?’

The young man’s eyes twinkled suddenly.

‘This is where I’m supposed to go all goosefleshy down the back. In the words of a best seller, “You’ve nothing on me.” Ratchett and I were on perfectly good terms.’

‘Perhaps, M. MacQueen, you will give me your full name and your address in America.’

MacQueen gave his name—Hector Willard MacQueen, and an address in New York.

Poirot leaned back against the cushions.

‘That is all for the present, M. MacQueen,’ he said. ‘I should be obliged if you would keep the matter of M. Ratchett’s death to yourself for a little time.’

‘His valet, Masterman, will have to know.’

‘He probably knows already,’ said Poirot dryly. ‘If so try to get him to hold his tongue.’

‘That oughtn’t to be difficult. He’s a Britisher, and does what he calls “Keeps himself to himself.” He’s a low opinion of Americans and no opinion at all of any other nationality.’

‘Thank you, M. MacQueen.’

The American left the carriage.

‘Well?’ demanded M. Bouc. ‘You believe what he says, this young man?’

‘He seems honest and straightforward. He did not pretend to any affection for his employer as he probably would have done had he been involved in any way. It is true M. Ratchett did not tell him that he had tried to enlist my services and failed, but I do not think that is really a suspicious circumstance. I fancy M. Ratchett was a gentleman who kept his own counsel on every possible occasion.’

‘So you pronounce one person at least innocent of the crime,’ said M. Bouc jovially.

Poirot cast on him a look of reproach.

‘Me, I suspect everybody till the last minute,’ he said. ‘All the same, I must admit that I cannot see this sober, long-headed MacQueen losing his head and stabbing his victim twelve or fourteen times. It is not in accord with his psychology—not at all.’

‘No,’ said Mr Bouc thoughtfully. ‘That is the act of a man driven almost crazy with a frenzied hate—it suggests more the Latin temperament. Or else it suggests, as our friend the chef de train insisted, a woman.’