The main character in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express is a Belgian detective by the name of Hercule Poirot. After finishing a case in Syria, he arrives by train in "Stamboul" (modern-day Istanbul) and then receives a telegram at his hotel, demanding his immediate return to London. While dining at the hotel, Poirot serendipitously runs into an old friend, Monsieur Bouc, who is a high-ranking employee for the Orient Express train company—the same train Poirot is to take that evening. Once on the train, Poirot is approached by a man named Ratchett, who asks the Belgian detective for assistance regarding death threats he has been receiving. Poirot turns him down because he doesn't like the appearance of Ratchett and perceives him as being an evil man.
The following morning, Poirot is summoned to M. Bouc’s car and informed that a murder had taken place the night before. The victim was Ratchett, who had been stabbed to death twelve times. While investigating the murder scene, Poirot finds a scrap of paper that mentions a girl named Daisy Armstrong. Upon further investigation, he finds that Daisy was a young girl who had been kidnapped and murdered by a man named Cassetti. Poirot proceeds to interrogate all of the passengers: Count and Countess Andrenyi, Dr. Constantine, Colonel Arbuthnot, Mary Debenham, Princess Dragomiroff, Antonio Foscarelli, Mrs. Hubbard, Hector MacQueen, Mr. Masterman, Pierre Michel, Greta Ohlsson, and Hildegarde Schmidt. Every passenger has an airtight alibi, and that, along with clues that don’t add up, causes Poirot to struggle with who the murderer could be. Upon digging deeper and following clues, Poirot discovers each passenger on the train has a close connection to Daisy Armstrong—the child who was murdered by Cassetti. Poirot then concludes that Ratchett was an alias used by Cassetti. He then uncovers the truth that Mrs. Hubbard is Linda Armstrong, Daisy’s grandmother.
Poirot arrives at two conclusions, which he presents to the passengers. Either someone boarded the train and killed Ratchett, or all passengers on board conspired together to exact revenge on Ratchett/Cassetti for the murder of Daisy Armstrong. Poirot determines that the twelve knife wounds inflicted on Cassetti were caused by each of the passengers. Countess Andrenyi was the only one not to have stabbed Cassetti; her husband, the Count, did it for her. As Hercule Poirot and M. Bouc give their account to the police, Poirot chooses to present the case as having been the first hypothesis that someone boarded the train and committed murder. In Poirot’s final opinion, justice had been served.
Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot takes a holiday rail journey from Aleppo to Istanbul; once there, he receives a telegram asking him to come to London at once to work a case. Though the Simplon-Orient Express to Calais is fully booked, Poirot is able to obtain a second-class berth with the influence of a fellow Belgian, Monsieur Bouc, who is a director of the railway.
After the train has traveled for two days, more coaches are added at a stop in Belgrade, and Monsieur Bouc gives Poirot his first-class berth. It adjoins the berth of a wealthy and disreputable American, Samuel Ratchett, who had previously asked for Poirot's assistance, believing himself to be in danger. Poirot had declined because of Ratchett's dubious reputation.
Ratchett is murdered in the night. The train is stalled by a massive snowdrift, and Poirot and a doctor begin to investigate the murder at M. Bouc's request. Poirot deduces that Ratchett is actually a criminal named Cassetti who kidnapped and murdered a three-year-old heiress some years before. Ultimately, Poirot deduces that a group of people with various grudges against him, including the grandmother of the murdered child, stabbed Ratchett. Poirot chooses to let the authorities believe that Ratchett was murdered by a stranger who boarded the train while it was stalled and then escaped unnoticed.
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