The mystery of the Blue Train
Poirot came to them in a moment or two, full of abject apologies and
clearly so crestfallen that harsh words would have been superfluous.
Van Aldin received his apologies gravely, but managed to restrain
himself from making acid comments.
They had dinner on the train, and afterwards, somewhat to the surprise
of the other two, Poirot suggested that they should all three set up in
Van Aldin's compartment.
The millionaire looked at him curiously.
"Is there anything that you are keeping back from us, Monsieur Poirot?"
"I?" Poirot opened his eyes in innocent surprise. "But what an idea."
Van Aldin did not answer, but he was not satisfied. The conductor was
told that he need not make up the beds. Any surprise he might have felt
was obliterated by the largeness of the tip which Van Aldin handed to
him. The three men sat in silence. Poirot fidgeted and seemed restless.
Presently he turned to the secretary.
"Major Knighton, is the door of your compartment bolted? The door into
the corridor, I mean."
"Yes; I bolted it myself just now."
"Are you sure?" said Poirot.
"I will go and make sure, if you like," said Knighton smiling.
"No, no, do not derange yourself. I will see for myself."
He passed through the connecting door and returned in a second or two,
nodding his head.
"Yes, yes, it is as you said. You must pardon an old man's fussy ways."
He closed the connecting door and resumed his place in the right-hand
corner.
The hours passed. The three men dozed fitfully, waking with
uncomfortable starts. Probably never before had three people booked
berths on the most luxurious train available, then declined to avail
themselves of the accommodations they had paid for. Every now and then
Poirot glanced at his watch, and then nodded his head and composed
himself to slumber once more. On one occasion he rose from his seat
and opened the connecting door, peered sharply into the adjoining
compartment, and then returned to his seat, shaking his head.
"What is the matter?" whispered Knighton. "You are expecting something
to happen, aren't you?"
"I have the nerves," confessed Poirot. "I am like the cat upon the hot
tiles. Every little noise it makes me jump."
Knighton yawned.
"Of all the darned uncomfortable journeys," he murmured. "I suppose you
know what you are playing at, Monsieur Poirot."
He composed himself to sleep as best he could. Both he and Van Aldin
had succumbed to slumber, when Poirot, glancing for the fourteenth time
at his watch, leant across and tapped the millionaire on the shoulder.
"Eh? What is it?"
"In five or ten minutes, Monsieur, we shall arrive at Lyons."
"My God!" Van Aldin's face looked white and haggard in the dim light.
"Then it must have been about this time that poor Ruth was killed."
He sat staring straight in front of him. His lips twitched a little,
his mind reverting back to the terrible tragedy that had saddened his
life.
There was the usual long screaming sigh of the brake, and the train
slackened speed and drew into Lyons. Van Aldin let down the window and
leant out.
"If it wasn't Derek--if your new theory is correct, it is here that the
man left the train?" he asked over his shoulder.
Rather to his surprise Poirot shook his head.
"No," he said thoughtfully, "no _man_ left the train, but I think--yes,
I think, a _woman_ may have done so."
Knighton gave a gasp.
"A woman?" demanded Van Aldin sharply.
"Yes, a woman," said Poirot, nodding his head. "You may not remember,
Monsieur Van Aldin, but Miss Grey in her evidence mentioned that a
youth in a cap and overcoat descended on to the platform ostensibly
to stretch his legs. Me, I think that that youth was most probably a
woman."
"But who was she?"
Van Aldin's face expressed incredulity, but Poirot replied seriously
and categorically.
"Her name--or the name under which she was known, for many years--is
Kitty Kidd, but you, Monsieur Van Aldin, knew her by another
name--_that of Ada Mason_."
Knighton sprang to his feet.
"What?" he cried.
Poirot swung round to him.
"Ah!--before I forget it." He whipped something from a pocket and held
it out.
"Permit me to offer you a cigarette--out of your own cigarette case.
It was careless of you to drop it when you boarded the train on the
_ceinture_ at Paris."
Knighton stood staring at him as though stupefied. Then he made a
movement, but Poirot flung up his hand in a warning gesture.
"No, don't move," he said in a silky voice; "the door into the next
compartment is open, and you are being covered from there this
minute. I unbolted the door into the corridor when we left Paris,
and our friends the police were told to take their places there. As
I expect you know, the French police want you rather urgently, Major
Knighton--or shall we say--Monsieur le Marquis?"
35. Explanations
"Explanations?"
Poirot smiled. He was sitting opposite the millionaire at a luncheon
table in the latter's private suite at the Negresco. Facing him was a
relieved but very puzzled man. Poirot leant back in his chair, lit one
of his tiny cigarettes, and stared reflectively at the ceiling.
"Yes, I will give you explanations. It began with the one point that
puzzled me. You know what that point was? _The disfigured face._ It is
not an uncommon thing to find when investigating a crime and it rouses
an immediate question, the question of identity. That naturally was
the first thing that occurred to me. Was the dead woman really Mrs.
Kettering? But that line led me nowhere, for Miss Grey's evidence was
positive and very reliable, so I put that idea aside. The dead woman
_was_ Ruth Kettering."
"When did you first begin to suspect the maid?"
"Not for some time, but one peculiar little point drew my attention to
her. The cigarette case found in the railway carriage and which she
told us was one which Mrs. Kettering had given to her husband. Now that
was, on the face of it, most improbable, seeing the terms that they
were on. It awakened a doubt in my mind as to the general veracity of
Ada Mason's statements. There was the rather suspicious fact to be
taken into consideration, that she had only been with her mistress for
two months. Certainly it did not seem as if she could have had anything
to do with the crime since she had been left behind in Paris and Mrs.
Kettering had been seen alive by several people afterwards, but--"
Poirot leant forward. He raised an emphatic forefinger and wagged it
with intense emphasis at Van Aldin.
"But I am a good detective. I suspect. There is nobody and nothing that
I do not suspect. I believe nothing that I am told. I say to myself:
how do we know that Ada Mason was left behind in Paris? And at first
the answer to that question seemed completely satisfactory. There was
the evidence of your secretary, Major Knighton, a complete outsider
whose testimony might be supposed to be entirely impartial, and there
was the dead woman's own words to the conductor on the train. But I put
the latter point aside for the moment, because a very curious idea--an
idea perhaps fantastic and impossible--was growing up in my mind. If
by any outside chance it happened to be true, that particular piece of
testimony was worthless.
"I concentrated on the chief stumbling-block to my theory, Major
Knighton's statement that he saw Ada Mason at the Ritz after the
Blue Train had left Paris. That seemed conclusive enough, but yet,
on examining the facts carefully, I noted two things. First, that
by a curious coincidence he, too, had been exactly two months in
your service. Secondly, his initial letter was the same--'K.'
Supposing--just supposing--that it was _his_ cigarette case which had
been found in the carriage. Then, if Ada Mason and he were working
together, and she recognized it when we showed it to her, would she
not act precisely as she had done? At first, taken aback, she quickly
evolved a plausible theory that would agree with Mr. Kettering's
guilt. _Bien entendu_, that was not the original idea. The Comte de
la Roche was to be the scapegoat, though Ada Mason would not make her
recognition of him too certain, in case he should be able to prove an
alibi. Now, if you will cast your mind back to that time, you will
remember a significant thing that happened. I suggested to Ada Mason
that the man she had seen was not the Comte de la Roche, but Derek
Kettering. She seemed uncertain at the time, but after I had got back
to my hotel you rang me up and told me that she had come to you and
said that, on thinking it over, she was now quite convinced that the
man in question _was_ Mr. Kettering. I had been expecting something of
the kind. There could be but one explanation of this sudden certainty
on her part. After my leaving your hotel, she had had time to consult
with somebody, and had received instructions which she acted upon.
Who had given her these instructions? Major Knighton. And there was
another very small point, which might mean nothing or might mean a
great deal. In casual conversation Knighton had talked of a jewel
robbery in Yorkshire in a house where he was staying. Perhaps a mere
coincidence--perhaps another small link in the chain."
"But there is one thing I do not understand, Monsieur Poirot. I guess I
must be dense or I would have seen it before now. Who was the man in
the train at Paris? Derek Kettering or the Comte de la Roche?"
"That is the simplicity of the whole thing. _There was no man._
Ah--_mille tonnerres!_--do you not see the cleverness of it all? Whose
word have we for it that there ever was a man there? Only Ada Mason's.
And we believe in Ada Mason because of Knighton's evidence that she was
left behind in Paris."
"But Ruth herself told the conductor that she had left her maid behind
there," demurred Van Aldin.
"Ah! I am coming to that. We have Mrs. Kettering's own evidence there,
but, on the other hand, we have not really got her evidence, because,
Monsieur Van Aldin, a dead woman cannot give evidence. It is not _her_
evidence, but the evidence of the conductor of the train--a very
different affair altogether."
"So you think the man was lying?"
"No, no, not at all. He spoke what he thought to be the truth. But the
woman who told him that she had left her maid in Paris was not Mrs.
Kettering."
Van Aldin stared at him.
"Monsieur Van Aldin, Ruth Kettering was dead before the train arrived
at the Gare de Lyon. It was Ada Mason, dressed in her mistress's very
distinctive clothing, who purchased a dinner basket and who made that
very necessary statement to the conductor."
"Impossible!"
"No, no, Monsieur Van Aldin; not impossible. _Les femmes_, they look
so much alike nowadays that one identifies them more by their clothing
than by their faces. Ada Mason was the same height as your daughter.
Dressed in that very sumptuous fur coat and the little red lacquer hat
jammed down over her eyes, with just a bunch of auburn curls showing
over each ear, it was no wonder that the conductor was deceived. He
had not previously spoken to Mrs. Kettering, you remember. True, he
had seen the maid just for a moment when she handed him the tickets,
but his impression had been merely that of a gaunt, black-clad female.
If he had been an unusually intelligent man, he might have gone so far
as to say that mistress and maid were not unlike, but it is extremely
unlikely that he would even think that. And remember, Ada Mason, or
Kitty Kidd, was an actress, able to change her appearance and tone
of voice at a moment's notice. No, no; there was no danger of his
recognizing the maid in the mistress's clothing, but there _was_ the
danger that when he came to discover the body he might realize it was
not the woman he had talked to the night before. And now we see the