Murder On The Orient Express / Убийство в восточном экспрессе. Агата Кристи

is what we need. About fifteen years ago hat- boxes were made like this. You skewered through the hat with a hatpin on to this hump of wire-netting.’

      As he spoke he was skilfully removing two of the attachments. Then he repacked the hat-box and told the conductor to return them both where they belonged.

      When the door was shut once more he turned to his companion.

      ‘See you, my dear doctor, me, I am not one to rely upon the expert procedure. It is the psychology I seek, not the fingerprint or the cigarette ash. But in this case I would welcome a little scientific assistance. This compartment is full of clues, but can I be sure that those clues are really what they seem to be?’

      ‘I do not quite understand you, M. Poirot.’

      ‘Well, to give you an example—we find a woman’s handkerchief. Did a woman drop it? Or did a man, committing the crime, say to himself “I will make this look like a woman’s crime. I will stab my enemy an unnecessary number of times, making some of the blows feeble and ineffective, and I will drop this handkerchief where no one can miss it.” That is one possibility. Then there is another. Did a woman kill him and did she deliberately drop a pipe cleaner to make it look like a man’s work? Or are we seriously to suppose that two people—a man and a woman—were separately concerned, and that each was so careless as to drop a clue to their identity? It is a little too much of a coincidence, that!’

      ‘But where does the hat-box come in?’ asked the doctor, still puzzled.

      ‘Ah! I’m coming to that. As I say, these clues, the watch stopped at a quarter-past one, the handkerchief, the pipe cleaner, they may be genuine, or they may be fake. As to that I cannot yet tell. But there is one clue here which I believe—though again I may be wrong—has not been faked. I mean this flat match, M. le docteur. I believe that that match was used by the murderer, not by M. Ratchett. It was used to burn an incriminating paper of some kind. Possibly a note. If so, there was something in that note, some mistake, some error, that left a possible clue to the assailant. I am going to endeavour to resurrect what that something was.’

      He went out of the compartment and returned a few moments later with a small spirit stove and a pair of curling tongs.

      ‘I use them for the moustaches,’ he said, referring to the latter.

      The doctor watched him with great interest. He flattened out the two humps of wire, and with great care wriggled the charred scrap of paper on to one of them. He clapped the other on top of it and then, holding both pieces together with the tongs, held the whole thing over the flame of the spirit lamp.