The Mystery of the Blue Train
Good Fit
- Readers who love the classic closed-circle mystery and Hercule Poirot's logical method
- Anyone who enjoys intrigue built around jewel theft, false identities, and disguised criminals
- Christie completists wanting to work through the early entries in the Poirot series
Not a Fit
- Readers used to modern, fast-paced thrillers who lack patience for a 1920s literary pace
- Readers expecting Christie's later, more mature work (e.g. "Murder on the Orient Express") — this is a comparatively early, hastily written book that even the author herself disliked
- Readers looking for deep emotional attachment to the protagonist — the opening chapters are devoted to introducing numerous secondary characters, with Poirot entirely absent
The novel opens by depicting a Russian émigré, Boris Krassnine, and his associate "Olga Demiroff," selling mysterious red stones wrapped in brown paper to a wealthy American. The scene is charged with paranoia — shadows watching the street from the window, suspicion of being followed, and both sellers vanishing in different directions the moment the deal is done.
The instant the American buyer leaves, Olga voices a cryptic thought: "He's certain to give them to a woman... What I'd really like to know is what happens after that." This brief line signals to the reader, without spoiling anything, that the stones will become the center of a coming tragedy.
Chapter two shifts attention entirely to a different character: that same night, a calm, unhurried, elegantly dressed man with white hair strolls through the streets. He happens to overhear that a failed mugging just took place — two street thugs tried and failed to rob an elderly American — a seemingly incidental episode that will later prove connected to the whole plot.
The white-haired man arrives at the home of D. Papopolous, an influential but publicity-shy dealer in a wealthy Parisian district, conceals his face behind a small black mask, and introduces himself under the mysterious name "Monsieur le Marquis." Papopolous's respectful welcome hints at a pre-existing, illicit working relationship between the two.
- Christie opens the novel entirely without Poirot, threading together several distinct character lines — laying the groundwork, right in these opening chapters, for the classic structure in which everyone turns out to be someone else
- The motif of masks, false names ("Monsieur le Marquis"), and hidden identity is foregrounded so heavily from the very start that it signals itself as the key to the book's central theme — that everyone wears a mask
The same author's most famous execution of the "murder aboard a closed vehicle" formula, written in her more mature period
Another earlier Poirot novel from the same period, previously featured on this site, built around a similarly theatrical criminal conspiracy
Short answer: Ruth Kettering was not killed by her husband Derek. The killer turns out to be Van Aldin's secretary, Major Richard Knighton; Ruth's maid Ada Mason is his accomplice and her real name is Kitty Kidd. Poirot exposes both on the Blue Train.
Derek is arrested because the dancer Mirelle says she saw him leave Ruth's compartment before the train reached Lyon. Derek himself tells Katherine Grey that he did enter the compartment but found Ruth asleep and slipped out. Poirot is not satisfied: the victim's face was made unrecognisable and he cannot stop wondering why. Mirelle also lets slip during questioning that she knew Ruth was already dead after Lyon.
Poirot's reconstruction runs like this. Knighton boards the train after Paris and slips a cord around Ruth's neck while she looks out of the window. Knighton and Ada Mason wrap the body in a blanket and hide it in the next compartment among the luggage. Knighton takes the jewel case and jumps off the train. At the Gare de Lyon, Ada Mason puts on Ruth's clothes, tucks brown curls under the hat and buys a meal basket. When the conductor comes to make up the beds, she tells him she left her maid in Paris and stands at the window with her back to the corridor. So Ruth is believed to be still alive at that point. Before Lyon, Ada lays the body on the bed, changes into men's clothes, gets off the train and returns to the Ritz in Paris. Knighton's claim that he «saw» her at the hotel becomes his alibi. That is why the face was crushed: so the conductor could not notice that the body was not the woman who had spoken to him.
Knighton is the much-discussed «Marquis», a notorious jewel thief. Van Aldin had hired him as secretary only two months earlier. Knighton fell for Katherine Grey and, seeing that Derek was a rival, pinned the crime on him. Poirot traps him like this: he boards the Blue Train again with Van Aldin and Knighton. At Lyon he says the person who got off was a woman dressed as a man, Kitty Kidd, and hands Knighton the cigarette case he had dropped. French police hiding in the adjoining compartment arrest him as «Monsieur le Marquis».
At the end Van Aldin expresses his gratitude to Poirot. Derek is released and leaves Nice in the direction of St. Mary Mead. Lenox Tamplin admits she was wrong about Katherine. Poirot tells her that her idea that the killer might not have been on the train was the first light on the road to the truth. The novel ends with the whistle of the Blue Train heard in the distance.
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