The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie #ReadChristie2024

Title: The Mystery of the Blue Train 
Author: Agatha Christie
Publication: Dodd, Mead & Co., hardcover, originally published in 1928
Genre: Mystery
Setting: France and England

Description: An American millionaire, Rufus Van Aldin, has purchased priceless rubies for his only child, Ruthie, which distracts her temporarily from annoyance with her philandering husband. She is heading to France to rendezvous with her first love (dismissed as a fortune hunter by her father years earlier) and takes the famous Blue Train, which brings affluent travelers to the Riviera. On the train, she meets Katherine Grey, a former lady’s companion who recently inherited a fortune from her employer (this is the kind of employer we all need). Later that night, Ruthie is murdered in her compartment and the rubies are stolen. In the dining car, Katherine encounters fellow traveler, Hercule Poirot, conveniently on the scene to help solve the murder, although it takes him longer than usual; in fact, several weeks, due to all the suspicious characters – including Ruthie’s husband, now interested in Katherine – who were interested in the rubies.  Van Aldin thinks Poirot has lost his touch but the diminutive detective is always just waiting until he has all the facts.

My Impression: It doesn’t take a detective to know that Christie enjoyed setting books in isolated places where the victim and the murderer share the same space, whether it is an island or (as in my last Christie) a hotel cut off by the tide or – perhaps her favorite – a train. Here, Ruthie, Katherine (going to visit distant relatives on the Riviera), and Poirot have been traveling more or less together by train from Victoria Station in London to Dover, where they took a three hour boat to Calais, and then boarded the luxurious Blue Train to Nice. Katherine has developed such good listening skills as a companion that Ruthie confides in her: second thoughts about her illicit assignation, deceiving her father, and a premonition of disaster. Katherine later encounters Poirot when she brings a mystery to the dining car:

She found the little man’s eyes fixed upon it with a kind of twinkling amusement.

“I see, madame, that you have a roman policier. You are fond of such things?”

“They amuse me,” Katherine admitted.

The little man nodded with an air of complete understanding.

“They have a good sale always, so I am told. Now why is that, eh, mademoiselle? I ask it of you as a student of human nature – why should that be?”

It’s a nice touch that Katherine is enjoying a crime novel, telling Poirot nothing ever happens to her but, hours later, as one of the last people to see Ruthie alive, she is entangled in the murder, first as a witness and then when she becomes acquainted with Ruthie’s fortune-hunting husband. As well, she and Poirot have become friends and, astute herself, she is able to help solve the mystery.

There is a lot of murky activity before the action begins taking place on the train: mysterious jewel thieves (the identity of the “Marquis” sought by the police seemed pretty obvious), spiteful ex-girlfriends, and jewelers operating outside the law.   This is not a Christie you hear readers discuss much and I am not surprised to read that it was not a favorite of the author: she thought “it commonplace, full of clichés, with an uninteresting plot” (The Agatha Christie Companion, 42). It was also the first book she wrote after her husband left her as she was recovering from their divorce (and her mysterious - and embarrassing - disappearance), which may be a partial reason for her dislike of it. I am sorry to read he lived happily ever after with his second wife, but Agatha also remarried and this marriage, to a distinguished young archeologist, was successful and lasted until her death.

This is the March selection for #ReadChristie24 and it is also my fifth book for Carol’s Cloak and Dagger Challenge. My copy of this book is an omnibus called Murder on Board and I think it was a good marketing to include two that take place on a train and one on a plane, given Christie’s enjoyment of such set-ups.

Source: Personal copy