bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1985) — Winter 1985 // Hiver 1985, p. 41
It is morning on the Orient Express and murder has been done in Room 13 of the Pullman Car (see diagram). The victim was an American secret agent on his way to Istanbul. The windows on the car are the kind that don’t open and the end doors have been locked all night. You and the porter stayed awake playing cards until dawn, and one of you had the corridor in view at all times. The passengers are one per room and there are no inter-connecting doors. You saw one and only one man enter Room 13 and engage the American in conversation, but the light was too dim to see who it was and you didn’t hear the shot that killed the victim. One of the other passengers is the murderer!
You find the body on entering the American’s room before anyone else has stirred. You first notice a persistent odour of gunsmoke and tobacco. There are two glasses on the table, each with a trace of liquor in the bottom. One has the American’s fingerprints and the other is wiped clean. The ashtray is empty, and there are no ashes elsewhere in the room. Clutched in the American’s hand is a torn piece of paper with the words “espia americano” scribbled on it; the ink was fresh enough to have smeared on the victim’s dry thumb. The murder bullet passed through both the American’s body and the window. Neither a gun nor a liquor bottle is to be found in the room; nor has either been discarded elsewhere in the still-sealed car.
You notify the conductor, who ensures that the car’s surviving passengers remain in their compartments. They all turn out to be secret agents like the American (such things happen on the Orient Express). No-one has an alibi except you and the porter, but all the others have diplomatic passports they wave self-importantly. Based on a search of their rooms and papers, you determine that each has a different nationality and a different state employer. Each is carrying a different single type of tobacco and alcohol (unless an abstainer) and a different single weapon. Each speaks exactly three languages, including the major tongue of his homeland and one common in a significant part of his employer’s country.
The conductor tries to interrogate the suspects and quickly develops brain-fever from the strain. All he can tell you are the following few fragments:
(1) The Spaniard’s room is right between the victim’s and that of the whiskey-drinking cigar smoker who works for London.
(2) The Frenchman carries a Colt 45 and speaks Welsh, French and Spanish.
(3) The man who works for Berlin drinks gin, smokes a pipe and speaks
German, Spanish and English.
The man who works for Moscow is at one end of the row; he is a strict teetotaller and carries a Luger.
The victim never carried a gun of any kind, drank but did not smoke, and spoke only English.
The strict non-smoker works for Belgium and drinks rum. The Englishman smokes cigarillos and speaks Spanish and Ukranian; the man in the only adjacent bedroom speaks neither. The Argentine carries a Browning; his room number is 2 higher than that of the cigarette-smoker, who works for Berne.
The brandy-drinker carries a powerful compressed-air pistol and speaks Spanish, German and English.
(10) The Japanese in Room 15 carries a derringer and speaks English and Walloon.
(11) None of the passengers would co-operate with any of the others, and no-one is missing so much as a cigarette.
As a famous Canadian detective and a friend of the conductor’s, you respond to his plea for help. You have no time for further interviews, as importunate Consuls-General are beating at your door. Based on the evidence at hand and a conviction that the simplest answers are the best, who is most likely to have killed the American? What did he use? Who does he work for? Which is his room? What does he smoke? What type of liquor was in the glasses? And just how do you know all this?
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1985) — Winter 1985 // Hiver 1985, p. 41. Read the rest of this issue →
