THE BOOK  PAN, 1954 Pan pp 188

The PAN edition is not an attractive one, with an ugly and fairly meaningless cover image: the dead woman was completely disfigured by the murderer, Poirot’s head is shaped like a pear rather than an egg and the question mark  has echoes of both that head and a hangman’s rope.

The uninspiring Fontana cover was painted by Ian Robertson, standing in for Tom Adams. The jewels are the fateful gift from Rufus van Aldin to his daughter, Ruth Kettering.

ABOUT

Katherine Grey comes into a fortune and decides to travel to the South of France on the Blue Train. En route, she meets Ruth Kettering, who is later found murdered on the train. Also on the train is Hercule Poirot, who invites Miss Grey to join his investigation of the crime, Katherine having earlier intimated to him her love of les romans policiers.

CHARACTERS

The most sympathetic character is Katherine Grey. Before she came into the money she had spent ‘a great deal of her life listening, and those who have listened do not find it easy to talk’.  Katherine is in her 30s, shy and on her own, as was the author at the time – hence the sympathetic treatment.

At least four characters are given forenames or surnames beginning with “K”, to facilitate a daft clue about a case with that initial on it.

My favourite character is the “information specialist” Mr Goby, a small, elderly man, shabbily dressed, with eyes that looked carefully all round the room, and never at the person he was addressing. I think he is one of the great comic creations, up there with Evelyn Waugh’s Chatty Corner. Mr Goby appears here on behalf of the murdered girl’s father, but is later to be found employed by Poirot in some of his later stories:

Mr Goby sat down with his hands on his knees, and gazed earnestly at the radiator … Mr Goby transferred his gaze from the radiator to the left-hand drawer of the desk … Mr Goby smiled understandingly at the fender …

ATTITUDES

Unusually, It is the attitude of the author here that gives one pause. Most of the nationalist or racist comments in her stories are used to delineate the character of the speaker; not here. These quotes are all taken from the first page of the book. This is not a first page written by a happy author.

A little man with the face of a rat… In an Empire where rats ruled, he was the king of the rats…

There was a hint of a curve in the thin nose. His father had been a Polish Jew, a journeyman tailor. It was business such as his father would have loved that took him abroad to-night. 

The electric light was shaded with dirty pink festoons,and it softened, but could not disguise, the girl’s face with its mask of crude paint. Could not disguise, either, the broad Mongolian cast of her countenance. There was no doubt of Olga Demiroff’s profession, nor of her nationality.

SWIGATHA RATING  4/10
It is readable as usual, but I don’t think many would rate it their favourite. Agatha Christie certainly didn’t: ¹

To begin with, I had no joy in writing, no elan. I had worked out the plot – a conventional plot, partly adapted from one of my other stories … I have always hated the Mystery of the Blue Train … 

… and it shows; this was the first new novel that she wrote after her mother’s death and her husband’s abandonment of her.  

Even the plot itself isn’t original; it is based on that of the short story The Plymouth Express, published just four years earlier.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

Katherine Grey went back to live in the village of St Mary Mead … there is no record of her ever meeting with a certain Jane Marple, although the Tuesday Night Club stories, set in St Mary Mead and featuring Miss Marple, were being published around the same time.

The ‘small elderly man’ Mr Goby, as described in this book, evidently shared Poirot’s talent for longevity – he is still being employed by him over 40 years later.

The carriage attendant on the Blue Train, Pierre Michel, switched lines: he reappears as carriage attendant on the Orient Express, in time for another murder, six years later.

ADAPTATIONS

An adaptation was made for the ITV Poirot series in 2005. It looks good, and is quite amusing, but far too many changes are made to the plot (the indomitable Miss Grey faces murder attempts by two different people, a group of nuns is added for no obvious reason, and, unforgivably, the character of Mr Goby is ditched.²

NOTES

¹ Agatha Christie, An Autobiography

² Although he appeared in five Poirot novels, Mr Goby has never appeared in any of the TV adaptations.  Contrast that with Miss Lemon, who appears in only four Poirot novels and two short stories, but features in over 40 Poirot adaptations.