A train between Europe and the Middle East was forced to stop due to a snowstorm, and a wealthy businessman from the United States was found dead in his box, stabbed irregularly 12 times, but surprisingly the box door was locked behind the door.
A train that runs all the time, a cordoned box, a dead man who claims to be in danger. This is a murder on the Orient Express.
Before his death, the deceased received a threatening letter in which a wealthy American businessman who claimed to be not a good man also tried to express his dangerous situation to a man with a strange mustache and force him to protect himself.
His high-spirited call for help was not answered, and the object of his call for help turned out to be the famous detective Poirot, but at this time Poirot, who was also traveling to escape work.
Polo, the great detective who originally wanted to enjoy the journey, had to accept the request of the trainer to personally investigate the confusing case. Poirot started with the people closest to the deceased, but only received extensive information that the deceased had made many enemies.
Clueless, Poirot decided to look for clues from the deceased, and he searched through the deceased's box and found a lot of scattered information, the deceased suffered 12 extremely violent and disorderly stab wounds, remnants of sleeping pills, a lady's handkerchief with an "H" written on it, burnt notes in the ashtray, and so on.
All the clues are not connected, and then Poirot discovers a shocking fact from the burnt note, the deceased is not a wealthy American businessman, but a notorious kidnapper Casati. The kidnapper of the Armstrong massacre that caused a great sensation.
Casati kidnapped Armstrong's 3-year-old daughter, but after receiving the ransom, he still killed the hostages, Mrs. Armstrong, who was pregnant at the time, heard the news that two were dead, and the maid in the family also chose to commit suicide because of self-blame, Armstrong asked Poirot for help, but committed suicide before Poirot received the letter.
Casati, who caused all this, then disappeared with a ransom, but now his true face was revealed in the form of a corpse.
Regardless of his identity, Poirot will continue to investigate, and the truth is the truth to him.
The 12 people who did not know each other in the same carriage provided everything they knew about the night of the crime, and each piece of information could be connected but had no meaning to the progress of the case.
There are so many suspicious things that Poirot finds that every suspicious point is verified by others in the same compartment, and it can be said that everyone has the most perfect alibi.
In the process of Poirot's separate conversation with 12 people, although he could not get any effective information, he saw through his own observations the identity and little secrets behind each person, and the truth gradually revealed in the process of finding clues.
Among the seemingly unrelated 12 people are Mrs. Armstrong's godmother, Mrs. Armstrong's mother, Armstrong's close friend, Mrs. Armstrong's female secretary, Mrs. Armstrong's sister and brother-in-law, Armstrong's driver, Armstrong's kidnapped daughter's nanny, the father of the suicide maid in the Armstrong case, the son of the judge in the Armstrong case, and so on.
In the Armstrong massacre 5 years ago, everyone related to the deceased's family appeared on this train, and the people who were not cursed in the court that year were personally executed by 12 of them, corresponding to the number of 12 juries in the British and American courts, and they replaced the legal knife to kill the kidnappers who killed their relatives and friends.
Faced with such a bitter truth, Poirot, who was jealous as a hatred, chose to break his own principles and buried the truth in a blizzard.
Lynching is not a substitute for the absence of law, but how can human nature and reason be so easy to sort out, the tragedy on the Orient Express is an unspeakable complexity in the legal dilemma, who can replace the law to break the evil in the world?
Source: Agatha Christie, "Murder on the Orient Express"
