The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie: Part 2

published 1928

Mrs. Kettering started violently. Her nerves were not completely under control this morning. Very perfectly dressed in a long mink coat and a little hat of Chinese lacquer red, she had been walking along the crowded platform of Victoria deep in thought, and her father's sudden appearance and hearty greeting had an unlooked-for effect upon her.

"Why, Ruth, how you jumped!"

"I didn't expect to see you, I suppose, Dad. You said good-bye to me last night and said you had a conference this morning."…


A thin maid is clutching a big scarlet morocco case with the initials RVK on it.

Extra credit: The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

[For comparison purposes, this is the departure of Linda for Spain, getting the train ten years later]

I went to see her off at Victoria, she was looking intensely English in her long blond mink coat, the Tatler under her arm, and Lord Merlin’s morocco dressing-case, with a canvas cover, in her hand.

observations: I mentioned in the first entry on this book that Vicki/Skiourophile had written an excellent review of the book, and I like this firm comment from it:

I recommend it for the settings and a pretty clever plot (I always give up thinking when anyone mentions train timetables as I know I'll never figure it out) and for featuring my favourite cliché of all, the dowdy companion who comes into money and is transformed by a good dressmaker.

--the transformation we looked at in the previous entry, and I know just what Vicki means about the trains. Christie isn’t usually prone to this (bridge bidding is another matter) but I said last time that I think the book could have done with another edit, and this – combined with the changes in transport since 1928 – would make it very hard for a modern person to work out the train stuff. For instance, Ruth is not getting on the actual, titular, Blue Train above, as you might think – she has to get to Dover and cross to Calais before she can do that. Then there is the business of the train circling Paris, and then calling elsewhere. I don’t think anyone could really work out what opportunities anyone might have for joining or leaving the train. (And I speak as someone who has travelled widely in Europe in recent years, using trains and sleeper cars, and is constantly reminded of this book, and of course Murder on the Orient Express, whenever I do so.) There are also some questions to be asked of the pathologist who examined the body…

I still do love all the details of the travel - the tickets, and the porter, and the maid sitting elsewhere, and leaving your compartment so the bed can be made up. Ruth has her dinner handed to her in a basket, through the train window surprisingly (having chosen not to go to the posh dining car), and later, people’s belongings are handed out through the window when the train arrives.

The TV version of this book (which does add other plotlines) is actually not bad at all, so long as you draw a veil over the unspeakable horror of trying to give Poirot a love interest. A lot of it was shot on location in an authentic villa in Menton, and it looks fabulous – there is also a funny story of an actress signing on cheerfully for this great job filming in the South of France, and then paging through the script and finding to her horror that her character dies and never gets there… 

The picture is Woman in Coat and Hat at train station, from a 1920s fashion magazine, from the NYPL. 

Above is a fashionable woman at a railway station some years later - from this entry earlier this year for a crime book set at a fashion magazine.

There are several entries on The Pursuit of Love, click on the labels below to see more. I like the idea that the railway platforms of the era were filled with women all dressed alike.

Josephine Tey’s The Singing Sands also features someone dying on a sleeper train.