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A character in Murder on the Orient Express

Hercule Poirot

The retired Belgian police officer with the egg-shaped head and the enormous moustache, going home to London and finding a corpse in the next coach.

What they want

To know exactly what happened in that compartment, and then to decide what the truth is worth.

The book

Murder on the Orient ExpressAgatha Christie, 1934

A snowbound train, a dead American with twelve stab wounds, and a carriage full of strangers who all have an alibi.

View the book

At a glance

In the book
The detective, a passenger in the Calais coach
Home
London, by way of Brussels
Where he appears
Every chapter

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Hercule Poirot is Belgian, not French, and the book has him say so more than once. He is a retired officer of the Brussels police, small, neat and vain about his moustache, and he has just finished a case for the French army in Syria. He wants a quiet journey home. Instead Monsieur Bouc puts him in a full coach and, the morning after the snow, in charge of a murder.

He works by talking. Each passenger gets a chapter of questions, and he listens for the sentence that does not fit the person saying it. He calls the process using the little grey cells, and he is not modest about it. What he wants is the truth, and the ending tests whether that is the same as wanting justice.

How Hercule Poirot Is Portrayed

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

  • The moustacheEnormous, waxed and tended; the first thing anyone notices and the thing he is proudest of.
  • The headEgg-shaped, and tilted a little to one side when he is thinking, which the passengers find comic until it stops being.
  • The refusalRatchett offers him money for protection and he declines in one line: he does not like Ratchett's face.
  • The methodOne passenger at a time, in the dining car, with Bouc and the doctor listening. He asks about small things and keeps the big ones for later.
  • The nationalityBelgian, and corrects anyone who calls him French. The distinction matters to him and the book keeps it straight.
  • The chairIn Part Three he sits back, closes his eyes and thinks. Bouc and the doctor try to do the same and get nowhere.

Hercule Poirot quotes

Lines spoken by or about Hercule Poirot, each verified verbatim against the text and located in the book.

The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.
— Hercule Poirot (dialogue) · Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express (1934), Part Two, Chapter 13
Their ending, and the commentary — spoilers aheadHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

Poirot solves it completely and then declines to act on it. He gives two solutions and hands the choice to Bouc and Dr Constantine, who pick the stranger in the conductor's uniform. Readers have argued since 1934 about whether the man who elsewhere insists that murder is murder has betrayed his own rule here, or applied it to the right person.

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