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A character in Murder on the Orient Express

Mrs Hubbard

The talkative American widow next door to the dead man, who found a stranger in her compartment in the night and a knife in her sponge bag in the morning.

What they want

In her own account, to get safely home to her daughter; in truth, something she has waited years for.

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
American passenger, compartment No. 3, next to Ratchett
Where she appears
Throughout, and at the centre of the final chapter

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Mrs Hubbard talks. She talks about her daughter, her daughter's husband, the state of the East, and the man who was in her compartment in the middle of the night. The other passengers find her exhausting, and the reader is encouraged to. She is the comic relief of Part Two, the witness whose evidence keeps arriving in a flood of unrelated detail.

She is also the passenger closest to the crime, with only a bolted door between her berth and Ratchett's. Every dramatic discovery in the coach passes through her: the intruder, the button, the knife. Christie gives the loudest voice in the book the most to hide.

How Mrs Hubbard Is Portrayed

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

  • The talkContinuous, and mostly about her daughter in Baghdad, which is how the reader learns to stop listening to her.
  • The sponge bagHung on the handle of the communicating door, where it hides the bolt from view; she makes Greta Ohlsson check the bolt for her.
  • The intruderA man in her compartment in the dark, she says, and a conductor's button found on the floor in the morning.
  • The knifeDiscovered in her own sponge bag after the luggage search, at which she faints.
  • The mannerIndignant, motherly and unstoppable; she treats Poirot's questions as interruptions.
  • The stagePoirot notices that she plays her scenes to the room. The observation is dropped and picked up again at the end.
Their ending, and the commentary — spoilers aheadHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

Mrs Hubbard is Linda Arden, the famous American actress, Daisy Armstrong's grandmother and the mother of the woman who died giving birth after the kidnapping. She planned the killing and played the fussing widow to keep attention on the wrong things. When Poirot names her, she stops acting and asks him to put the whole thing on her alone.

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