“Oh, I’m sorry”

“Not at all. It is most natural. I am now in the compartment that he had formerly.”

M. Bouc was not present in the restaurant car. Poirot looked about to notice who else was absent.

Princess Dragomiroff was missing, and the Hungarian couple. Also Ratchett, his valet, and the German lady’s-maid.

The Swedish lady wiped her eyes.

“I am foolish,” she said. “I am bad to cry. All is for the best, whatever happen.”

This Christian spirit, however, was far from being shared.

“That’s all very well,” said MacQueen restlessly. “We may be here for days.”

“Whatis this country anyway?” demanded Mrs. Hubbard tearfully.

On being told it was Jugo-Slavia, she said: “Oh! one of these Balkan things. What can you expect?”

“You are the only patient one, Mademoiselle,” said Poirot to Miss Debenham.

She shrugged her shoulders slightly. “What can one do?”

“You are a philosopher, Mademoiselle.”

“That implies a detached attitude. I think my attitude is more selfish. I have learned to save myself useless emotion.”

She was speaking more to herself than to him. She was not even looking at him. Her gaze went past him, out of the window to where the snow lay in heavy masses.

“You are a strong character, Mademoiselle,” said Poirot gently. “You are, I think, the strongest character amongst us.”

“Oh! no. No, indeed. I know one far, far stronger than I am.”

“And that is-?”

She seemed suddenly to come to herself, to realise that she was talking to a stranger and foreigner, with whom, until this morning, she had exchanged only half a dozen sentences.

She laughed, a polite but estranging laugh.

“Well-that old lady, for instance. You have probably noticed her. A very ugly old lady but rather fascinating. She has only to lift a little finger and ask for something in a polite voice-and the whole train runs.”