Murder on the Orient Express
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50 free Murder on the Orient Express trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express traps Hercule Poirot on a snowbound luxury train with a murdered passenger and a coach full of suspects who all seem to have alibis. Its solution is one of the most famous in crime fiction, and readers have argued over it ever since the book appeared in 1934. This quiz covers the novel's plot, clues and characters, the real kidnapping case and railway journeys that inspired it, and the best-known adaptations: the all-star 1974 film, the 2010 television episode and the 2017 film. Expect questions on who played whom as well as on what happened in the sleeping car. It is written for readers, film fans and book clubs, and for anyone putting together a quiz night round on classic crime stories. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play even if it has been years since you read the book. Be warned: the questions give away the ending.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The 1932 kidnapping of which famous aviator's baby son inspired the Armstrong case in Murder on the Orient Express?
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh's 20-month-old son was taken from his crib and found dead even though a ransom was paid. Christie reworked the case two years later as the fate of little Daisy Armstrong.
Q 02In Murder on the Orient Express, the killers who each stab Ratchett in turn see themselves as which kind of body?
A jury
A jury is how the twelve avengers see themselves, since their victim had escaped the courts. Each strikes once in the dark, so nobody can know whose blow was the fatal one.
Q 03Which actor and director cast himself as Hercule Poirot in the 2017 film of Murder on the Orient Express?
Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Branagh directed himself as Poirot and came back for two sequels. He said he enjoyed finding the obsessive-compulsive in the detective rather than the dandy.
Q 04Agatha Christie liked the 1974 film of Murder on the Orient Express but was let down by which feature of its Poirot?
His moustache
His moustache fell far short of the magnificent one she had written for her detective. Even so, it was one of only two screen versions of her books that she said she liked.
Q 05Which actress won an Oscar for 1974's Murder on the Orient Express in a small role as a missionary?
Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman was offered the grander part of Princess Dragomiroff but insisted on playing Greta Ohlsson. Her one big scene was filmed as a single take of almost five minutes.
Q 06The firm behind the real Orient Express was founded by a banker's son from which country, Hercule Poirot's homeland?
Belgium
Belgium was home to Georges Nagelmackers, who set up the Wagons-Lits sleeping-car company in 1872 after admiring Pullman night trains on a trip to America.
Q 07The last scene of the 2017 film Murder on the Orient Express sets up a sequel based on which Christie novel?
Death on the Nile
Death on the Nile is teased when a messenger hands Poirot a note asking for his help as he steps off the train. The sequel reached cinemas in 2022.
Q 08Which star plays Ratchett, the shady American stabbed in his berth, in the 2017 film Murder on the Orient Express?
Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp's character is found stabbed a dozen times, and Poirot soon unmasks him as a notorious gangster travelling under a false name.
Q 09Which James Bond actor did the makers of 1974's Murder on the Orient Express approach first, to play Colonel Arbuthnot?
Sean Connery
Sean Connery was asked first on the theory that once the biggest star says yes, the rest will follow. He later admitted that he had been flattered into it.
Q 10Moved by the Armstrong tragedy, what does Hercule Poirot finally do about the killers in Murder on the Orient Express?
Lets them go free
Poirot lets them go free, putting forward another theory in which a lone intruder slipped off the train. The victim's crime had cost at least five lives, and he had escaped justice in America.
Q 11In Murder on the Orient Express, a snowdrift strands the train between Vinkovci and Brod in which country?
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia is where the train sticks fast, on a stretch of line that now lies in northeastern Croatia. With deep snow all around, the killer cannot have left the coach.
Q 12In Murder on the Orient Express, the victim calling himself Ratchett is really a fugitive gangster with which surname?
Cassetti
Cassetti had kidnapped and killed three-year-old Daisy Armstrong, then escaped justice by fleeing the country. Poirot works out the alias from a charred piece of paper naming the child.
Q 13In Murder on the Orient Express, the talkative American Mrs Hubbard turns out to be which relation of Daisy Armstrong?
Grandmother
Q 21Murder on the Orient Express became Murder in the Calais Coach in America to avoid a clash with whose novel?
Graham Greene
Graham Greene's Stamboul Train had just been sold to American readers under the title Orient Express. It was his first real success, set on a rail journey from Ostend to Istanbul.
Q 22The Baron Hotel, where Agatha Christie reputedly began Murder on the Orient Express in room 203, is in which city?
Aleppo
Aleppo's Baron Hotel also put up Lawrence of Arabia, and a copy of his unpaid bar bill is kept on display there. The Syrian landmark was damaged in the civil war but survived.
Q 23Which Istanbul landmark, opened in 1895 for Orient Express passengers, keeps a room as a memorial to Agatha Christie?
Pera Palace Hotel
Grandmother to Daisy, she is really the celebrated stage star Linda Arden. At the end she offers to take the blame as the mastermind of the revenge.
Q 14In Christie's novel Murder on the Orient Express, which of the thirteen suspects alone is innocent of the stabbing?
Countess Andrenyi
Countess Andrenyi, sister of Daisy's mother, never strikes a blow. Her husband takes her place as the twelfth killer and smudges her luggage label to keep her above suspicion.
Q 15In Murder on the Orient Express, a handkerchief marked H is Natalia Dragomiroff's because H is N in which alphabet?
Cyrillic
Cyrillic writes the sound N with a letter that looks like a Latin H, so the monogram stands for Natalia. The Russian princess admits that the handkerchief is hers.
Q 16In Murder on the Orient Express, Hercule Poirot glimpses a woman in the corridor wearing a kimono of which colour?
Scarlet
Scarlet is the colour several passengers recall, yet nobody admits to owning the garment. It finally turns up inside Poirot's own luggage.
Q 17In the novel Murder on the Orient Express, the dagger that killed Ratchett turns up in which item of Mrs Hubbard's?
Her sponge bag
Her sponge bag is where Mrs Hubbard herself discovers the weapon. It is one of a string of planted clues meant to send Poirot hunting for an outsider.
Q 18Which director of the Wagons-Lits company, a friend of Hercule Poirot, finds him a berth on the full Orient Express?
Monsieur Bouc
Monsieur Bouc gets his friend a bed and later breaks the news of the murder. Having slept in a locked second coach, he is one of only two passengers above suspicion.
Q 19Early in Murder on the Orient Express, the wealthy American Ratchett offers Hercule Poirot a job doing what?
Guarding his life
Guarding his life is the job, because Ratchett has been receiving threats. Poirot turns him down, and soon afterwards the man is stabbed in the compartment next to his.
Q 20In Murder on the Orient Express, Englishwoman Mary Debenham is returning from Baghdad, where she has worked as what?
A governess
A governess in Baghdad, she had once taught in the Armstrong household. Poirot overhears her talking with Colonel Arbuthnot before he even boards the train.
Pera Palace Hotel claims she wrote the novel there, though her autobiography never says so. It was once run by a hotel arm of the same company that operated the train.
Q 24Agatha Christie's Orient Express was held up by floods in 1931 as she travelled home from her husband's work as what?
An archaeologist
An archaeologist, Max Mallowan was digging at Nineveh in Iraq. In a letter to him she described fellow passengers who went on to inspire characters in the novel.
Q 25Before it was a book, Murder on the Orient Express ran in six parts in 1933 in which American magazine?
Saturday Evening Post
Saturday Evening Post readers met the story in autumn 1933, months before any book. The British magazine serial came after the book and cut about a quarter of the text.
Q 26A blizzard that trapped the real Orient Express for days in 1929, inspiring Christie, struck in which country?
Turkey
Turkey saw the real train snowed in near Çerkezköy in February 1929. Christie had made her own first trip on the service only a few months earlier.
Q 27Which American crime writer attacked the solution of Murder on the Orient Express in his essay The Simple Art of Murder?
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler wanted detective fiction to mirror real crime, and this plot enraged him. The critic Robert Barnard still judged the book the best of the railway stories.
Q 28Hildegarde Schmidt, maid to Princess Dragomiroff in Murder on the Orient Express, once served the Armstrongs as what?
Their cook
Their cook was her old role in the Armstrong household. Poirot also finds a railway uniform, part of the planted trail, hidden in her luggage.
Q 29In Murder on the Orient Express, the father of the wrongly accused nursemaid Susanne has which job aboard the train?
Conductor
Conductor Pierre Michel lost his daughter when she killed herself after being falsely accused of helping the kidnapper. He joins the plot and supplies the spare uniform.
Q 30Which director made 1974's Murder on the Orient Express between his crime dramas Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon?
Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet often returned to the theme of guilt, and in this story every suspect is guilty. He worked with his Poirot again 33 years later on Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.