Description

Death on the Nile a Hercule Poirot myst - Agatha Christie

While dining out in London, Hercule Poirot encounters Simon Doyle and his fiance Jacqueline de Bellefort. Jacqueline brings Simon to meet her best friend, the wealthy heiress Linnet Ridgeway, in hopes of getting him a job. instead, Simon breaks off his engagement with her to marry Linnet. While on their honeymoon in Egypt, the Doyles encounter Poirot who witnesses a chance meeting between the married couple and Jacqueline. Jacqueline has been stalking and antagonizing them since their wedding. Poirot informs the Doyles that there is no legal recourse to get rid of her, and tries to reason with Jacqueline in private, urging her to not pursue them further and not to "open [her] heart to evil". Jacqueline refuses stating that Linnet stole her fiance with her dazzling wealth.

Attempting to give her the slip, the Doyles falsely claim they are extending their stay in Cairo, but secretly book passage on the Karnak, a Nile River cruise ship that Poirot is also travelling on. They discover to their rage that Jacqueline had managed to come aboard the ship. Also on the cruise are: Linnet's French maid, Louise Bourget, as well as her American trustee, Andrew Pennington; romance novelist Salome Otterbourne and her daughter, Rosalie Otterbourne; Tim Allerton and his mother, Mrs. Allerton; American socialite Marie Van Schuyler, her younger cousin, Cornelia Robson, and her nurse, Miss Bowers; a young outspoken Communist, Mr. Ferguson; Italian archaeologist Guido Richetti; a quiet young solicitor, Jim Fanthorp; and a Central European physician, Dr. Bessner. Joining the cruise on its return trip is Poirot's friend, Colonel Race, who suspects one of the passengers of the murders of several people, but does not know which one it is.

One night Jacqueline, after getting drunk, shoots Simon in the leg. In the morning Poirot, who slept deeply through the night's events, learns that Linnet has been found dead, shot in the head while sleeping in her starboard-side cabin. Examining the scene, Poirot notes that the bullet wound has scorching around it, that Linnet's pearl necklace is missing, and that there are two bottles of nail polish, each of the same red color, despite one of them being labeled pale pink. Although there is a "J" written in Linnet's blood on the wall behind her bed, Poirot notes that she died instantly. Dr. Bessner confirms that after Jacqueline had shot Simon and dropped the pistol she broke down into remorseful hysterics and was looked after by Miss Bowers until morning. He also confirms that Simon was incapacitated by the leg wound and could not move, even if he had wanted to. Both Race and Poirot theorize that one of the other passengers must have murdered Linnet, having stolen the discarded pistol after everyone left the lounge, and planted clues to implicate Jacqueline. They note that someone had already attempted to kill Linnet while they were touring temple ruins the previous day, with a boulder pushed off a cliff. Jacqueline was suspected at first but she was later found to have been on the boat at the time of the incident.

During the murder investigation, some passengers describe hearing a faint "pop" on the night of the murder, while some recall hearing a splash shortly after midnight. Miss Van Schuyler claims that she saw Rosalie throw something overboard, and that someone had stolen her velvet stole. Jacqueline's pistol is recovered from the Nile, wrapped in the missing stole. During his interview with Linnet's maid at Simon's bedside, Louise states that she saw nothing on the night of the murder but would have "if" she had left her cabin. He also learns that the maid's predecessor was set to marry an engineer on the boat, until Linnet revealed that he was married already, for which he vowed vengeance against her. Jacqueline comes to apologise to Simon, Poirot noting that she is still very much in love with Simon despite having shot him in the leg.

Race announces that a search will be made of the cabins for the missing pearls. Miss Bowers returns the pearls, confiding that Mrs. Van Schuyler is a kleptomaniac and had taken them from Linnet's cabin. Poirot examines the necklace and finds it to be a fake, the real pearls having been stolen sometime earlier. Later, he confronts Rosalie about her mother being a secret alcoholic and that Rosalie was seen throwing overboard her mother's hidden cache of spirits. Although she admits to this, she firmly denies she saw anyone leaving Linnet's cabin. The maid Louise is found stabbed to death in her cabin, clutching a piece of a banknote. Poirot and Race deduce this was part of a blackmail payment so the maid must have seen something on the night of the murder. Mrs. Otterbourne enters Simon's cabin, declaring she knows who killed Linnet and Louise. Simon yells at her to tell him who it is, but before she can finish her story, she is killed by a shot fired from the deck outside. The shooter disappears, Poirot and Race only find the discarded gun, which Poirot recognizes from Pennington's luggage.

Poirot clears up the lesser mysteries of the case: Pennington had illegally speculated with Linnet's holdings, and had planned to replace the stolen funds before she came of age. Her marriage forced him to take desperate measures and to attempt to dupe her into signing legal documents to exculpate him. When this failed, he attempted to kill her with the boulder at the temple ruins. Fanthorp was on the cruise merely to investigate him on behalf of Linnet's British solicitors, who were suspicious of Pennington's intentions. Tim Allerton stole the pearls from Linnet but did not kill her. Allerton agrees to return the pearls and to reform his ways, asking Rosalie's hand in marriage. Richetti is found to be a foreign agent and the man Race was seeking. Finally, Poirot reveals that Linnet's murder was committed together by Jacqueline and Simon, who had planned it months in advance.

Jacqueline deliberately missed Simon, who faked the bullet wound by using a bottle of nail polish containing red ink. Simon asked that Dr. Bessner be called to help him, and that Jacqueline be looked after during the night, thereby giving her an alibi. Once the lounge was empty, Simon rushed to Linnet's cabin with the discarded gun, shot her in the head, and used her blood to write the "J" on the wall. Rushing back, he then shot himself in the leg, using Van Schuyler's stole to silence the gun, so that Bessner would find a real wound and confirm he couldn't move. After reloading the gun with two bullets in order to make it appear that only one shot had been fired, he wrapped it in the stole and tossed both into the river. Their plan nearly fell apart when Louise hinted to him that she knew he was the murderer as she had witnessed him leaving her mistress's cabin. When Simon was alone with Jacqueline, he informed her of the blackmail. Later, under the pretense of bringing Louise her money, Jacqueline stabbed her to death with one of Bessner's scalpels. However, Salome Otterbourne spotted her leaving Louise's cabin, and deduced that Jacqueline was the murderer; when Simon yelled at Salome later, he was actually communicating to Jacqueline, in the next cabin, that she had been seen and was about to be exposed. This prompted her to steal Pennington's gun and kill Salome before she could reveal what she saw.

Poirot reveals that he knew the crime was premeditated because he suspected he had been drugged on the night of the murder. His suspicions were further raised by the hole in the stole; a third shot must have been fired that night, as Linnet's wound showed signs of scorching, therefore, the stole must have been used to silence the third shot. He finally suspected the pair were involved in the murder due to the choice of words Louise used: she spoke hypothetically ("if I had left my cabin...") which meant that the murderer was present in the room; apart from Poirot and Race, only Bessner and Simon were present. Her words must have been aimed at Simon, who was always surrounded by the doctor or the nurse, preventing Louise from being able to speak to him alone.

Confronted, Jacqueline and Simon confess to the crime, revealing that they loved each other and that Simon married Linnet, whom he never really loved, in order to get her money. After a suitable period of mourning, he and Jacqueline would reunite and marry. While Linnet's murder had been Simon's idea, Jacqueline had planned the details, since Simon, whose former employers had caught him stealing from them and subsequently fired him, was incapable of masterminding such a scheme. Jacqueline admits that Linnet did genuinely try to steal Simon away from her, and that she did not regret planning her murder, despite being glad she was not the one to kill her. As the ship arrives at its final destination and the passengers disembark, Jacqueline kills Simon and herself with a second pistol, which she had hidden in Rosalie's handbag during Race's search of the ship. Poirot confesses that he knew of its existence, and wanted to give the murderers a chance to take a more humane way out. Tim becomes engaged to Rosalie and Cornelia accepts a proposal of marriage from Dr. Bessner, much to the stupefaction of Mr Ferguson, who had been courting her in an uncouth way throughout the trip. Ferguson was actually a member of nobility travelling under an alias and became interested in communism whilst studying at Oxford.