Death On The Nile

Miss Bowers emerges from Dr. Bessner’s cabin, where she has been attending to Simon. Jackie accosts her anxiously, asking whether Simon is going to die; Miss Bowers responds that although there is a danger of infection, and Simon’s temperature has risen, the wound itself is not severe and the danger is probably not mortal. Jackie walks away, overcome with emotion, and Poirot follows.

Once inside her cabin, Jackie begins to sob: “He’ll die! He’ll die! I know he’ll die…[a]nd I shall have killed him…[a]nd I love him so…I love him so” (319). Poirot responds that she loves Simon “[t]oo much” (319). He consoles her, saying that Simon will be fine, and she picks up on the theme, describing how Simon will receive treatment “and everything will be all right” (320). Poirot adds, “And they lived happily ever after,” implying that Jackie must be imagining that she and Simon will be together again: “[t]he sun has gone and the moon rises. That is so, is it not?” (320). Jackie denies that she has any hope of reconciling with Simon. Poirot looks at her “half mockingly, half with some other emotion” (321) and recites a poem in French about the vanity and brevity of life, then leaves the room.

Poirot runs into Race, who says he thinks there is something significant about the telegram (addressed to Richetti and accidentally read by Linnet) that Simon mentioned. Poirot agrees that it is significant, and says that, furthermore, since Louise’s murder he has reached some certainty about what happened. Poirot is not yet ready to share his solution, since there are still too many details to be cleared up; however, he does give Race the following hints:

But think, think for a moment along the lines that I shall indicate. There are certain points…[t]here is the statement of Mademoiselle de Bellefort that someone overheard our conversation that night in the garden at Assuan. There is the statement of Monsieur Tim Allerton as to what he heard and did on the night of the crime. There are Louise Bourget’s significant answers to our questions this morning. There is the fact that Madame Allerton drinks water, that her son drinks whisky and soda and that I drink wine. Add to that the fact of two bottles of nail polish and the proverb I quoted. And finally we come to the crux of the whole business, the fact that the pistol was wrapped up in a cheap handkerchief and a velvet stole and thrown overboard… (323).

Race does not fully understand what Poirot means. Poirot gives him (and the reader) a further hint: his and Race’s first idea about what happened was completely wrong. Although it was clear all along that the removal of the gun from the crime scene was significant, Poirot came to understand what it meant “one little half hour ago” (324).

The two men return to Bessner’s room to ask Simon about the details of the incident with the telegram. Simon explains that, at Wadi Halfa, Linnet saw a telegram addressed in sloppy handwriting to Richetti. She misread “Richetti” as “Ridgeway” and opened the telegram, which she could not understand; then Richetti came along, became very angry, and tore the telegram out of her hand.

Simon is on the verge of saying what was in the telegram when Mrs. Otterbourne bursts in claiming to have seen who killed Linnet Doyle and Louise Bourget. Standing in the doorway, she begins to explain: she had gone down to the lower deck to meet one of the ship’s crew, who was to supply her with alcohol. There, she saw Louise peeking out of one of the cabins. Mrs. Otterbourne went on to acquire the alcohol, and on her way back she saw someone entering Louise’s cabin. Mrs. Otterbourne is on the point of saying whom she saw when she is shot dead by someone outside the cabin. The killer leaves the murder weapon, a revolver, on the deck just outside the cabin.

Poirot runs out of the room to find the killer. He meets Tim Allerton, who is running toward the cabin from aft and says he met no one along his way. The killer could not have gone the opposite direction, either, since Ferguson and Fanthorp were on the deck and would have seen. Poirot brings Tim back to Bessner’s cabin and finds the other passengers assembled there already. Poirot asks Tim whether he has any gloves with him; Tim hands him the gloves and Poirot puts them on to examine the revolver. It is Pennington’s, and there are no fingerprints on it.

Poirot and Race find Mr. Pennington on the deck below writing letters. He appears shocked to learn that Mrs. Otterbourne has been killed and claims to have been in his room for the past twenty minutes. Race confronts him with the information that Mrs. Otterbourne was shot with Pennington’s revolver. 

Mr. Pennington claims to be innocent, but there are no witnesses who can prove his alibi. He says that he mentioned his revolver during a conversation in the saloon, so anyone might have known that it was in his room. Poirot asks Pennington to come to his cabin for questioning in half an hour.

Race and Poirot leave Pennington behind. Mrs. Allerton asks whether she can share a double cabin with Rosalie so that Rosalie will neither have to be alone nor return to the cabin she shared with her mother.

Back at the crime scene, Cornelia wonders aloud how Mrs. Otterbourne’s killer got away unseen. Poirot points out that the killer could have gone right, left, or down to the deck below. Cornelia says that the trip has become a nightmare, and Ferguson breaks in, accusing her of being “over-civilized” (337) and saying he thinks it’s “a damned good thing” (338) that Linnet, Louise, and Mrs. Otterbourne are dead, since he views all of them as useless parasites. Cornelia loses her composure, crying out that “it makes me sick to hear you talk and talk, as though nobody mattered but you” (338). She points out that even if Mrs. Otterbourne wasn’t very likable, Rosalie certainly loved her. Similarly, someone somewhere must have loved Louise. Linnet was astoundingly beautiful, “and when anything beautiful’s dead, it’s a loss to the world” (339).

Ferguson declares, “I give it up...[y]ou’re unbelievable. Just haven’t got a bit of natural female spite in you anywhere” (339). He reveals to Poirot that Linnet’s father ruined Cornelia’s father’s fortune; that is, Cornelia’s must have been the name on the passenger list that upset Linnet. However, Cornelia “felt sore for a minute” and then let go of her grudge (339). Ferguson proclaims that Cornelia is “the only nice woman I’ve ever come across” and asks her to marry him on the spot. She refuses, saying that he isn’t serious or reliable enough for her.

Ferguson approaches Miss Van Schuyler in an attempt to “get her thoroughly against” him (341), hoping that doing so will make Cornelia more sympathetic to his proposal. He tells Miss Van Schuyler that Cornelia has refused his proposal, and Miss Van Schuyler responds that she will make sure to keep him from repeating his offer because he lacks the appropriate social position to marry Cornelia.

After Ferguson leaves, confidently proclaiming that he will one day marry Cornelia, Poirot remarks to Miss Van Schuyler that Ferguson, like the rest of his family, is “rather eccentric...spoilt...always inclined to tilt at windmills” (345). He mentions, as if offhandedly: “Yes, that’s young Lord Dawlish. Rolling in money, of course, but he became a communist when he was at Oxford” (345). Miss Van Schuyler is astonished, and Poirot explains that he had noticed Ferguson’s resemblance to a young society man in the paper, and had his suspicions confirmed by the signet ring in Ferguson’s cabinet.