Death on the Nile - Agatha Christie [0]
Death on the Nile
A Hercule Poirot Mystery
To my old friend Sybil Bennett
who also loves wandering about the world
Author’s Foreword
Death on the Nile was written after coming back from a winter in Egypt. When I read it now I feel myself back again on the steamer from Assuan to Wadi Halfa. There were quite a number of passengers on board, but the ones in this book travelled in my mind and became increasingly real to me—in the setting of a Nile steamer. The book has a lot of characters and a very elaborately worked out plot. I think the central situation is intriguing and has dramatic possibilities, and the three characters, Simon, Linnet, and Jacqueline, seem to me to be real and alive.
My friend, Francis L. Sullivan, liked the book so much that he kept urging me to adapt it for the stage, which in the end I did.
I think, myself, that the book is one of the best of my “foreign travel” ones, and if detective stories are “escape literature” (and why shouldn’t they be!) the reader can escape to sunny skies and blue water as well as to crime in the confines of an armchair.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Author’s Foreword
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
About the Author
Other Books by the Agatha Christie
Copyright
About the Publisher
One
I
“Linnet Ridgeway!”
“That’s her!” said Mr. Burnaby, the landlord of the Three Crowns.
He nudged his companion.
The two men stared with round bucolic eyes and slightly open mouths.
A big scarlet Rolls-Royce had just stopped in front of the local post office.
A girl jumped out, a girl without a hat and wearing a frock that looked (but only looked) simple. A girl with golden hair and straight autocratic features—a girl with a lovely shape—a girl such as was seldom seen in Malton-under-Wode.
With a quick imperative step she passed into the post office.
“That’s her!” said Mr. Burnaby again. And he went on in a low awed voice: “Millions she’s got…Going to spend thousands on the place. Swimming pools there’s going to be, and Italian gardens and a ballroom and half of the house pulled down and rebuilt….”
“She’ll bring money into the town,” said his friend. He was a lean, seedy-looking man. His tone was envious and grudging.
Mr. Burnaby agreed.
“Yes, it’s a great thing for Malton-under-Wode. A great thing it is.”
Mr. Burnaby was complacent about it.
“Wake us all up proper,” he added.
“Bit of difference from Sir George,” said the other.
“Ah, it was the ’orses did for him,” said Mr. Burnaby indulgently. “Never ’ad no luck.”
“What did he get for the place?”
“A cool sixty thousand, so I’ve heard.”
The lean man whistled.
Mr. Burnaby went on triumphantly: “And they say she’ll have spent another sixty thousand before she’s finished!”
“Wicked!” said the lean man. “Where’d she get all that money from?”
“America, so I’ve heard. Her mother was the only daughter of one of those millionaire blokes. Quite like the pictures, isn’t it?”
The girl came out of the post office and climbed into the car.
As she drove off, the lean man followed her with his eyes. He muttered:
“It seems all wrong to me—her looking like that. Money and looks—it’s too much! If a girl’s as rich as that she’s no right to be a good-looker as well. And she is a good-looker…Got everything, that girl has. Doesn’t seem fair….”
II
Extract from the Social column of the Daily Blague.
Among those supping at Chez Ma Tante I noticed beautiful Linnet Ridgeway. She was with the Hon. Joanna Southwood, Lord Windlesham and Mr. Toby Bryce. Miss Ridgeway, as everyone knows,