Death on the Nile recap

Linnet Ridgeway, a young and much-envied heiress, marries Simon Doyle, the penniless fiance of her friend Jacqueline de Bellefort, who had asked her to give him a job. Jacqueline follows the honeymoon couple across Europe and up the Nile, appearing wherever they go, until all three are aboard the steamer Karnak with Poirot and Colonel Race. After a boulder narrowly misses Linnet at a temple, Jacqueline drunkenly shoots Simon in the leg one night in the saloon and is taken away sedated. In the morning Linnet is found shot in her bed with the letter J written in blood on the wall. Two more deaths follow: the maid Louise Bourget, stabbed after hinting that she knew something, and Salome Otterbourne, shot as she is about to name a witness. Poirot shows that Simon and Jacqueline committed the murders together, the long public feud having been staged to give each of them an alibi, with Linnet's fortune as the object. Jacqueline shoots Simon and herself rather than face arrest.

Linnet Ridgeway, young, beautiful and enormously rich, buys a country estate and rearranges the neighbourhood to suit it. Her school friend Jacqueline de Bellefort, who has nothing, comes to ask a favour: that Linnet employ her fiance Simon Doyle, a big, cheerful, unemployable young man, as land agent. Linnet meets him and marries him herself. The scandal travels ahead of them. Poirot, dining in a London restaurant, watches Jacqueline and Simon together before the marriage and hears the intensity with which she speaks of him. Various other people are shown preparing to travel: Mrs Allerton and her idle son Tim, the American trustee Andrew Pennington in New York, a young man with violent opinions about the rich, and others whose paths will cross in Egypt. Linnet and Simon leave on honeymoon and find Jacqueline waiting for them at each stop, silent, smiling and always visible, which no law can prevent and which is slowly wearing them both down.

At Assuan the Doyles arrive at the hotel where Poirot is staying, and Jacqueline arrives with them. Linnet begs Poirot to make her stop; Poirot instead goes to Jacqueline and warns her that she is opening her heart to evil, and she shows him the small pearl-handled pistol she carries. Simon tries a blunter approach and gets nowhere. During an excursion to a temple a boulder crashes down from above and narrowly misses Linnet, though Jacqueline was demonstrably elsewhere. The party boards the steamer Karnak for the journey up the Nile, and Jacqueline books a passage at the last moment. The other passengers include Colonel Race, travelling on official business of his own, the novelist Salome Otterbourne and her daughter Rosalie, the imperious Miss Van Schuyler with her companion Cornelia Robson and her nurse Miss Bowers, the Austrian Dr Bessner, the aggressive young Mr Ferguson, Pennington the trustee, the Allertons, and Linnet's French maid Louise Bourget. Poirot watches the tension aboard tighten day by day.

One night in the observation saloon Jacqueline, who has been drinking, taunts Simon until she snatches out her pistol and fires at him, hitting him in the leg. Cornelia Robson and a young fellow passenger get her away to her cabin, where Miss Bowers sedates her and stays with her; Simon is carried to Dr Bessner's cabin and his leg set. In the confusion the pistol disappears from the saloon. In the morning Linnet is found shot through the head as she slept, with a letter J daubed in blood on the wall above her, and her string of pearls missing from the dressing table. Colonel Race joins Poirot in the investigation, since the steamer is beyond any police force and everyone aboard is a suspect. The medical evidence puts the death in the small hours, and both Jacqueline and Simon appear to have been watched over all night.

Poirot and Race work through the passengers. The pistol is dredged up from the river wrapped in a velvet stole belonging to Miss Van Schuyler, with two shots fired from it and the stole scorched and holed. The pearls turn up and prove to be a good imitation. Miss Bowers admits that she is employed to watch Miss Van Schuyler, whose habit of taking other people's property is a family affliction, and that the old lady took the pearls and returned them. Pennington's business papers show that he has been speculating with Linnet's fortune and needed her signature, and his story of a chance meeting collapses. Others have their own reasons for discomfort: Rosalie Otterbourne is protecting her mother's drinking, Ferguson conceals more than his politics, and Tim Allerton is evasive about his London connections. Louise Bourget, the maid, hints in front of witnesses that she may have seen something, refuses to say what, and is later found dead in her cabin, stabbed, with a torn corner of a banknote in her hand.

Salome Otterbourne comes to Poirot and Race announcing that she saw who went into the maid's cabin, and is shot dead through the doorway before she can give the name. The shot is fired with a pistol taken from Race's own cabin, and the passengers' movements at that moment are again nearly impossible to fix. The steamer turns back with three bodies aboard. Poirot resolves the lesser mysteries as he goes: the imitation pearls were substituted for the real ones by Tim Allerton, working with a London acquaintance who supplied the copies; the agitator Race has been hunting is aboard under an assumed archaeological identity; and Pennington's frauds, though real, do not fit the shape of the murders. Poirot returns to the physical facts of the first killing, in particular the stole used to muffle the shot, the two bullets, and the exact sequence of the evening in the saloon.

Poirot lays out the truth. Simon Doyle and Jacqueline de Bellefort acted together, and the whole public spectacle of the jilted girl pursuing the honeymoon couple was arranged to give each of them a perfect alibi. In the saloon Jacqueline fired a shot that hit nothing; the moment the witnesses had gone for help, Simon took the pistol, went to his wife's cabin, shot her, wrote the letter J on the wall, and then shot himself through the leg, so that the wound he was carried away with was self-inflicted and the timing was false. Jacqueline recovered the pistol and sank it in the river wrapped in the stolen stole. She afterwards stabbed Louise Bourget, who had seen enough to attempt blackmail, and shot Mrs Otterbourne through the door before she could identify her. The object was Linnet's fortune, which Simon would inherit as her husband, after which the two intended to marry in a decent interval. Simon breaks down when confronted with the evidence. As the pair are taken off the steamer, Jacqueline shoots Simon and then herself with a second small pistol she had kept. Pennington is left to answer for his frauds, Tim Allerton returns the pearls and is given a chance to reform, and he and Rosalie leave together, while Cornelia Robson accepts Dr Bessner.

Poirot and Race establish that Simon Doyle and Jacqueline de Bellefort planned everything together. Their public quarrel, the broken engagement and the relentless pursuit across Europe and Egypt were staged so that each would have an unassailable alibi. In the saloon Jacqueline fired a shot that hit nothing; as soon as the witnesses had scattered to fetch help, Simon picked up the pistol, went to his wife's cabin, shot her through the head, returned, scrawled a letter J on the wall to incriminate Jacqueline, and then shot himself through the leg to produce the wound he had been carried away with. Jacqueline retrieved and disposed of the pistol wrapped in a stolen velvet stole. She afterwards killed the maid Louise Bourget, who had tried to blackmail them, and shot Mrs Otterbourne through the door as she was about to name the person she had seen. The purpose was Linnet's fortune, after which Simon would in time have married Jacqueline. Confronted, Simon breaks down. As they are being taken off the steamer, Jacqueline uses a second small pistol to shoot Simon and then herself, sparing them both a trial. The other threads settle: Pennington's frauds are exposed, Miss Van Schuyler's thefts are managed quietly by her nurse, Tim Allerton returns the pearls he had replaced with a copy and is let off by Poirot on condition he goes straight, and Tim and Rosalie Otterbourne leave together, as do Cornelia Robson and Dr Bessner.