Death on the Nile

Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile begins as a detective novel wrapped in a light comedy. By the end what Dame Agatha unmasks is not simply the murderer, but the falsity of the social premise of romance.

The central plot focuses on a beautiful, wealthy young woman, Linnet, and her husband, Simon Doyle, who are honeymooning in Egypt. Doyle’s former girlfriend, Jacqueline de Bellefort, has been stalking them, going to the same public places they attend to stare. She follows them when they try to escape her on a cruise up the Nile to Luxor and Assuan.

The critical murder scene begins when a drunken Jacqueline shoots Doyle. While a nurse is sedating her and others are attending Doyle, Linnet’s murdered while she sleeps with the same gun that injured Doyle.

The rest of the novel is the search for the murderer by Hercule Poirot, who just happens to be on board. Since the novel has been set as a holiday adventure, I immediately applied the rules of comic opera and eliminated from consideration all the young people who should marry at the end: Rosalie Otterbourne and Tim Allerton, Cornelia Robinson and Ferguson.

I also eliminated the utilitarian characters who must be on board for the plot to advance: the doctor who attends Doyle, the nurse who attends Jacqueline, the foreign intelligence agent, Colonel Race, whose position gives Poirot the authority to question people.

As I read I reminded myself it’s always dangerous with Christie to eliminate anyone. In some of her first Poirot novels she upended the conventions when the utilitarian characters in fact were the murderers.

But, I told myself as I read the 1938 novel, she can’t repeat herself. She’s been exposed to the movie makers who adapt her novels. She’s remarried and her trips with her archaeologist husband must contribute to the plot’s mise en scene. Why not a happy ending?

Surely the firey romance between Cornelia and Ferguson and the gentler one between Rosalie and Tim are intended to contrast positively with the dangers of a woman who cares too much? The conventions require such balance.

And so the investigation progresses, revealing the hidden faults of each of the key characters. Some minor ones die. A spy is identified. And, finally, the murder is revealed with a method so byzantine, I leave it to Poirot to explain.

But, instead of the frisson of pleasure that follows from finishing a mystery, this left me with a chill because I knew, and Christie knew, all those pleasant little marriages at the end are damned.

It turns out Tim is a jewel thief working with Joanna Southwood, a friend of Linnette’s. Rosalie’s mother, Salome Otterbourne, is a drunkard. The girl is exchanging the life of enabling her mother to that of enabling a crook and living with the mother who created him. In some ways the trade is worse because, at least, her mother had once been a successful romance novelist, while no publisher will acknowledge Tim’s existence.

Cornelia’s father was ruined by Linette’s father. Her wealthy aunt, Marie Van Schuyler, is a kleptomaniac. The browbeaten girl refuses a proposal from a man who is secretly Lord Dawlish and instead accepts an older doctor who can help her understand her aunt’s problems and give her a new group of people to tend. Ferguson/Dawlish complains that given the chance for light and happiness, she chooses a new cave.

As for the heroine who has everything, her husband married her for her money. Her one friend becomes her tormentor, the other steals her jewels. Her trustees mismanage her funds. Her maid ungratefully quits after Linette’s detectives revealed she was planning to marry a bigamist. The young beauty dies not knowing how lonely she is.

In no other Christie book do I remember the warm experience of reading the mystery so different than the cold chill of having read it. It’s not simply that no one is what they seem, for that’s expected in a mystery. It’s that the society restored at the end is not what it seems. The thieves are still at liberty, the marriages are dooming young women into further submission, and the only passionate one lies dead at our feet. Poirot may claim to have "a high regard for human happiness," but Christie presents happiness as a false illusion.