105 pages • 3 hours read
Agatha ChristieDeath On The Nile
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1937A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 17-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 17 Summary
Race wants to ask Poirot what he means about the “impossible” series of events but refrains from doing so. Instead, the two men agree to question Rosalie, who appears “not...nervous or frightened in any way—merely unwilling and sulky” (241).
Rosalie claims not to have left her cabin all night. When Race confronts her with Miss Van Schuyler’s testimony, she insists it is a lie. Then she asks what time Miss Van Schuyler claims to have seen her, and whether she saw anything else. When Poirot responds that Miss Van Schuyler also heard someone in Linnet’s cabin, Rosalie goes pale; however, she insists that she never threw anything overboard.
Race shows Rosalie the murder weapon, and Rosalie insists that she did not kill Linnet and did not throw the gun overboard. Once she has left, Poirot says that he doubts either Rosalie or Miss Van Schuyler has been completely honest.
Next, the two men question Mrs. Otterbourne, who says she heard nothing during the night and is unsure whether Rosalie left their cabin at any time. After that, they interview Richetti, who is “very voluble, very agitated” (246). He tells them he went to bed immediately after dinner and turned off his light around 11 p.m. He heard neither a shot nor a sound like a cork popping, but he did hear a loud splash near his porthole on the starboard side of the lower deck. His report seems to correlate with Miss Van Schuyler’s: the splash would have occurred around 1:10 a.m.
Finally, Race and Poirot speak with Ferguson, who is “difficult” (247). He says that he went ashore with Cornelia, then stayed out on his own, going to bed around midnight. His room is on the starboard side of the lower deck, and he reports having heard something like a cork popping and, perhaps, a splash. Ferguson expresses regret that he had nothing to do with killing Linnet, whom he describes as “superfluous” (247). When Poirot mentions Fleetwood, Ferguson become incensed, swearing to defend the “poor devil Fleetwood, who can’t defend himself, who’s got no money to hire lawyers” (249) if they attempt to blame him for Linnet’s murder. Poirot asks who exactly Ferguson is to be making such promises, and Ferguson simply responds that he sticks by his friends.
Chapter 18 Summary
Poirot and Race call Pennington in for questioning. The latter, who arrives dressed in his usual impeccable manner but with a black tie, “show[s] all the conventional reactions of grief and shock” (251). He says that he went to bed around 11 p.m.
Pennington’s cabin is next to Bessner’s, and he reports having heard a commotion in Bessner’s room around midnight, but nothing else. Pennington insists that Jackie must have shot Linnet, even when presented with her airtight alibi. He appears alarmed when Race and Poirot ask whether he knows of anyone else who has a motive for killing Linnet. Poirot mentions the incident with the boulder, adding, “but you were not there, perhaps?” (254). Pennington responds that he was inside the temple, and wipes sweat from his brow. When asked whether anyone held a grudge against Linnet’s family, Pennington “look[s] genuinely astonished” (254) and replies in the negative.
After he leaves, Race and Poirot agree that he was clearly uncomfortable, and Poirot points out that Pennington lied about being in the temple at the time of the boulder incident: “He was not in the temple of Abu Simbel when that boulder fell. I—moi qui vous parle—can swear to that. I had just come from there” (255). The two men agree to handle Pennington gently for the time being, despite this “very stupid” and “very revealing” lie (255).
Next, they turn to the matter of the pearls. At the end of lunch, Race will announce that the pearls have been stolen and confine everyone to the saloon while he and Poirot conduct a search. To keep his mind clear, Race composes a summary of all the known facts, which he then presents to Poirot. The summary, located on pages 257-260, identifies the probable course of events and the set of possible motives so far, and divides the passengers into two groups: those who appear free of suspicion and those who have a possible motive or against whom there is some definite evidence. The latter group is composed of Pennington, Fleetwood, Rosalie, Miss Van Schuyler, Louise, and Ferguson. The former group consists of Mrs. Allerton, Tim, Cornelia, Miss Bowers, Dr. Bessner, Richetti, Mrs. Otterbourne, and Fanthorp.
After reading the précis, Poirot focuses on a single question, which he says must be the starting point of the investigation: “Why was the pistol thrown overboard” (261). He asks Race whether the velvet stole found wrapped around the gun would have been an effective means for muffling the shot; Race says that it would not. Poirot suggests that a man (at least a man experienced with guns) would have known this, but a woman probably would not have known; on the other hand, the gun is small enough that it would not have made a loud noise to begin with. Poirot also observes that the handkerchief is a man’s and cheap, “not a gentleman’s handkerchief” (262), and that the color is odd. He then remarks that it is “odd” (263) the way Linnet lay “so peacefully…with the little hole in her head. You remember how she looked?” (263). Race responds that he thinks Poirot is trying to communicate something, but he doesn’t understand what.
Chapter 19 Summary
Simon asks Poirot to bring Jackie to him. When she sees Simon, Jackie asks his forgiveness and assures him that she did not kill Linnet. Poirot observes their emotional reconciliation, with Jackie breaking down in sobs. Poirot recalls the metaphor both Simon and Jackie used to describe Simon’s abandonment of Jackie for Linnet: “When the sun shines you cannot see the moon...but when the sun is gone—ah, when the sun is gone” (268).
Poirot seeks out Rosalie Otterbourne, who looks exhausted and appears to be in a bad mood. Poirot confronts Rosalie with something he has deduced from her and Mrs. Otterbourne’s behavior: Mrs. Otterbourne is an alcoholic, and Rosalie is attempting to keep her mother from drinking—and to hide the secret. Poirot explains that he has observed that Mrs. Otterbourne is a secret binge drinker, and that she was intoxicated the morning she stumbled out of her cabin and into Poirot’s path. Poirot has deduced that Mrs. Otterbourne has acquired a secret supply of liquor, which Rosalie discovered only recently and threw overboard the previous night, causing the splash heard by several of the passengers at 1:10 a.m.
Rosalie admits that Poirot is right, and that her mother starting drinking after her books stopped selling well. Her mother has come to dislike her because she is constantly watching her, trying to prevent the “dreadful quarrels and rows with people” (272) that result when Mrs. Otterbourne takes to the bottle. This secret, exhausting battle is the reason for Rosalie’s constant foul mood: “People think I’m awful. Stuck-up and cross and bad-tempered. I can’t help it. I’ve forgotten how to be—to be nice” (272). Poirot asks whether Rosalie saw or heard anyone on deck while she was disposing of her mother’s liquor; after a long pause, Rosalie says that she did not.
Chapters 17-19 Analysis
These chapters serve to eliminate some suspects, increase the reader’s suspicion of others, and heighten the novel’s dramatic tension, as Poirot drops enticing hints to Race without sharing the solution he is in the process of piecing together.
The Rosalie subplot deepens as she initially denies that it was she who threw something overboard, causing the splash heard by various other passengers. However, when Poirot confronts her with his deductions, she quickly admits that he is correct: she has been attempting to hide her mother’s alcoholism and prevent Mrs. Otterbourne from drinking. This revelation makes sense of Rosalie’s odd behavior and justifies both Poirot’s and Mrs. Allerton’s affection for Rosalie, as well as Christie’s sympathetic portrayal of her.
Ferguson’s outburst in defense of Fleetwood, and the somewhat cryptic suggestion that Ferguson himself will help Fleetwood to mount a legal defense if necessary, casts Ferguson, whom Race has described as a “likeable young cub” (249), in a sympathetic light.
Pennington, on the other hand, appears much the worse in these chapters. When he appears for questioning on the morning after Linnet’s murder, he is wearing a black mourning tie but is also dressed in his usual impeccable fashion. Pennington comes across as someone who knows how to feign grief: while uttering all the right sorts of platitudes and referencing his long acquaintance with Linnet, his attention to sartorial details suggests that he is not really grieving so deeply.
Poirot’s comment about the apparent reconciliation between Simon and Jackie, and his repetition of the phrase about the sun and the moon, indicates that he views their having made up as inevitable. Because Poirot has also noticed that Simon and Jackie used almost identical phrases when using the sun/moon analogy to describe Simon’s relationship with Linnet, we can also infer that he views their reconciliation with some degree of suspicion.
Poirot states that the key question facing him and Race is why the killer threw the pistol overboard instead of leaving it to be discovered. He also says, cryptically, that it was interesting how peacefully Linnet lay in bed with the bullet hole in her head. Race tells Poirot that he doesn’t understand the significance of this detail. Perhaps Poirot is implying that Jackie looks peaceful because the killer who entered her cabin was someone whose presence would not have alarmed her—someone, perhaps, whose gait and movements would have been so familiar to her that they would not have awoken her.
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