Death On The Nile

Jackie is “a small slender creature with a mop of dark hair” (18), the daughter of an absconded French count and an American southerner who lost her money on Wall Street. Completely broke, Jackie is too proud to accept money from her oldest and closest friend, Linnet, whom she met while studying at a French convent school. 

In conversation with Poirot, Jackie reveals herself as an astute student of human psychology. In the course of describing the way Linnet “dazzled” and then stole Simon away with her glamour, she describes Linnet’s “complete assurance—her habit of command,” which Poirot, too, has noticed (88). Still, her hot-tempered, “Latin” character reveals itself even in this deliberate, methodical conversation. Jackie declares that “He loved me—he will always love me” (89). Indeed, Jackie is a complex character: calculating and rational, yet ultimately driven by a dark passion.

Poirot first observes Jackie dining, blissfully, with her fiancé, Simon Doyle. Over the course of the novel, she undergoes a transformation: from innocent bride-to-be to cold-hearted killer. When Poirot sees her for the first time in Egypt, after Simon has married Linnet, Jackie is “paler, thinner, [with] lines that told of a great weariness and misery of spirit” and eyes that, “dark with a kind of smouldering fire, [have] a queer kind of suffering dark triumph in them” (61). Despite Jackie’s obvious suffering and her famous hot temper, Poirot is initially unsure that she could be capable of murder and spends a great deal of time and energy attempting to convince her to let go of her anger, leave Linnet alone, and turn away from the darkness that seems to be consuming her. However, because of her obsessive and excessive love for Simon, she pays him no mind, and by the end of the novel Jackie has become someone who is not only capable of murder but seems actually to enjoy killing. 

Simon is “a tall, broad-shouldered young man, with very dark blue eyes, crisply curling brown hair, a square chin, and a boyish, appealing, simple smile” who looks at Linnet with “naïve genuine admiration” (33). Jackie describes him as “what you call ‘county’ all right—but very impoverished county…[h]is people come from Devonshire. He loves the country and country things” (20-21). Initially engaged to Jackie, he is also consumed by his desire for wealth and eventually breaks off the engagement to marry Linnet for her money. He remains in a secret relationship with Jackie and depends on her to plan Linnet’s murder.

Simon is a simple, direct, and unimaginative person who “belong[s] to that type of men of action who find it difficult to put thoughts into words and who have trouble in expressing themselves clearly” (93). He is extremely deft and quick in physical matters, as his rescue of Linnet from the boulder shows. However, as his many blunders—from repeating Jackie’s line about the sun and the moon to scrawling a “J” in blood above Linnet’s bed—show, he is less skillful when it comes to behaving subtly and choosing his words well. 

Joanna is “a tall thin young woman of twenty-seven, with a long clever face and freakishly plucked eyebrows” (12). She is a friend of Linnet Ridgeway’s and the cousin of Tim Allerton. Joanna herself states openly that she immediately drops friends who suffer financial hardship, lest they should ask her for money. Although Tim Allerton and she are close and appear to genuinely enjoy one another’s company, Mrs. Allerton finds Joanna “insincere, affected, and essentially superficial” (36), and Tim himself declares that he would be perfectly happy never to see her again. Joanna appears in only two scenes at the very beginning of the novel but remains in contact with Tim via post. Later, we learn that she is the driving force behind the ring of jewel thieves in which Tim is also involved. 

Tim is a:

tall, thin young man, with dark hair and a rather narrow chest. His mouth had a very sweet expression: his eyes were sad and his chin was indecisive. He had long delicate hands. Threatened by consumption some years ago, he had never displayed a really robust physique. He was popularly supposed ‘to write,’ but it was understood among his friends that inquiries as to literary output were not encouraged(34).

Tim confesses to Rosalie that, because of his health, he has never been able to pursue a satisfying career. He appears to become involved in Joanna’s jewel thievery out of some combination of boredom and the desire to make money. Although he is naturally wary of Poirot, Tim is generally even-tempered, affectionate toward his mother, and—at least according to Poirot—capable of reforming himself. He comes to love Rosalie over the course of their time together and promises to leave behind his life of crime forever.

Mrs. Allerton is “a good-looking, white-haired woman of fifty “who attempts, unsuccessfully, to hide her “intense affection” (33) for her son Tim. Well-liked by everyone—even, grudgingly, by the snobbish Miss Van Schuyler—Mrs. Allerton becomes Poirot’s confidant and a kind of maternal figure to Rosalie. Mrs. Allerton is never a suspect in any crime, though her offhand remark about her companions’ drinking habits does inspire one of Poirot’s crucial insights into the case. 

Miss Van Schuyler is “an elderly lady with a very wrinkled face, a stiff white stock, a good many diamonds and an expression of reptilian contempt for the majority of mankind” (116). She is extremely snobbish and treats her niece, Cornelia, like a servant, snapping orders at her and criticizing her while demanding that both Cornelia and Miss Bowers cater to her whims. However, Miss Van Schuyler harbors her own secrets: she requires Miss Bowers’ services not because of ill health, but because of her kleptomania. Miss Van Schuyler does not lack anything, yet she is inexplicably moved to steal others’ possessions. 

Cornelia is “a big, rather clumsy young woman of under thirty...[with] eager brown eyes, rather like a dog’s, untidy hair, and a terrific air of willingness to please” (116). She is Miss Van Schuyler’s “poor relation” (127). Despite her Cousin Marie’s incessant demands and bad moods, Cornelia is “obviously enjoying herself in spite of being treated like a black slave” (127), and is generally kind, optimistic, and even-tempered. Ferguson declares her the nicest person on the boat, and she becomes the object of rivalry between him and Dr. Bessner, whose compliments inform us that Cornelia is appealingly feminine, as well as a good listener and clever student.

As the novel progresses, Cornelia reveals there is far more to her than meets the eye: besides being friendly, tolerant, and forgiving (even to Linnet, whose father financially ruined Cornelia’s own father, who died shortly thereafter),she is intelligent and highly capable. When Simon is wounded, she assists Dr. Bessner in performing surgery and setting Simon’s broken leg. Her calm unflappability embarrasses Fanthorp, who is far less composed under pressure. When Ferguson asks Cornelia to marry him, she refuses him because she thinks he is unreliable; Poirot remarks that Cornelia is “a woman of an original mind” (413). 

Miss Bowers is a nurse who works in some unspecified capacity for Miss Van Schuyler, “perhaps [as a] secretary” (127), since Miss Van Schuyler is not actually ill. She is thin and wears pince-nez. In actuality, Miss Bowers’ job is to keep Miss Van Schuyler from stealing, to return stolen objects to their owners, and to prevent a public scandal. 

Andrew Pennington is Linnet’s uncle and trustee. Like his business partner, Sterndale Rockford, he is “tall, spare, with greying hair and [a] clean-shaven, clever [face]” (45) with a “ruthless jaw” (127). Mrs. Allerton describes him as looking like a very rich person who works on Wall Street, and “very good-looking in a dry sort of way” (127). He grows visibly upset upon learning of Linnet’s marriage: “Suddenly his fist clenched itself and came down on his desk with a bang; his face crimsoned and two big veins stood out on his forehead” (44). Pennington, who “always made a hit” (47) with Linnet, views her marriage to Simon Doyle as suspiciously secretive. Prompted by partially-articulated worries about Linnet’s British lawyers, he arranges to meet Linnet, as if by accident, on her honeymoon in Egypt.

Over time, Pennington reveals himself as a cold, calculating man who speculated with Linnet’s money, attempts to trick her into signing papers that will obscure this fact, and then attempts to kill her with a boulder so that he can slip the papers in question past Linnet’s inattentive husband, Simon. Although Pennington is “innocent” in the sense that he does not ultimately succeed in killing Linnet, his deeds and intentions make him a deeply guilty man.

William Carmichaelis Linnet’s British lawyer and the senior partner of Carmichael, Grant & Carmichael. When he learns that Linnet has “coincidentally” run into Andrew Pennington while on her honeymoon in Egypt, his suspicions are awakened, and he sends his nephew, Jim Fanthorp, to intervene. 

Fanthorp is Carmichael’s nephew. He has never met either Linnet or Pennington. He agrees to travel to Egypt as a favor to his uncle, who is convinced that such a trip is urgently necessary. He is an “intensely quiet young man who never speaks” with a “nice face, cautious and intelligent” (126). As Poirot observes, Fanthorp is an attentive observer and seems out of place on the tourist cruise. Fanthorp is a conservative and deeply-proper person who wears an Old School tie. Mortified by the need to interrupt Pennington and Linnet’s conversation in an effort to alert Linnet to the danger of signing papers without reading them fully, he does so anyway, in order to carry out his duty. 

Mrs. Otterbourne is a failing novelist, conceited, and possessed of a “high complaining voice” (64). She dresses herself in “draperies of black ninon” (64). Given to bouts of self-aggrandizement and exaggeration of her own talents, as well as a tendency to castigate her long-suffering daughter, Rosalie, she suffers from alcoholism. Mrs. Otterbourne seeks out a supply of alcohol from the ship’s crew for her secret drinking binges. In so doing, she becomes an unwitting witness to Louise Bourget’s murder and winds up dead herself. 

Rosalie is, according to Tim Allerton, “the best-looking girl in the place” (51), though she also looks “bad-tempered and sulky” and has “eyebrows drawn together in a frown” and “the scarlet line of her mouth [is] drawn downward” (52). Rosalie is three inches taller than Poirot and walks “well, neither stiffly nor sloughingly” (52). She is a figure of some mystery for most of the novel; Poirot seems to view her affectionately, though Rosalie behaves secretly when she is accused of having thrown something overboard on the night of Linnet Doyle’s murder.

Rosalie turns out to have been engaged in a long, futile battle to prevent her mother’s drinking; on the night of Linnet’s murder, she was throwing her mother’s liquor into the river. As much as she pretends to hate Mrs. Otterbourne, Rosalie actually loves her deeply and is clearly tortured by the fact that her mother has come to resent her bitterly as a result of her interventions. Deeply loyal to those she loves, Rosalie also refuses to tell Poirot that she saw Tim Allerton coming out of Linnet Doyle’s cabin on the night Linnet was killed. She believes Tim to be the murderer and takes the risk of becoming a suspect herself partially in order to protect him. 

Poirot is a short, well-dressed man (“he wore a white silk suit, carefully pressed, and a panama hat, and carried a highly ornamental fly whisk with a sham amber handle”) who speaks softly and gently and wears an expression of “beatific good humour” (52). A renowned detective, he is disposed in a kindly way to everyone he meets, even the ill-tempered (such as Rosalie) and those in grave danger of being seduced by evil (such as Jackie). His behavior toward two of the novel’s confessed criminals, Tim and Jackie, is extremely merciful. He allows Tim to escape the consequences of his crimes altogether, and engineers Jackie’s opportunity to kill herself rather than face trial. 

Bessner is a fat German doctor “with [a] closely shaved head and [a] moustache” (125) who reads aloud, ponderously, from his guidebooks and instructs Cornelia Robson about the sights they see together on the trip. He appears to work as a psychologist or psychiatrist as well as a medical doctor; by the end of the novel, he and Cornelia are engaged, and he has invited her to work in his practice. 

Mr. Ferguson is a young and extremely vocal leftist who scowls at his fellow passengers and engages in unsolicited tirades about the exploitation of the working classes. He clearly harbors a great bitterness toward the upper classes, so it is somewhat ironic when Poirot reveals that Ferguson is actually Lord Dawlish, a member of a noble family who became a communist while studying at Oxford. Ferguson eventually falls in love with Cornelia, whom he views as extremely kind and excessively tolerant. He seems to find it incomprehensible that she chooses Dr. Bessner over him; Poirot responds that Ferguson has probably never met a woman as original as Cornelia.