Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot 17)

“Except those of our own number, Mademoiselle?”

She shrugged her shoulders. Then she said: “There’s something about this country that makes me feel—wicked. It brings to the surface all the things that are boiling inside one. Everything’s so unfair—so unjust.”

“I wonder. You cannot judge by material evidence.”

Rosalie muttered: “Look at—at some people’s mothers—and look at mine. There is no God but Sex, and Salome Otterbourne is its Prophet.” She stopped. “I shouldn’t have said that, I suppose.”

Poirot made a gesture with his hands.

“Why not say it—to me? I am one of those who hear many things. If, as you say, you boil inside—like the jam—eh bien, let the scum come to the surface, and then one can take it off with a spoon, so.”

He made a gesture of dropping something into the Nile.

“Then, it has gone.”

“What an extraordinary man you are!” Rosalie said. Her sulky mouth twisted into a smile. Then she suddenly stiffened as she exclaimed: “Well, here are Mrs. Doyle and her husband! I’d no idea they were coming on this trip!”

Linnet had just emerged from a cabin halfway down the deck. Simon was behind her. Poirot was almost startled by the look of her—so radiant, so assured. She looked positively arrogant with happiness. Simon Doyle, too, was a transformed being. He was grinning from ear to ear and looking like a happy schoolboy.

“This is grand,” he said as he too leaned on the rail. “I’m really looking forward to this trip, aren’t you, Linnet? It feels, somehow, so much less touristy—as though we were really going into the heart of Egypt.”

His wife responded quickly: “I know. It’s so much—wilder, somehow.”

Her hand slipped through his arm. He pressed it close to his side.

“We’re off, Lin,” he murmured.

The steamer was drawing away from the jetty. They had started on their seven-day journey to the Second Cataract and back.

Behind them a light silvery laugh rang out. Linnet whipped round.

Jacqueline de Bellefort was standing there. She seemed amused.

“Hullo, Linnet! I didn’t expect to find you here. I thought you said you were staying in Assuan another ten days. This is a surprise!”

“You—you didn’t—” Linnet’s tongue stammered. She forced a ghastly conventional smile. “I—I didn’t expect to see you either.”

“No?”

Jacqueline moved away to the other side of the boat. Linnet’s grasp on her husband’s arm tightened.

“Simon—Simon—”

All Doyle’s good-natured pleasure had gone. He looked furious. His hands clenched themselves in spite of his effort at self-control.

The two of them moved a little away. Without turning his head Poirot caught scraps of disjointed words:

“…turn back…impossible…we could…” and then, slightly louder, Doyle’s voice, despairing but grim: “We can’t run away forever, Lin. We’ve got to go through with it now….”

It was some hours later. Daylight was just fading. Poirot stood in the glass-enclosed saloon looking straight ahead. The Karnak was going through a narrow gorge. The rocks came down with a kind of sheer ferocity to the river flowing deep and swift between them. They were in Nubia now.

He heard a movem

ent and Linnet Doyle stood by his side. Her fingers twisted and untwisted themselves; she looked as he had never yet seen her look. There was about her the air of a bewildered child. She said:

“Monsieur Poirot, I’m afraid—I’m afraid of everything. I’ve never felt like this before. All these wild rocks and the awful grimness and starkness. Where are we going? What’s going to happen? I’m afraid, I tell you. Everyone hates me. I’ve never felt like that before. I’ve always been nice to people—I’ve done things for them—and they hate me—lots of people hate me. Except for Simon, I’m surrounded by enemies…It’s terrible to feel—that there are people who hate you….”

“But what is all this, Madame?”