Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot, #18)

by Agatha Christie

“Look at it the right way, and it answers every question. Simon Doyle and Jacqueline had been lovers. Realize that they are still lovers, and it is all clear.

I KNEW IT

“No, it’s no use being sentimental. I might do it again . . . I’m not a safe person any longer. I can feel that myself . . .” She went on broodingly: “It’s so dreadfully easy—killing people. And you begin to feel that it doesn’t matter . . . that it’s only you that matters! It’s dangerous—that.”

Poirot said simply: “And for you love would have been enough, but not for him.”

He liked all the things you get with money—horses and yachts and sport—nice things all of them, things a man ought to be keen about. And he’d never been able to have any of them. He’s awfully simple, Simon is. He wants things just as a child wants them—you know—terribly.

whoopee,

“So I had to come into it, too, to look after him. . . .” She said it very simply but in complete good faith. Poirot had no doubt whatever that her motive had been exactly what she said it was. She herself had not coveted Linnet Ridgeway’s money, but she had loved Simon Doyle, had loved him beyond reason and beyond rectitude and beyond pity.

I wanted it to be so that, if anything went wrong, they’d get me and not Simon. But Simon was worried about me.

I wasn’t even horrified. I was so afraid—so deadly afraid . . . That’s what murder does to you.

It was quite easy. That’s what’s so horribly, horribly frightening about it . . . It’s so terribly easy. . . .

She said with a sudden smile: “Do you remember when I said I must follow my star? You said it might be a false star. And I said: ‘That very bad star, that star fell down.’” He went out to the deck with her laughter ringing in his ears.

“That boyish type of criminal is usually intensely vain. Once prick the bubble of their self-esteem and it is finished! They go to pieces like children.”

“People say love justifies everything, but that is not true . . . Women who care for men as Jacqueline cares for Simon Doyle are very dangerous.

“She prefers that pompous old bore to me?” “Undoubtedly.” “The girl’s mad,” declared Ferguson. Poirot’s eyes twinkled. “She is a woman of an original mind,” he said. “It is probably the first time you have met one.”

insouciance

“Love can be a very frightening thing.” “That is why most great love stories are tragedies.”