Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot, #18)

by Agatha Christie

“In my day we had our standards,” said Mrs. Allerton. “And a very good thing too! Nowadays young people seem to think they can just go about doing anything they choose.”

But there she was quite wrong—for a matter of life and death was exactly what it was.

I mean that all is not the gold that glitters. I mean that, though this lady is rich and beautiful and beloved, there is all the same something that is not right.

You are beautiful, Madame; you are rich; you are clever; intelligent—and you have charm. You could have exercised that charm or you could have restrained it. You had everything, Madame, that life can offer. Your friend’s life was bound up in one person. You knew that, but, though you hesitated, you did not hold your hand. You stretched it out and, like King David, you took the poor man’s one ewe lamb.”

“Give up the past! Turn to the future! What is done is done. Bitterness will not undo it.”

“Love is not everything, Mademoiselle,” Poirot said gently. “It is only when we are young that we think it is.”

“Look at the moon up there. You see her very plainly, don’t you? She’s very real. But if the sun were to shine you wouldn’t be able to see her at all. It was rather like that. I was the

“Mothers, Madame, are particularly ruthless when their children are in danger.”

“Well, that’s that. Flat contradiction. Which of ’em do we believe?” Poirot shook his head. “I have a little idea that neither of them was being quite frank.” “That’s the worst of our job,” said Race despondently.

“I’m used to that. It often seems to me that’s all detective work is, wiping out your false starts and beginning again.” “Yes, it is very true, that. And it is just what some people will not do. They conceive a certain theory, and everything has to fit into that theory. If one little fact will not fit it, they throw it aside. But it is always the facts that will not fit in that are significant.

“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.”