Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot, #18)

by Agatha Christie

I think, myself, that the book is one of the best of my “foreign travel” ones, and if detective stories are “escape literature” (and why shouldn’t they be!) the reader can escape to sunny skies and blue water as well as to crime in the confines of an armchair.

How bored and weary most of the faces were! Some of those stout men, however, were enjoying themselves . . . whereas a patient endurance seemed to be the sentiment exhibited on their partners’ faces. The fat woman in purple was looking radiant . . . Undoubtedly the fat had certain compensations in life . . . a zest—a gusto—denied to those of more fashionable contours. A good sprinkling of young people—some vacant-looking—some bored—some definitely unhappy. How absurd to call youth the time of happiness—youth, the time of greatest vulnerability!

Mrs. Allerton was a good-looking, white-haired woman of fifty.

Stout women oughtn’t to be allowed to bathe anyway; they look so revolting in bathing dresses.”

I predict this jerk to be the killer or to be killed.

All three wore the air of superiority assumed by people who are already in a place when studying new arrivals.

“I mean that all is not the gold that glitters.

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

“I am not thinking of her at this moment! I am thinking of you. You have suffered—yes—but what you are doing now will only prolong the suffering.”

“You’re wrong. There are times when I almost enjoy myself.” “And that, Mademoiselle, is the worst of all.”

“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 moon . . . When the sun came out, Simon couldn’t see me anymore . . . He was dazzled. He couldn’t see anything but the sun—Linnet.” She paused and then she went on: “So you see it was—glamour.

Simon Doyle was frowning a little. He belonged to that type of men of action who find it difficult to put thoughts into words and who have trouble in expressing themselves clearly.

“Take the Pyramids. Great blocks of useless masonry, put up to minister to the egoism of a despotic bloated king. Think of the sweated masses who toiled to build them and died doing it. It makes me sick to think of the suffering and torture they represent.”

Mrs. Allerton said cheerfully: “You’d rather have no Pyramids, no Parthenon, no beautiful tombs or temples—just the solid satisfaction of knowing that people got three meals a day and died in their beds.”

“I think human beings matter more than stones.”

“I’d rather see a well fed worker than any so-called work of art. What matters is the future—not the past.”

I’ve got to educate him—gradually.”

If I am right, and after all I am constantly in the habit of being right”—Race

“What a poisonous woman! Whew! Why didn’t somebody murder her!”

Why? Because she speaks freely of passion and the sex?

“she counts it. Oh, yes, I know that class. She would count the money,

Hospital nurses, me, I find them always gloomy! The night nurse, always, she is astonished to find her patient alive in the evening; the day nurse, always, she is surprised to find him alive in the morning! They know too much, you see, of the possibilities that may arise.

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.

Linnet got control of her dough

Odd choice of word for money…time period? Doesn’t mesh with wealth though

“Because I am Hercule Poirot I do not need to be told.