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Death on the Nile
Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie’s most exotic murder mystery, reissued with a striking cover designed to appeal to the latest generation of Agatha Christie fans and book lovers.The tranquillity of a cruise along the Nile is shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway has been shot through the head. She was young, stylish and beautiful, a girl who had everything – until she lost her life.Hercule Poirot recalls an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: ‘I’d like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger.’ Yet in this exotic setting’ nothing is ever quite what it seems…
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Collins 1937
Copyright © 1937 Agatha Christie Ltd.
All rights reserved.
www.agathachristie.com (http://www.agathachristie.com)
The moral right of the author is asserted
"Essay by Charles Osborne" excerpted from The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie. Copyright © 1982, 1999 by Charles Osborne. Reprinted with permission.
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Source ISBN: 9780007527557
Ebook Edition © 2010 ISBN: 9780007422289
Version: 2018-09-05
To my old friend Sybil Bennett
who also loves wandering about the world
Contents
Cover (#u0387d37f-74c1-59ab-ad3c-fc34eb377a3f)
Title Page (#uc188b98e-417d-5bec-9d04-b37664020186)
Copyright
Dedication (#u9d2e0ff5-7ffb-5685-9911-ad6bbe0c84ca)
Author’s Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About Agatha Christie
The Agatha Christie Collection
E-Book Extras
www.agathachristie.com (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Author’s Foreword
Death on the Nile was written after coming back from a winter in Egypt. When I read it now I feel myself back again on the steamer from Assuan to Wadi Halfa. There were quite a number of passengers on board, but the ones in this book travelled in my mind and became increasingly real to me–in the setting of a Nile steamer. The book has a lot of characters and a very elaborately worked out plot. I think the central situation is intriguing and has dramatic possibilities, and the three characters, Simon, Linnet, and Jacqueline, seem to me to be real and alive.
My friend, Francis L. Sullivan, liked the book so much that he kept urging me to adapt it for the stage, which in the end I did.
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.
Chapter 1 (#ulink_b9e42f1a-ecef-531b-a50e-3476f1dbe480)
‘Linnet Ridgeway!’
‘That’s her!’ said Mr Burnaby, the landlord of the Three Crowns.
He nudged his companion.
The two men stared with round bucolic eyes and slightly open mouths.
A big scarlet Rolls-Royce had just stopped in front of the local post office.
A girl jumped out, a girl without a hat and wearing a frock that looked (but only looked) simple. A girl with golden hair and straight autocratic features–a girl with a lovely shape–a girl such as was seldom seen in Malton-under-Wode.
With a quick imperative step she passed into the post office.
‘That’s her!’ said Mr Burnaby again. And he went on in a low awed voice: ‘Millions she’s got…Going to spend thousands on the place. Swimming-pools there’s going to be, and Italian gardens and a ballroom and half of the house pulled down and rebuilt…’
‘She’ll bring money into the town,’ said his friend. He was a lean, seedy-looking man. His tone was envious and grudging.
Mr Burnaby agreed.
‘Yes, it’s a great thing for Malton-under-Wode. A great thing it is.’
Mr Burnaby was complacent about it.
‘Wake us all up proper,’ he added.
‘Bit of difference from Sir George,’ said the other.
‘Ah, it was the ’orses did for him,’ said Mr Burnaby indulgently. ‘Never ’ad no luck.’
‘What did he get for the place?’
‘A cool sixty thousand, so I’ve heard.’
The lean man whistled.
Mr Burnaby went on triumphantly: ‘And they say she’ll have spent another sixty thousand before she’s finished!’
‘Wicked!’ said the lean man. ‘Where’d she get all that money from?’
‘America, so I’ve heard. Her mother was the only daughter of one of those millionaire blokes. Quite like the pictures, isn’t it?’
The girl came out of the post office and climbed into the car.
As she drove off, the lean man followed her with his eyes. He muttered:
‘It seems all wrong to me–her looking like that. Money and looks–it’s too much! If a girl’s as rich as that she’s no right to be a good-looker as well. And she is a good-looker…Got everything, that girl has. Doesn’t seem fair…’
II
Extract from the Social column of the Daily Blague.
Among those supping at Chez Ma Tante I noticed beautiful Linnet Ridgeway. She was with the Hon. Joanna Southwood, Lord Windlesham and Mr Toby Bryce. Miss Ridgeway, as everyone knows, is the daughter of Melhuish Ridgeway who married Anna Hartz. She inherits from her grandfather, Leopold Hartz, an immense fortune. The lovely Linnet is the sensation of the moment and it is rumoured that an engagement may be announced shortly. Certainly Lord Windlesham seemed very épris!!
III
The Hon. Joanna Southwood said:
‘Darling, I think it’s going to be all perfectly marvellous!’
She was sitting in Linnet Ridgeway’s bedroom at Wode Hall.
From the window the eye passed over the gardens to open country with blue shadows of woodlands.
