Agatha Christie's Poirot Episode Guide - inaf iasf bologna

Agatha Christie’s Poirot Episode Guide
Poirot meets his friend Colonel Race, who is joining everyone on the boat for the return trip.
Race tells Poirot that one of the passengers is a deadly criminal who has murdered several other
people, only Race has not yet identified him.
That night on the boat, Jacqueline gets into a drunken rage, takes out a pistol, and shoots
Simon in the leg, then breaks down in a hysterical state of remorse. At Simon’s insistence, the
two other persons present, Cornelia and Mr. Fanthorp, help Jacqueline back to her cabin, and
then fetch Dr. Bessner to see to Simon’s wound. Nurse Bowers stays in Jacqueline’s room all
night. Later, Fanthorp tells Bessner the gun is missing.
The next day, Linnet is found dead with a bullet in her head. Race takes charge of the situation
and asks Poirot to handle the investigation. Several clues seem to incriminate Jacqueline — a ”J”
written in blood on the wall above Linnet’s head, for instance — but Miss Bowers assures Poirot
that Jacqueline never left her cabin that night. Dr. Bessner also assures Poirot that Simon’s leg
wound completely incapacitated him, and so he could not have moved from his bed, even if he
wanted to.
Race and Poirot theorize that Linnet had some other enemy among the passengers, who took
advantage of the scene in the lounge to murder her and implicate Jacqueline. Poirot also notices
that Linnet’s pearl necklace is missing from her room.
Poirot then interviews all the passengers. Several of them heard a splash shortly after midnight,
and Miss Van Schuyler claims that she looked out her window and saw Rosalie Otterbourne
throw something overboard. But Rosalie denies this. A short time later, the murder
weapon is recovered from the Nile — Jacqueline’s pistol, wrapped in Miss Van Schuyler’s missing
velvet stole. To Poirot this makes no sense, when someone wanting to incriminate Jacqueline
would have left her pistol behind to incriminate her.
Louise Bourget is interviewed in Dr. Bessner’s cabin, while Bessner is ministering to Simon.
She says she saw nothing on the night of the murder, but would have done ”if” she had left her
cabin. This choice of words sounds strange to Poirot.
When Race announces that the cabins will be searched for the missing pearls, Miss Bowers
returns them, confiding that Miss Van Schuyler took them from Linnet’s cabin, being a secret
kleptomaniac. But Poirot examines the string and finds it is a fake, meaning the real necklace
was stolen sometime earlier.
Poirot eventually realizes that Salome Otterbourne is a secret alcoholic, and what Rosalie was
throwing overboard was her mother’s hidden cache of spirits. Rosalie admits this, but firmly
denies seeing anyone leaving Linnet’s cabin on the night of the murder.
When Louise Bourget is found murdered in her cabin, clutching a large-denomination banknote,
Race and Poirot deduce that she had seen the real murderer leave Linnet’s cabin, and was
trying to blackmail him or her.
Poirot and Race enter Dr. Bessner’s cabin and tell the doctor and Simon what happened.
Salome Otterbourne enters and says she knows who killed Linnet and Louise, because she saw
that person enter and leave Louise’s cabin. Simon yells at her to tell him. Before she can finish her
story, a shot is fired from the deck outside, killing her. Before Poirot and Race can get outside, the
shooter is gone, having dropped a gun that Poirot recognizes from Andrew Pennington’s luggage.
Poirot announces that he has solved the case; for him the most salient clues were:
the fact that Poirot only drinks wine with dinner, while his two usual dinner companions, the
Allertons, drink something else;
• two bottles of nail polish in Linnet’s room, one labelled ”Cardinal” (a deep, dark red) and the
other ”Rose” (pale pink), but both of which contain red coloring;
• the fact that Jacqueline’s gun was thrown overboard; and
• the circumstances of Louise and Mrs. Otterbourne’s deaths.
Before explaining his solution to the crime, Poirot decides to clear away some of the lesser
mysteries first, by interviewing several of the passengers in turn:
• Andrew Pennington admits that he has speculated, illegally, with Linnet’s holdings; he was
hoping to replace the funds before she came of age, but upon her marriage she gained
full control of her estate; on learning of her marriage, Pennington rushed to Egypt to stage
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