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A character in Death on the Nile

Linnet Doyle

The heiress who took her best friend's fiancé and cannot understand why her honeymoon is being followed.

What they want

To have what she wants and be forgiven for it.

The book

Death on the NileAgatha Christie, 1937

An heiress, her new husband and the friend she took him from, on a Nile steamer with nowhere to go but the next temple.

View the book

At a glance

In the book
The victim; heiress of Wode Hall, newly married
Age
Twenty
Where she appears
Chapters 1 to 12

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Linnet Ridgeway is twenty, and has just come into an American fortune and an English house. She is used to getting what she wants and to being liked for it, and the book opens with her being both. When her poor friend Jacqueline brings Simon Doyle to Wode Hall and asks for a job for him, Linnet gives him the job and then herself. She sees no reason to feel guilty, and the book keeps asking her to.

On the Nile she is frightened, and being frightened is new to her. She asks Poirot to help and is refused. She asks her trustee to explain some papers and is put off. She is the victim from the first page and she never quite becomes a person, which is part of what the book is about.

How Linnet Doyle Is Portrayed

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

  • The moneyAn American fortune from her mother's side and Wode Hall from her own; she is rebuilding the village at her own expense.
  • The friendJacqueline at school, Jacqueline poor, Jacqueline asking a favour — and Linnet taking the man instead.
  • The fearOn the terrace at Aswan she tells Poirot she is being haunted, and means it.
  • The pearlsA famous string, worn every day, and the object of at least two people's attention on the boat.
  • The papersPennington keeps producing documents for her to sign, and she keeps reading them, which he did not expect.
  • The boulderAt Abu Simbel a rock falls from the cliff and misses her by a step.
Their ending, and the commentary — spoilers aheadHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

Linnet is shot through the head in her sleep by her husband, who had married her for her money and planned her death with the woman she had taken him from.

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