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A character in Death on the Nile

Simon Doyle

The good-looking young man with no money, engaged to Jacqueline and married to Linnet within three months.

What they want

Money, and a life in which nobody expects him to be clever.

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
Linnet's husband; formerly engaged to Jacqueline
Where he appears
Throughout

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Simon is tall, boyish, and easy to like. He came to Wode Hall as Jacqueline's fiancé and left it as Linnet's husband, and he explains the change, when Poirot asks, as a man's plain preference for one woman over another. He hates being followed and says so. He is the book's least complicated person on the surface, and the surface is the point.

He is shot in the leg in the saloon in front of witnesses, and spends the last third of the book in the doctor's cabin, which is where Poirot finally tells him what he did.

How Simon Doyle Is Portrayed

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

  • The looksBig, handsome, sunburned, with a boy's grin; Linnet's friends think she has done badly.
  • The explanationHe tells Poirot that a man can change his mind about a woman, and seems to think that settles it.
  • The temperHe calls Jacqueline's pursuit unbearable and speaks of her with real hatred in the saloon.
  • The legShot above the knee; Dr Bessner finds the bullet in the bone, and it is real.
  • The trouserA stain on the trouser leg seen by Cornelia before the doctor arrives, which is not what she thinks.
  • The cabinHe lies in Bessner's cabin for the rest of the voyage, and people come to him there.
Their ending, and the commentary — spoilers aheadHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

Simon and Jacqueline planned the whole thing before he ever proposed to Linnet. In the saloon he faked his wound with red ink, ran to Linnet's cabin and shot her, then shot himself in the leg so that his alibi would be a real bullet. Jacqueline shoots him dead on the landing stage at Shellal.

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