While on holiday in Aswan to board the steamer "Karnak", set to tour along the Nile River from Shellal to Wadi Halfa, Hercule Poirot is approached by successful socialite Linnet Doyle Linnet Ridgeway. She wants to commission him to deter her former friend Jacqueline de Bellefort from hounding and stalking her: Linnet had recently married Jacqueline's fiancé, Simon Doyle, which has made Jacqueline bitterly resentful. Poirot refuses the commission, but attempts unsuccessfully to dissuade Jacqueline from pursuing her plans. Simon and Linnet secretly follow Poirot to escape Jacqueline, but find she had learned of their plans and boarded ahead of them. The other "Karnak" passengers include Linnet's maid (Louise Bourget) and trustee (Andrew Pennington), romance novelist Salome Otterbourne (a thinly disguised portrayal of Elinor Glyn), and her daughter Rosalie, Tim Allerton and his mother, American socialite Marie Van Schuyler, her cousin Cornelia Robson and her nurse Miss Bowers, outspoken communist Mr. Ferguson, Italian archaeologist Guido Richetti, solicitor Jim Fanthorp, and Austrian physician Dr. Bessner.