It’s a small thing, but I honestly can’t figure out the point of a jarring little passage in Agatha Christie’s novel: where Simon Doyle announces that, if somebody puts a legal document in front of him and asks him to sign on the dotted line, well, then, gosh; he cheerfully does so, without reading it through, and that’s that.
His wife disapprovingly says this is “frightfully slipshod,” because of course it is, prompting him to reply that, look, since he’s got no head for business, if a fellow tells him to sign, he just does; really, it’s the simplest way. (And just in case we’re ready to move on to a new topic and drop this one, Christie then has someone else ask, uh, hey, isn’t that risky? This gives the guy a chance to keep on waving that sort of talk off as nonsense, and he naturally leaps at it.)
No indication that he’s joking, or exaggerating for effect, or whatever.
So my question is: is the idea supposed to be that he is, in fact, that dumb? Or is it supposed to be that he presumably isn’t that dumb, and possibly he’s playing dumb because a would-be murderer would be well-advised to do so? Or am I reading way too much into it, and Christie maybe thinks this is just a mild but reasonable quirk and the other characters are overreacting?
The set up is this: Lynette’s American lawyer Pennington has misused her money and he’s hoping to get her to sign some documents to keep himself out of jail. Pennington meets her “accidentally” on her honeymoon in the hopes that, distracted by luurve, she’ll sign the papers without reading them. She, of course, does insist on reading them, prompting Doyle’s remarks and Pennington to delay the meeting “for another time”
The point of the scene is to set up Pennington as a suspect in the mind of the reader. It gives him a motive to get Lynette. That’s it, really.
yes especially in the Marple books I’ve read there’s at least one character or sets of characters of that’s all set up to be a red herring with a perfect reason to be a suspect or to commit another crime so you’ll get distracted from the real culprit who usually only gets a line or two of motive until the end (read the mirror crack’d for the best example of this)
No, I get what the lawyer wants in that scene (which, of course, later gets flatly stated) and why his actions there make perfect sense in light of that. But I still don’t get what Simon is supposed to be going for, there: is he saying that stuff because he actually believes it, since he’s dumb and there’s no reason for him not to be honest right then? Or is he saying it without actually believing it?
Or is it that, like, even Christie maybe didn’t know if the character believed it, maybe never even considered it, because, hey, it doesn’t actually matter why he’s saying it; he says it, and says it again, and says it again, simply because the scene needs someone to make subject-relevant mouth-sounds right then, is all?
(Is this the spark for one of those clichéd bits where, upon filming it, the actor would do a quick What’s My Motivation Here, and the director would shrug in reply?)
See, the thing is — I said SPOILERS in the title, right? So, SPOILERS — he is, in fact, a lying liar who lies; specifically, he’s the murderer; and his cunning plan is, y’know, to lie about the details of What Really Happened That Night. I mean, that’s pretty much his whole deal, right? Just, uh, lying, and killing; and, again, lying.
I just skimmed some passages, and IMHO, Simon is just that dumb. He”s described repeatedly as simple and uncomplicated, he”s really just a big boy. I don’t get the impression that he’s a habitual liar, it’s more that he saw a chance, as he saw it, to get rich quick, and he has the impulse control of a child. And he really is that trusting. IIRC, he lost a prior job because some sharp city types ran some sort of con and used him as the patsy.
And remember that it was Jacquelyn who was the mastermind behind the murder; his job was to do what she said. I’m sure she coached him very throughly on What to Say Happened that Night, and to always be the adoring new bridegroom. But this interaction has nothing to do with the murder or their alibi, so why would he lie?
It has nothing, in specific, to do with a murder or an alibi; but it could generally help establish him as a guileless type who sure doesn’t think in such terms, making it seem unlikely that he’d go in for dishonest murder-by-alibi trickery.
And he is the guy who improvised the ‘trace a bloody letter’ bit at the crime scene: after hatching the idea of killing her in the first place, but before (a) catching on to Louise’s hint-hint-hint blackmail attempt, and feigning agreement to reassure her, without Poirot or Race realizing a whole conversation-by-innuendo is playing out right in front of them; and (b) figuring out, in no time flat, how to foil Rosalie’s attempt to spill the beans while Poirot and Race again fail to realize what he’s doing right in front of them. (And as far as I can tell, the tale of him losing that prior job doesn’t mention sharp city types making him a patsy, or finding him trusting; only that he tried something dishonest with money and got found out.)
And also that he’s a simple country-squire type with no head for business and no real interest in money. The very last fellow even to consider marrying an heiress for her money, let alone murdering her for it, right?
Remember, the love-triangle setup is supposed to be that the lovely heiress just dazzled the handsome simple country squire right out of his engagement to her poor but passionate best friend, who is half mad with heartbreak and rage over it (and half-French into the bargain, and you know those hot-blooded foreigners!). That’s to make the jilted friend the obvious suspect in the murder of the heiress, since she turns out to have a solid alibi for it.
The more guileless and simple Simon appears, the less likely he is to be suspected of concocting such a clever and callous plot.
He is guileless. When Jacquline first tells Linnet about Simon - He’s big and boyish and incredibly simple, poor country squire, etc - it’s before Linnet and Simon have ever met, before any murder plot could have been conceived. Jackie is telling her best friend about the man she’s madly in love with. There’s no reason, at this point, to believe Simon is playing a part. And Jackie describes him in similar terms later, after they”re caught and there”s no reason for subterfuge.
I checked and you’re right. He wasn’t a patsy - he tried “to do something smart over money and got caught right away.” Again, this before he ever met Linnet, and it’s Jackie telling the story after they’ve been caught. This strongly implies that he wasn’t lying when he said he had no head for business; he really doesn’t.
Finally, the improvised “J” was a bad idea - even Jackie said so. And when confronted with the truth, he broke down and confessed everything immediately, instead of toughing it out and demanding evidence (which Poirot didn’t have). None of this is consistent with having a subtle, scheming brain full of guile.
See the question for me isn’t whether the “J” was a bad idea; it’s whether it was his idea. Near as I can tell, he realized he could add a misleading piece of trickery; and so he did, because that’s how he thinks and so that’s what he does.
When it comes to him losing that job, you’re focusing on the ‘and got caught’ part of ‘Doyle tried something dishonest and got caught’; but what jumps out at me is the ‘Doyle tried something dishonest’ part, because that’s how he thinks and so that’s what he does. (Which is why he’d know not to trustingly sign whatever is put in front of him; he’d know that Can’t-Be-Trusted types are out there trying dishonest stuff, because he is a Can’t-Be-Trusted type who did try dishonest stuff.)
What did he act like when he was trying that scheme, whatever it was? I’d figure he acted trusting and trustworthy and boyish and simple back then: that’s how he acted during the murder plot, when he was sinister; and, as you note, he apparently acted the same way before a murder plot was conceived. (And the part I want to focus on, there, is: he conceived the idea of murdering her for money. I know you want to focus on the part where Jackie’s plan was better than his; but the question isn’t how good he is at it, just if that’s how he thinks. If it is, then I get why he thinks to falsely assure Louise of a payoff without Poirot or Race realizing what he’s doing, and why Louise then dies; and why he later foils Rosalie, on his own initiative, again while Poirot and Race see what he’s doing but think ‘innocuous’.)
I can easily fit all of that with him not really meaning it when he gets the chance to opine about trusting folks and signing papers and, gawrsh, it never even really occurs to me that some people are dis-hon-est, am I even pronouncing that right? Golly, it’s just so alien a concept! Why, I sure don’t know anyone who thinks like that; including Yours Truly, who never does a dishonest thing, can’t stress that enough!
Whatever mask Simon may wear to try and fool other people, he’s not fooling Jackie – she knows who he is and what he’s like. And it’s Jackie - on two separate occasions, when she has no reason to lie – that says he’s truly a simple man, in many ways an innocent. She says of him, “He’s awfully simple, Simon is. He wants things just as a child wants tem – you know – terribly.” She gets involved in the murder plot specifically to look after him: “He’s so childishly simple. He’d have no kind of subtlety about it-and he’s got no imagination. He would probably have just bunged arsenic into her and assumed the doctor would say she’d died of gastritis. He always thought things would go right.”
What happens with Louise and Rosalie are good examples of this – where, exactly, does Simon display subtlety or imagination? For the former he tells her straight out “You’ll be taken care of”, how subtle is that? As for the latter, he doesn’t do anything but shout loudly in hopes that Jackie would hear him. He’s acting impulsively – not cunningly - and hoping for the best. He certainly isn’t going to out-clever Hercule Poirot; if neither he nor Race immediately see what he’s up to, it’s because they have to be dumb-for-the-sake-of-narrative necessity. In-story, of course, they don’t think of him as a suspect because he’s convinced them he’s ever such a widdle ewe lamb, but because at this point they think he’s *physically *incapable of having done it. Poirot’s greatness as a detective is his masterful ability to understand “the psychology” of the criminal. Does he, after the case is solved, give Simon credit for being a consummate poseur? Just the opposite: “Simon was not a really good actor. He overdid the devoted manner.” And of the murderers: “There, between the two of them, you get all the qualities you require – the cool, resourceful, planning brain, Jacqueline de Bellefort’s brain, and the man of action to carry it out with incredible swiftness and timing.”
(Just as an aside, the first time you read this book – did you solve the mystery? Did you realize what Simon was up to in the Louise and Rosalie scenes as you were reading it?)
The “J” clue and the botched money scheme are further examples of how Simon always acts on instinct, without considering the consequences. He *thinks *he can “add a misleading piece of trickery” but he’s incapable of seeing that it’s so obvious and clichéd that it won’t actually mislead anyone. It’s exactly the type of clue someone truly without subtlety or imagination would plant. About it, Jackie says “We worked everything out carefully. Even then Simon went and wrote a J in blood which was a silly melodramatic thing to do. It’s just the sort of thing he would think of!” About the money scam she says “I don’t believe he really meant to be dishonest. He just thought it was the sort of thing people did in the City.” He came up with the money scheme, yes; he conceived of the murder, yes – because he’s greedy and has the impulse control of a child. That doesn’t make him capable of being conniving. He isn’t acting “trusting and boyish and simple” either before or during the murder plot – he *is *“trusting and boyish and simple.”
And not just before or during - what about after they’re caught? Surely there’s no need to act a part now? No need, now, to convince anyone he’s “the very last fellow even to consider marrying an heiress for her money, let alone murdering her for it”. Does Christie now show the real face of the cunning manipulator able to perfectly fake sincerity? No, this is how Christie describes him: “He looked a different man-cringing, frightened, all his boyish insouciance vanished.” And when Simon talks to Jackie for the last time, “The old boyish look came back to his face for a moment. ‘I messed it up’, he said. ‘Lost my head and admitted everything! Sorry, Jackie. I’ve let you down.’” Does this sound like someone playing a part?
In the OP, you raise three possibilities for Simon’s responses in the signing-documents scene: Simon is dumb, or Simon is playing dumb, or Simon has a mild but reasonable personality quirk and Pennington and Linnet are over-reacting.
Starting with the last option first: how are the other characters over-reacting? Both Pennington and Simon express annoyance at how long Linnet is taking. When she tells them that her father taught her to always read every legal document (and not, by the way, because she shouldn’t trust people, but because there may be a “clerical mistake”), Simon says he’s never read a legal document, just signs where he’s told. She replies “that’s rather slipshod” –which is not over-reacting in my book, that’s being right. (On the other hand, how many of us really read through all the legal jargon on a website before clicking on the “I have read and understand the terms and conditions” button? Slipshod, perhaps, but not at all uncommon.) Pennington, who *is *a never-trusts-because-he’s-not-trusty-himself type, wants to confirm this is really Simon’s attitude for nefarious reasons of his own. So no overreaction here either. Nor do I think Simon is he overstressing his attitude; he’s just replying to their comments, like people do in conversation.
As for Dumb vs Playing Dumb, per Occam’s razor, the simplest explanation is the most likely explanation, and that would be yes, he really is that dumb. Otherwise, he would have to be have been capable of convincing not just Pennington and Linnet, not just Jackie and Poirot, but everybody he meets, over a period of months, that’s he’s this got-no-head-for-business, doesn’t-care-about-money, so-in-love-it’s-not-funny man-child – AND keep up the pretense even after the need for it has passed – even though everything we know about him indicates he’s simply not up to maintaining the pretense for very long. The money scam? He’s caught right away. The J clue? – That’s seen through immediately. Louise and Rosalie? He has to be clever just long enough to let Jackie know – she’s the one who figures what to do about them, and actually acts.
Everything we’re told and see about Simon’s character is consistent with a man who hasn’t grown up – he’s impulsive, wants instant gratification, doesn’t think about the consequences, and thinks everything will work out for the best. *Exactly *the type of man who would sign a legal document without bothering to read it.
I’m not saying it shows he’s subtle or imaginative; I’m saying he leads her to believe he’ll pay her off — yes, right in front of a detective who doesn’t realize that’s what’s happening, but put that detail aside for a moment — and he doesn’t actually mean it, he’s not going to arrange that blackmail payment; he comes up with a reply that’ll keep her quiet, and she trusts him enough to metaphorically sign on the dotted line, which was dumb of her and it of course ends badly for her.
Again, yeah, okay, impulsive-but-not-cunning — but which impulse? If this were a story where he could impulsively run away right then, or something, then, sure, I’d see the relevance of what you’re saying here. But what I’m saying is, the impulse in question is, what? To keep someone from revealing the truth while innocuously pretending that he’s doing nothing of the sort? Never mind whether that’s cunning; it’s misleading. Being misleading is his impulsive go-to move.
Again, I feel like we’re just going in circles, here: to my mind, the question (a) isn’t whether he’s any good at it, and (b) isn’t answered by saying he acts on instinct; the question, in that case, is which instinct is it, and the answer in both of the items in your quote there — and when he hears what Louise has to say, and when he hears what Rosalie has to say — is to try his level best to be misleading.
Hold on a second; I’m not following, and I want to make sure I’m getting this right. Isn’t the whole point that he is capably faking the doesn’t-care-about-money bit? Isn’t it that Jackie doesn’t actually care about getting all that money, but Doyle does, and so he marries Linnet without actually falling for her, and decides to murder her while acting like he’s in love with her, and nobody suspects that he is, in fact, simply after her money and willing to kill for it and shouldn’t be trusted?
Did I figure it out? God, no. Usually with Christie my go-to theory is that the guilty party is the one who absolutely could not have done it, and use that as a starting point when evaluating the clues and hints. It sometimes works {but usually doesn’t). But with Death on the Nile, I had NO clue. It’s one of my favorite books of hers, for that reason.
I’m not saying Simon’s incapable of misleading people, I’m saying he’s incapable of doing it well. You seem to be saying that’s beside the point, when I think it’s the crux of the matter. Even if his natural inclination is to lie, to mislead, his *tendency *is to get caught, and quickly too. He needs Jackie’s brains to mislead people effectively. I think the book establishes, fairly well, that without her, people would see right through him and any plot he would contrive on his own.
And if the main point of the scene is show Simon being duplicitous, it’s redundant. There are other incidents in the book, after all, where Simon and Jackie are unequivocally acting out their parts of the loving husband and the jilted lover. Christie has Poirot mention some; she also has him mention times when Simon’s façade slipped, and the reality showed through. Poirot doesn’t mention the document-signing scene in either context. The only time he alludes to it is when he’s confronting Pennington, and it presupposes that both Pennington and Poirot (*neither *of whom are inclined to trust anybody) are convinced that Simon is being sincere. If the intent is to provide an example of Simon being misleading, why doesn’t Poirot say so? And does it seem likely that Christie would have Poirot, with his little grey cells, so egregiously misunderstand a character’s true nature?
The point I was trying to make with the Occam’s Razor reference was this: Either Simon is really the type of person to not read legal documents, or he is lying. He lies because either because it’s his instinct to mislead or because he’s trying to convince people that he’s something he’s not – the poor-but-honest country squire, the simple and trusting soul. If he’s lying – if he’s not what he seems – that would mean successfully fooling both Jackie and Poirot, starting from before the murder could possibly have been conceived and continuing, for no purpose, after the mystery is solved. Did he never love Jackie either? Why would he pretend to Jackie, before he ever met Linnet, that he was childishly simple? She knows he’s willing to commit murder, and she still loves him enough to help him – surely he doesn’t have to keep up the innocent babe act with her? And if Jackie does know he’s not really like that, then why lie to Poirot when she has no reason to? Why would Christie allow Poirot – whose *whole *shtick is to uncover the truth, the full truth, and nothing but the truth - to be taken in, even up to the last page? Isn’t the simpler explanation that Jackie and Poirot are right in their assessment of Simon’s character?
And with that, I don’t know what else I can say, except I’m beginning to feel we’re going around in circles, too. On the one hand, you seem to favor the “Simon isn’t playing dumb” theory, on the other, you can’t make out what Christie was going for, what the point of the scene is. Well, if Simon’s not playing dumb, then why can’t *illustrating *that fact be the point? What exactly is it about the scene that you find so jarring?
For myself, I think the point of the scene is to set up Pennington’s motive for killing Linnet. It’s Pennington who’s trying to misled here. I think Simon is being sincere for once – he truly is the kind of guy who would just sign on the dotted line, the same as thousands of other people. Nor do I think that Simon is trying to stress the point over much; the conversation goes on just as long as Christie needs it to, in order to clearly establish 1) Linnet is a great woman of business and 2) Simon is a bad businessman who has no idea of this how dangerous this practice is. This is consistent with Poirot’s understanding of Simon’s psychology (and I’m not going to be the one to tell *Poirot *he got it wrong!)
I would like to hear from you on what you think Christie was going for with this scene, and why you’re having trouble with it, but when it comes to Simon I think we’ll have to agree to disagree.
I guess I’d say you’re compounding stuff together, there.
You frame his act, in that case, as “trying to convince people that he’s something he’s not – the poor-but-honest country squire, the simple and trusting soul”. But halve that, with emphasis: say that, before meeting Linnet or even Jackie, he’s a poor (but not honest) country squire, and a simple (but not trusting) soul; and say, too, that he’ll act like he’s poor-but-honest as well as simple-and-trusting.
Say that’s his general strategy for getting through life: it explains how he gets that city job (by acting like he’s honest and trusting) long enough to try something illicit with the money (because he’s not honest and trusting), and it explains why he got caught (because he’s not playing dumb; he really isn’t all that clever). It’d also be the act he keeps up around Linnet: present himself as honest and trusting and not especially bright — even though he’s not, y’know, honest and trusting.
Say he fakes, like, two-thirds of it.
Say that’s what Jackie has known for quite some time, and been okay with, and lays out for Poirot at the end: that Doyle isn’t faking the ‘not too bright’ part, but does fake the honest-and-trusting part. That, as you say, he doesn’t keep up the act with her; she gets that he acts honest-and-trusting-and-kinda-dumb, and that he’s neither honest nor trusting but, yeah, kinda dumb, that’s true.
Let me put it another way. You asked about my first read of the book, when I got it wrong; the story seemed to be this: Doyle, who is honest and trusting and not too bright, is, like, pathologically empty-headed. So he’s dating Jackie, and Linnet tells him to break it off and get with her, and he shrugs and says, “durr, okay.” And then, once Linnet is out of the picture, Jackie tells him to get back with her; even though Jackie fired a bullet into him, he shrugs and says, “durr, okay.”
In that context, Louise makes mouth-noises at him, and he reacts with an obliging shrug and a sincere “durr, okay.” Rosalie starts making mouth-noises at him; if she asked for something, he’d reply with an obliging shrug and a sincere “durr, okay.” Until she does, though, he’ll enthusiastically parrot her words back until she finally gets to a part where he can shrug up a sincere “durr, okay.”
If you’d popped in, right then, to spoil the ending by saying he was in on some plan with Jackie to kill Linnet, I would’ve (a) been surprised, and then (b) countenanced the possibility that Jackie got Doyle alone for five minutes and told him to kill Linnet, at which point he obligingly shrugged and said “durr, okay.”
(Sign some legal papers on the dotted line? Obliging shrug; “durr, okay.”)
But that ending! It wasn’t Jackie’s idea to kill Linnet, sparking a “durr, okay”; it was his idea! He hadn’t fallen under Linnet’s sway with a “durr, okay”; Linnet fell for him, and he decided on his own to feign romantic interest in her (and then decided, on his own, to murder her). And then his “durr, okay” was an insincere act for Louise, while looking innocuous to Poirot and Race; and then he repeated his ‘innocuous’ act for Rosalie and the rest, while thinking, once again, time for me to act like I’m a guy who’d obligingly shrug and reply with a sincere “durr, okay”…
…but he’s not. Every time I thought he was doing that, he wasn’t…
…except, maybe, for the dotted-line bit. On my first read of it, that was just one more “durr, okay” from a guy who always says “durr, okay.” In that context, it fits: every other instance looks slightly more plausible, because he’s once again been consistent; and this instance doesn’t stand out as jarring, because that’s how he constantly presents himself. But on a re-read?
On a re-read, knowing that the other “durr, okay” interactions were an act he puts on when he doesn’t really mean it, suddenly I look at this one and think, hey, wait a sec; is this also him faking the honest-and-trusting part? Or is this the only one I got right the first time, and he’s showcasing the ‘dumb’ part here?
Alright, I think I’m beginning to see at last where you’re coming from. You think Simon is, fundamentally, dishonest – is that right? Whereas I see him as basically childlike, with a child’s indifference about honesty. Jackie’s word, used multiple times, is innocent.
You see Simon as having a general strategy towards life – to wit, he deliberately acts like he’s honest and trusting in order to take advantage of people. But I don’t think Simon is trying to fool anyone, I think his open and trusting nature sets people up to fool themselves – in other words, they assume that someone who is trusting must also be trustworthy.
So Simon, in my view, didn’t get the job with the intention of stealing funds or cheating anyone, but when a chance arose to get-rich-quick he took it at once and without thinking because he’s a greedy, impulsive child. On his own, Simon would not have tried to seduce Linnet in order to kill her for her money. But once she started to pursue him, he saw an opportunity…(one which he required Jackie to effectively exploit)
Simon is dangerous because people see him as harmless; he attracts people and invites their trust because he really is a great big puppy. They don’t see that he will betray their trust without hesitation because the only thing he’s faithful to is his own immediate desires, any more would they expect a usually friendly dog to suddenly turn savage. Do they fail to see because he’s hiding it? It’s possible, I suppose, but I don’t think he’s that clever.
Bottom line, I think your initial interpretation of the Signing Scene is correct. I think when Simon says he can’t be bothered to read legal documents, that’s completely in accord with his temperament. I believe he’s being honest when he says he has no head for business; I’m pretty sure he knows he needs Jackie to do all of the planning for him.
I also think you and I have may have spent more time thinking about this scene than ever Christie did.
