And Then There Were None

The remaining three eat breakfast together in the kitchen. Even though they know they are still in danger, they feel as if they are waking from a nightmare now that the storm has passed, and the sun is shining. Lombard believes Dr. Armstrong is dead based on the evidence that there are only three figurines left. Blore accuses Lombard of being the killer as he suspects that Lombard had the revolver in his possession the entire time. Lombard balks at the accusation. Vera says they are both ignoring the clue that is right in front of them: the nursery rhyme. She recites, “Four little soldier boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were Three” (205). Vera believes that Dr. Armstrong is the red herring and that he is not dead but hiding somewhere on the island.

After conducting another unsuccessful search, they stay outside to avoid the danger lurking inside the house. Blore decides that he will return to the house for lunch, but Vera refuses to go back inside. Blore is nervous to go alone but refuses to accept Lombard’s offer to go with him. He hopes that Lombard will lend him his revolver, but Lombard refuses. Blore makes his way back to the house, leaving Vera and Lombard alone.

Lombard tells Vera that he thinks Blore is the murderer. She wonders out loud if the killer is something supernatural. Lombard suggests that is her conscience talking. When Lombard asks if she truly killed the child, she denies it but then confesses that it is true.

They suddenly hear a crash from the house and go investigate. They find Blore dead on the terrace, his head crushed by the clock shaped like a bear that was on Vera’s mantlepiece. Lombard has no choice but to accept that Vera must be right about Dr. Armstrong. Vera urges Lombard not to investigate because Dr. Armstrong is probably inside waiting for them.

They decide that they must find a place up by the cliffs to wait for morning to come. They walk until they see what looks like a bundle of clothes washed up on the shore. They scramble to get a closer look and discover that it is not clothes, but Dr. Armstrong. His body is wedged between two rocks, his face purple. He has clearly drowned.

Lombard and Vera slowly look up at one another. Vera wonders how she never noticed Lombard’s wolf-like features. Lombard snarls at her in a menacing voice that the truth has been revealed and this is now the end. He calls Vera’s sorrow for Dr. Armstrong “womanly pity” and tells her he has no pity for her at all (217). She suggests they move his body. Lombard laughs at her with contempt but agrees.

After they move Dr. Armstrong further up the shore, Lombard discovers his revolver is gone. Vera used the action of moving Dr. Armstrong’s body as a diversion to pick Lombard’s pocket. Lombard is confident that death will not come for him because he has narrowly escaped death many times before this. He quickly lunges at Vera to take back the gun and she shoots him through the heart. Lombard dies, and Vera is the only one left.

Vera remains on the shore until the sun sets, the shock rendering her immobile. She realizes how hungry and exhausted she is and walks back into the house, no longer afraid. Instead, she is overcome with relief and peace. She pauses at the dining room table where there are still three soldier boy figurines. Laughing, she throws two of them out the window but keeps one clutched in her hand in triumph. As she walks up the stairs to her room, she tries to remember the final line of the nursery rhyme, which she thinks is “He got married and then there were none” (222).

The house suddenly doesn’t feel empty, and Vera becomes convinced that Hugo is upstairs waiting for her. She opens the door and is shocked to find a noose hanging from the hook on her ceiling with a chair to stand upon. She suddenly remembers the last line of the nursery rhyme: “He went and hanged himself and then there were none….” (222). Knowing this is what Hugo wanted, she steps onto the chair and puts the noose around her neck and kicks away the chair.

Sir Thomas Legge, Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard, and Inspector Maine attempt to figure out how the 10 murders on Soldier Island might have occurred. The doctor’s report was not helpful, and none of the Sticklehaven residents know anything that could help them crack the case. All the two policemen know is that a man named Isaac Morris, who is now dead, bought Soldier Island for an unknown third party. Morris is also hired Lombard and Blore. They know that Morris told the people of Sticklehaven that there was to be an experiment on Soldier Island and to ignore any distress signals they may see. Fred Narracott eventually decided to override Morris’s orders and take a boat to the island.

Inspector Maine says he investigated the accusations made on the gramophone they found inside the house. After explaining the circumstances behind each alleged crime, Sir Thomas Legge concludes that this mysterious Mr. Owen dealt exclusively with crimes the law could not touch. Maine’s theory is that Mr. Owen was motivated by a warped sense of justice. What neither Maine nor Legge can understand is how Owen carried out the murders. They try to piece together what may have happened using Vera, Emily Brent, and Blore’s diary entries, as well as Justice Wargrave’s notes that were left behind. After running through the possible scenarios, they are unable to come to any conclusions. What is most perplexing is that the chair Vera stood upon to hang herself was pushed neatly back against the wall, meaning someone was there following Vera’s death.

Inspector Maine and Sir Thomas Legge conclude that there must have been someone else on the island besides the 10 murdered guests, but the Sticklehaven residents are positive that no one left the island before the rescue boats got there. It seems like the case of Soldier Island may remain a mystery.

The final chapter of the novel is a manuscript found by a fisherman and sent to the police. The manuscript is a confession written by Justice Wargrave, otherwise known as the mysterious Mr. Owen, the man responsible for the 10 murders on Soldier Island.

Justice Wargrave starts by acknowledging that even as a child, he was full of contradictions. He has always had a romantic imagination, which is why he decided to write his confession as a message in a bottle, thrilled with the knowledge that someone may one day find it. He confesses that as a child, he always took a sadistic delight in seeing or causing death, but at the same time, he has always been deeply committed to justice. He is strongly against innocent people suffering, especially if it is at his own hand. Because of his commitment to justice, he joined the legal profession. He always took great pleasure in watching the guilty criminals squirm while taking the stand.

Eventually, he writes, he realized that condemning criminals to death was not enough: He longed to commit a murder himself. He saw murder as an art, and he wanted to do something fantastical and theatrical. Still, he was adamant that no innocent people should suffer. He was inspired during a conversation with a doctor who mentioned the number of murders that fly under the radar because they are not punishable by law. The doctor told him about an elderly woman who was one of his patients. He was certain that the married couple who were the woman’s servants purposely neglected to give her her medication. Justice Wargrave writes that he then started to collect his victims by selecting people who committed murder untouchable by the law. He found his final guest who would be invited to the island one night when he met a handsome young man named Hugo Hamilton. Hugo was unhappy and inebriated, so he shared with Justice Wargrave that he once loved a woman who turned out to be a murderer. He confessed that he still might love her. Justice Wargrave writes that it was not hard to then track down the woman by the name of Vera.

His final victim was a man named Morris, a drug dealer responsible for selling drugs to the daughter of a friend of his, who later died by suicide. After Morris made the arrangements for him for Soldier Island, Justice Wargrave gave him what he claimed was medicine for his indigestion, but it was really poison.

Justice Wargrave explains how he decided the order of his murders. He chose to kill those who bore the least responsibility for their crimes. Anthony Marston, Justice Wargrave decided, was a man born with no sense of moral responsibility, and Mrs. Rogers was likely coerced by her husband. The person who bore the most egregious responsibility for her crime, Vera, would be last.

It was part of his plan all along that he should have an ally. He easily convinced Dr. Armstrong that they could catch the killer if he faked his own death and then would be free to roam the house looking for the killer. Dr. Armstrong would then be the only one to closely examine his body and declare his death. After they faked his death, he planned to meet with Dr. Armstrong in the middle of the night where Justice Wargrave pushed him off a cliff to his death.

After Blore and Lombard’s death, Justice Wargrave writes, would be a psychological experiment. He suspected that Vera, weighed down by her own consciousness and swayed by the sight of the noose, would take her own life. He was correct.

Justice Wargrave writes that like all artists, he wants recognition for his work but assumes the case will go unresolved. There are three clues, however, that may lead the police to figure out that he is responsible: First, he was the only guest who was truly not guilty of a crime because Edward Seton was indeed guilty; second, the nursery rhyme hints at the red herring; and third, the bullet hole in his head is symbolic of Cain, the first murderer in the book of Genesis.

After enclosing the message in the bottle, Justice Wargrave writes, he will lay himself back in his bed and shoot himself in the head by rigging up the revolver to an elastic band.