And Then There Were None Week15

This is the last contribution in this semester. Who was the person who really committed the crime? If you want to know it, please read the following.

A letter sent to Scotland Yard by a man who found it at the seashore. It was written by Lawrence Wargrave. He wrote his confession, enclosing it in a bottle, sealing the latter, and casting it into the waves. There was a hundred to one chance that his confession might have been found. It was his ambition to invent a murder mystery that on one could solve. However, he wanted someone to know just how clever he had been. He had a strong sense of justice. Crime and its punishment had always fascinated him. He had a reputation as a hanging judge. For some years past he had been aware of a change within himself, a desire to act instead of to judge. He wanted to commit a murder himself. He decided to kill people who committed murders which were unable to touch by the law. He knew that there were many murders which were quite untouchable by the law. That was the beginning of the whole thing. He determined to commit not one murder, but murder on a grand scale. A childish rhyme of his infancy came back into his mind, the rhyme of the ten little soldier boys.

He watched the faces of his guests closely during the gramophone recital, and he had no doubt whatever after his long court experience that one and all were guilty. Anthony Marston and Mrs. Rogers died first, the one instantaneously the other in a peaceful sleep. General Macarthur met his death quite painlessly. Then he killed Rogers while he was chopping sticks for lightning the fire. Next he slipped his dose of chloral into Miss Brent’s coffee, a little while later he injected a strong solution of cyanide into her. At any rate once he was supposed to be dead he could move about the house. He took up his pose of a murdered man and Lawrence Wargrave was dead. Armstrong was pushed into the sea from the cliff. Blore was crushed by the big marble clock. Lombard was shot by Vera Claythorne. Vera hanged herself before his eyes where he stood in the shadow of the wardrobe. At last, he went to his room and laid himself down on the bed after entrusting his bottle and its message to the sea. He pressed the trigger and shoot through the forehead by himself.

And Then There Were None Week14

Sir Tomas Legge, Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard said that whole thing was incredible, ten people dead on an island and not a living soul on it, it didn’t make sense. Inspector Maine said that nevertheless it happened, somebody must have killed them.

Wargrave and Lombard were shot, the first through the head, the second through the heart. Miss Brent and Marston died of cyanide poisoning. Mrs. Rogers died of an overdose of chloral. Rogers’s head was split open. Blore’s head was crushed in. Armstrong died of drowning. Marcarthur’s skull was fractured by a blow on the back of the head and Vera Claythorne was hanged.

The AC said that the whole thing was fantastic impossible, ten people killed on a bare rock of an island and he didn’t know who did it, or why, or how. Maine said that he knew why, more or less. Some fanatic with a bee in U. N. Owen’s bonnet about justice, he was out to get people who were beyond the reach of law, it seemed to be the point which he dealt with cases that the law couldn’t touch, and he picked ten people whether they were really guilty or not didn’t matter. There were ten people to be executed. He accomplished his task and somehow or other he spirited himself off that island into thin air. However, the only explanation possible was that he was actually one of the ten.

And Then There Were None Week13

Two people, Vera Claythorne and Philip Lombard, were standing looking down on a dead man. There was no one on the island, no one at all except them. Vera said that they must carry him up to the house. Lombard helped her, and she leaned against him. She took the revolver from his pocket while they drew the body out of the sea. She had moved a yard or two away and was facing him, the revolver in her hand. Death was very near to him. Automatically she pressed the trigger of the revolver, and his leaping body stayed poised in the middle of the spring then crashed heavily to the ground. She came warily forward, the revolver ready in her hand, but there was no need of caution. He was dead, shot through the heart.

Enormous exquisite relief possessed her. At last it was over. There was no more fear, because she was alone on the island, alone with nine dead bodies. One little soldier boy left all alone. She went to the dining room and picked it up and held in her hand. Then, she went to her room, because she was so tired and wanted to sleep. She opened the door and she gave a gasp. A rope was hanging from the hook in the ceiling and a chair to stand upon, a chair that could be kicked away. Like an automaton she moved forward. She climbed up on the chair, her eyes staring in front of her like a sleepwalker. She adjusted the noose round her neck. She kicked away the chair. The little china figure fell from her hand.

And of course that was the last line of the rhyme.
“One little soldier boy left all alone;
He went and hanged himself and then there were None.”

And Then There Were None Week12

Three people sat eating breakfast in the kitchen. Outside, the sun shone. It was a lovely day. The storm was a thing of the past. And with the change in the weather, a change had come in the mood of the prisoners on the island. They felt like people just awaking from a nightmare. There was danger, yes, but it was danger in daylight. That paralyzing atmosphere of fear that had wrapped them round like a blanket yesterday while the wind howled outside was gone.

Vera Claythorne and Philip Lombard were sitting on the cliffs, and Blore went into the house to eat something for lunch. Then, two people heard a sort of cry from the house. They walked up the slope to the house. Blore was spread-eagled on the stone terrace on the east side, his head crushed and mangled by a great block of white marble.

Before Blore was killed, Vera and Lombard had thought that Armstrong might have been thrown into the sea. However, after the crime, they thought that he was in hiding somewhere in the house or the island. They decided to spend a whole night on the top cliffs where they could overlook the sea, and they moved. Then, they found something like clothes between big rocks. They scrambled over the rocks. Vera stopped suddenly and said it wasn’t clothes, it was a man. The man was wedged between two rocks, flung there by the tide earlier in the day. A purple discoloured face and a hideous drowned face…it was Armstrong.

And Then There Were None Week11

There were only four people. Who would be the next? They went up the stairs to sleep. Each one of the four stood with a hand on his or her bedroom door handle. Then, as though at a signal, each one stepped into the room and pulled the door shut. There were sounds of bolts and locks, of the moving of furniture. Four frighten people were barricaded in until morning.

Philip Lombard entered in his room, and then, he opened the drawer of the table. He stood there, staring at the revolver which was used to kill Mr. Justice Wargrave.

In the midnight, Armstrong was disappeared. Three people thought that he vanished clean off the island, and they found that there were only three little soldier boys on the table.

And Then There Were None Week10

One of us…One of us…One of us…Three words, endlessly repeated, dinning themselves hour after hour into receptive brains. There were five frightened people who watched each other, who hardly troubled to hide their state of nervous tension. They were five enemies linked together by a mutual instinct of self-preservation. And all of them, suddenly, looked less like human beings. The rain was pouring down again and the wind came in fitful gusts. The depressing sound of the pattering rain nearly drove them mad.

Mr. Justice Wargrave was sitting in his high backed chair at the end of the room. Two candles burnt on either side of him. But what shocked and startled the onlookers was the fact that he sat there robed in scarlet with a judge’s wig upon his head. He was shot.

Five little soldier boys going in for low; one got in Chancery and then there were Four.

And Then There Were None Week9

Five people found Rogers in the little wash house across the yard. He had been chopping sticks in preparation for lighting the kitchen fire. The small chopper was still in his hand. A bigger chopper, a heavy affair, was leaning against the door, and the metal of it stained a dull brown. The murderer must have crept up behind him, swung the chopper once and brought it down on his head as he was bending over.

The idiotic rhyme said that “seven little soldier boys chopping up sticks.”
And the next verse was “six little soldier boys playing with a hive.”

After breakfast, Mr. Justice Wargrave suggested that they met to discuss the situation, and every one made a sound suggestive of agreement. They decided to gather in half an hour’s time in the drawing room.

Emily Brent was left alone sitting in the dining room. There was no one else in the house. There was a buzzing in her ears, or was it a real buzzing in the room? It was like a bee, a bumble bee. Presently she saw the bee. It was crawling up the window pane. Vera Claythorne had talked about bees this morning. And then she felt the pain. The bee sting on the side of her neck…

In the drawing room they were waiting for Emily Brent. Then, they went to dining room and found her sitting in the chair in which they had left her. From behind they saw nothing amiss, except that she did not seem to hear their entrance into the room. And then they saw her face, suffused with blood, with blue lips and starting eyes. She was dead.