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.