And Then There Were None
And
Then There Were None is a mystery
novel by English writer Agatha
Christie, described by her as the most
difficult of her books to write.[2] It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club
on 6 November 1939, as Ten Little Niggers,[3] after the minstrel song,
which serves as a major plot point.[4][5]
The
US edition was released in January 1940 with the title And Then There Were
None, which is taken from the last five words of the song.[6] All successive American reprints and adaptations use that
title, except for the Pocket Books paperbacks published between 1964 and 1986,
which appeared under the title Ten Little Indians.
The
book is the world's best-selling mystery, and with over 100 million copies sold
is one of the best-selling books of all time. Publications International lists the novel as
the sixth best-selling title.[7]
Plot summary
On
8 August in the late 1930s, eight people arrive on a small, isolated island off
the Devon coast of England. Each has an invitation tailored to his or her personal
circumstances, such as an offer of employment or an unexpected late summer
holiday. They are met by Thomas and Ethel Rogers, the butler and
cook-housekeeper, who state that their hosts, Mr. Ulick Norman Owen and his
wife Mrs. Una Nancy Owen, whom they have not yet met in person, have not
arrived, but left instructions, which strikes all the guests as odd.
A
framed copy of a nursery rhyme, "Ten Little Niggers"[8] (called "Ten Little Indians" or "Ten Little
Soldiers" in later editions), hangs in every guest's room, and ten
figurines sit on the dining room table. After supper, a gramophone
(or "phonograph") record
is played; the recording accuses each visitor of having committed murder, and then asks if any of "the accused" wishes to
offer a defence. Anthony Marston and Philip Lombard admit to the charges
leveled against them, both instances of irresponsible endangerment resulting in
death rather than murder as normally defined.
They
discover that none of them actually knows the Owens, and Justice Wargrave
concludes that the name "U N Owen" is a play on "Unknown".
Marston finishes his drink and immediately dies from cyanide
poisoning. Dr. Armstrong confirms that there
is no cyanide in the drinks Marston was served from, indicating he committed
suicide.
The
next morning, Mrs. Rogers' corpse is found in her bed; she died in her sleep.
The cause is unknown, but some of the guests suspect her husband of poisoning
her for fear that she would confess to the crime they are charged with in the
recording. By lunchtime, General MacArthur is found dead, from a heavy blow to
his head. Three of the figurines are found to be broken, and again the deaths
parallel the rhyme.
The
guests begin to suspect that U N Owen is systematically murdering them. A
search for Owen turns up no results. The island is a "bare rock" with
no hiding places, and no one could have arrived or left; thus, they conclude
that one of the seven remaining persons is the killer. Wargrave leads the group
in determining that so far, none of them can definitively be ruled out as the
murderer. The next morning, Rogers is found dead while chopping wood. After
breakfast, Emily Brent is found dead in the kitchen, where she had been left
alone after complaining of feeling unwell; she had been injected with potassium
cyanide via a hypodermic needle.
Wargrave
suggests searching all the rooms, and any potentially dangerous items are
locked up. Lombard's gun is missing from his room. When Vera goes upstairs to
take a bath, she is shocked by the touch and smell of seaweed left hanging from
the ceiling of her room and screams; the remaining guests rush upstairs to her
room. Wargrave, however, is still downstairs. The others find him seated,
immobile and crudely dressed up in the attire of a judge. Wargrave is examined
by Armstrong and pronounced dead from a gunshot to the forehead.
That
night, Lombard finds his gun returned to his room. Henry Blore catches a
glimpse of someone leaving the house but loses the trail. Only Armstrong is
absent from his room. Vera, Blore, and Lombard decide to stay together at all
times. In the morning, they signal SOS to the mainland from outside by using a mirror
and sunlight, but receive no reply. Blore
returns to the house for food by himself and is killed by a heavy bear-shaped
clock statue that is pushed from Vera's window sill, crushing his skull. Since
neither of them were near the house when the death occurred, Vera and Lombard
conclude that Armstrong is the killer.
Vera
and Lombard come upon Armstrong's body washed up on the beach. Each concludes
the other must be the killer. Vera suggests moving the doctor's body past the
shore as a gesture of respect for the dead, but this is a pretext. While they
move the body, she lifts Lombard's gun. When Lombard lunges at her to get it
back, she shoots him dead.
She
returns to the house in a shaken dreamlike state, relieved to be alive. She
finds a noose and chair arranged in her room, and a strong smell of the sea.
Pressed by guilt over the crime she is accused of - causing the drowning of a
boy in her charge because he held priority over her lover for his inheritance -
she hangs herself in accordance with the last verse of the rhyme.
Scotland
Yard officials are puzzled at who could
have killed the ten. They reconstruct the deaths from Marston to Wargrave with
the help of the victims' diaries and a coroner's report, and systematically determine that none of the
last four victims (Armstrong, Blore, Lombard, or Claythorne) can be the killer,
since there was some form of cleanup following all their deaths except Blore's
(for example, the chair on which Vera stood to hang herself had been set back
upright), and a suicide by falling clock seems beyond the realm of probability.
Isaac Morris, a sleazy lawyer and drug trafficker, purchased the island,
arranged the invitations, ordered the production of the gramophone record, and
told the inhabitants of nearby Sticklehaven to ignore any signals for help,
citing a bet about living on a "desert island" for a week. However,
Morris died of an overdose of barbiturates on the night of 8 August.
A
fishing ship picks up a bottle inside its trawling nets; the bottle contains a written confession of the killings, which is then sent to Scotland Yard. In
the confession, Justice Wargrave writes that all his life he has had two
contradictory impulses: a savage bloodlust and a strong sense of justice. For
most of his life, he satisfied both desires through his profession as judge.
However, the desire to commit murder with his own hands and his diagnosis with
a terminal illness
motivated him to orchestrate a mass murder of people who were themselves
murderers by his judgment but could not be prosecuted under the law. Before
departing for the island, he gave Morris barbiturates to take for his
indigestion. He tricked Armstrong into helping him fake his own death under the
pretext that it would help the group identify the killer. He used the gun and
some elastic to ensure his true death matched the account in the guests'
diaries. Although he wished to create an unsolvable mystery, he acknowledges in
the missive a "pitiful human need" for recognition, hence the
confession.
Characters
The
following details of the characters are based on the original novel published
in England.
- Anthony James Marston, a handsome but amoral and irresponsible young man, who killed two young children (John and Lucy Combes) while driving recklessly, for which he feels no remorse and accepts no personal responsibility, complaining only that his driving licence had been suspended as a result. He is the first island victim, having his drink poisoned and suffocating. ("One choked his little self...")
- Mrs Ethel Rogers, the cook/housekeeper and Thomas Rogers' wife, described as a pale and ghost-like woman who walks in mortal fear. She is dominated by her bullying husband, who coerces her into withholding the medicine of a former employer (Miss Jennifer Brady, an elderly spinster) in order that they might collect an inheritance they knew she had left them in her will. Mrs Rogers was haunted by the crime for the rest of her life, and is the second victim, dying in her sleep. ("One overslept himself...")
- General John Gordon MacArthur, a retired World War I war hero, who sent his late wife's lover (a younger officer, Arthur Richmond) to his death by assigning him to a mission where it was practically guaranteed he would not survive. Leslie MacArthur had mistakenly put the wrong letters in the envelopes on one occasion when she wrote to both men at the same time. The general tells Vera that no one will leave the island alive. ("One said he'd stay there...")
- Thomas Rogers, the butler and Ethel Rogers' husband. He dominates his weak-willed wife, and they killed their former employer by withholding her medicine, causing the woman to die from heart failure, thus inheriting the money she bequeathed them in her will. Despite his wife's death, Rogers continues serving the others, and is killed with an axe while chopping wood. ("One chopped himself in half...")
- Emily Caroline Brent, an elderly, pious spinster who accepts the vacation on Soldier Island largely due to financial constraints. Years earlier, she had dismissed her teenage maid, Beatrice Taylor, for becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Beatrice, who had already been rejected by her parents for the same reason, drowned herself, which Miss Brent considered an even worse sin. The murderer puts a bee into the room, in addition to murder by poison. ("A bumblebee stung one...")
- Dr Edward George Armstrong, a Harley Street doctor, responsible for the death of a patient, Louisa Mary Clees, after he operated on her while drunk many years earlier. He is tricked by Wargrave into meeting him on a clifftop above the sea and pushed over, where he drowns. ("A red herring swallowed one...")
- William Henry Blore, a former police inspector and now a private investigator, was accused of falsifying his testimony in court for a bribe from a dangerous criminal gang, which resulted in an innocent man, James Landor, being convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Landor, who had a wife and young child, died shortly afterwards in prison. Blore arrives under the alias "Davis" from South Africa, on the island for "security work." His true name is revealed on the gramophone recording. He denies the accusation against him from the gramophone recording, but later admits the truth to Lombard. He is crushed to death by a brass bear clock. ("A big bear hugged one...")
- Philip Lombard, a soldier of fortune. He is literally down to his last square meal when he meets Isaac Morris, who makes the proposition which brings Lombard to the island. He carries a loaded revolver, as Morris had hinted he might wish to do. Lombard is accused of causing the deaths of a number of East African tribesmen, after stealing their food and abandoning them to their deaths. Neither he nor Marston feels any remorse. He is the only one to theorize that Wargrave might be “U N Owen”, but the others dismiss the idea. He and Vera are the only victims not killed by Justice Wargrave, as Vera shoots him on the beach. ("One got all frizzled up...")
- Vera Elizabeth Claythorne, a cool, efficient, resourceful young woman who is on leave from her position as a sports mistress at a third-rate girls' school. She was once a governess employed by the wealthy Hamilton family, but was quietly fired after her young charge, Cyril, drowned on her watch. It is later revealed that she let the boy drown so his uncle Hugo could inherit the family estate and marry her. Hugo rejected her when he realized what she had done. In a post-traumatic state after shooting Lombard, finding a waiting noose in her room, she hangs herself. ("One went and hanged himself...")
- Justice Lawrence John Wargrave, a retired judge, known as a "hanging judge" for liberally awarding the death penalty in murder cases. Wargrave is accused of influencing the jury to hand a guilty verdict to Edward Seton, a man many thought was innocent of his crime of killing an old woman, and sentencing him to death unfairly. As the two policemen discuss at Scotland Yard, new evidence after Seton's execution proved Seton's guilt. Wargrave admits in his postscript that he has always harbored homicidal urges, but his sense of justice prevented him from acting on them; he thus sentences guilty defendants to death as a means of satisfying these contradictory impulses. When he is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he devises and carries out a plot to kill a group of people he believes deserve it. His false death is sixth, corresponding to the line "One got in Chancery..."
- Isaac Morris is a sleazy, unethical lawyer and erstwhile drug trafficker hired by Wargrave to purchase the island (under the name “UN Owen”), arrange the gramophone recording, and make arrangements on his behalf, including gathering information on the near destitute Philip Lombard, to whom he gave some money to get by and recommended Lombard bring his gun to the island. Morris' is the first death chronologically, as he dies before the guests arrive on the island. Years earlier, Morris had sold narcotics to the daughter of one of Wargrave’s friends; she became an addict, and later committed suicide. A hypochondriac, Morris accepts a lethal cocktail of pills from Wargrave to help treat his largely imagined physical ailments.
- Fred Narracott, the boatman who delivers the guests to the island. After doing so, he does not appear again in the story, although Inspector Maine notes it was Narracott who, sensing something seriously amiss, returned to the island as soon as the weather allowed, before he was scheduled to do so, and found the bodies. Maine speculates that it was the normalcy and ordinariness of the guests that convinced Narracott to do so and ignore his orders to dismiss any signals requesting help.
- Sir Thomas Legge and Inspector Maine, two Scotland Yard detectives who discuss the case in the epilogue. They reason out the events of the case, but are stymied as to who was the murderer until the confession comes to light.
Literary significance and reception
Writing
for The Times Literary
Supplement of 11 November 1939, Maurice Percy
Ashley stated, "If her latest story has scarcely any detection in it there
is no scarcity of murders... There is a certain feeling of monotony inescapable
in the regularity of the deaths which is better suited to a serialized
newspaper story than a full-length novel. Yet there is an ingenious problem to
solve in naming the murderer", he continued. "It will be an extremely
astute reader who guesses correctly."[9]
For
The New York Times
Book Review (25 February 1940), Isaac Anderson
has arrived to the point where "the voice" accuses the ten
"guests" of their past crimes, which have all resulted in the deaths
of humans, and then said, "When you read what happens after that you will
not believe it, but you will keep on reading, and as one incredible event is
followed by another even more incredible you will still keep on reading. The
whole thing is utterly impossible and utterly fascinating. It is the most
baffling mystery that Agatha Christie has ever written, and if any other writer
has ever surpassed it for sheer puzzlement the name escapes our memory. We are
referring, of course, to mysteries that have logical explanations, as this one
has. It is a tall story, to be sure, but it could have happened."[10]
Many
compared the book to her novel The Murder of Roger
Ackroyd (1926). For instance, an unnamed
reviewer in the Toronto Daily Star of 16 March 1940 said, "Others have written better
mysteries than Agatha Christie, but no one can touch her for ingenious plot and
surprise ending. With And Then There Were None... she is at her most
ingenious and most surprising... is, indeed, considerably above the standard of
her last few works and close to the Roger Ackroyd level."[11]
Other
critics laud the use of plot twists and surprise
endings. Maurice Richardson wrote a
rhapsodic review in The Observer's
issue of 5 November 1939 which began, "No wonder Agatha Christie's latest
has sent her publishers into a vatic trance. We will refrain, however, from any invidious
comparisons with Roger Ackroyd and be content with saying that Ten
Little Niggers is one of the very best, most genuinely bewildering
Christies yet written. We will also have to refrain from reviewing it
thoroughly, as it is so full of shocks that even the mildest revelation would
spoil some surprise from somebody, and I am sure that you would rather have
your entertainment kept fresh than criticism pure." After stating the
set-up of the plot, Richardson concluded, "Story telling and
characterisation are right at the top of Mrs Christie's baleful form. Her plot
may be highly artificial, but it is neat, brilliantly cunning, soundly
constructed, and free from any of those red-herring false trails which
sometimes disfigure her work."[3]
Robert
Barnard, a recent critic, concurred with
the reviews, describing the book as "Suspenseful and menacing detective-story-cum-thriller.
The closed setting with the succession of deaths is here taken to its logical
conclusion, and the dangers of ludicrousness and sheer reader-disbelief are
skillfully avoided. Probably the best-known Christie, and justifiably among the
most popular."[12]
The
original title of the mystery (Ten Little Niggers) was changed because
it was offensive in the United States and some other places. Alison Light, a
literary critic and feminist scholar, opined that Christie's original title and
the setting on "Nigger Island" (later changed to "Indian
Island" and "Soldier Island", variously) were integral to the
work. These aspects of the novel, she argued, "could be relied upon
automatically to conjure up a thrilling 'otherness', a place where revelations
about the 'dark side' of the English would be appropriate."[13] Unlike novels such as Heart
of Darkness, "Christie's location is both
more domesticated and privatized, taking for granted the construction of racial
fears woven into psychic life as early as the nursery. If her story suggests
how easy it is to play upon such fears, it is also a reminder of how intimately
tied they are to sources of pleasure and enjoyment."[13]
In
the "Binge!" article of Entertainment Weekly Issue #1343-44 (26 December 2014–3 January 2015), the
writers picked And Then There Were None as an "EW favorite" on
the list of the "Nine Great Christie Novels".[14]
Publication history
This
novel has a long and noteworthy history of publication. It is a continuously
best selling novel in English and in translation to other languages since its
initial publication. From the start, in English, it was published under two
different titles, due to different sensitivity to the author's title and
counting-rhyme theme in the UK and in the US at first publication.
The title
The
novel was originally published in late 1939 and early 1940 almost
simultaneously, in the United Kingdom and the United States. In the UK it
appeared under the title Ten Little Niggers, in book and newspaper
serialized formats. The serialization was in 23 parts in the Daily
Express from Tuesday 6 June to Saturday 1
July 1939. All of the instalments carried an illustration by
"Prescott" with the first having an illustration of Burgh
Island in Devon which inspired the setting
of the story. The serialized version did not contain any chapter divisions.[20] The book retailed for seven shillings and six pence.
In
the United States it was published under the title And Then There Were None,
in both book and serial formats. Both of the original US publications changed
the title from that originally used in the UK, due to the offensiveness of the
word in American culture, where it was more widely perceived as a racially
loaded ethnic slur or insult compared to
the contemporaneous culture in the United Kingdom. The serialized version
appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in seven parts from 20 May (Volume 211, Number 47) to 1
July 1939 (Volume 212, Number 1) with illustrations by Henry Raleigh, and the
book was published in January 1940 by Dodd, Mead and Company for $2.[4][5][6]
In
the original UK novel, and in succeeding publications until 1985, all
references to "Indians" or "Soldiers" were originally
"Nigger", including the island's name, the pivotal rhyme found by the
visitors, and the ten figurines.[5] (In Chapter 7, Vera Claythorne becomes semi-hysterical at
the mention by Miss Brent of "our black brothers", which is
understandable only in the context of the original name). UK editions continued
to use the original title until the current definitive title appeared with a
reprint of the 1963 Fontana Paperback in 1985.[21]
The
word "nigger" was already racially offensive in the United States
by the start of the 20th century, and therefore the book's first US edition and
first serialization changed the title to And Then There Were None and
removed all references to the word from the book, as did the 1945 motion
picture (except that the first US edition retained 'nigger in the woodpile' in
chapter 2 part VIII). Sensitivity to the original title of the novel was
remarked by Sadie Stein in 2016, commenting on a BBC mini series with the title
And Then There Were None, where she noted that "[E]ven in 1939,
this title was considered too offensive for American publication."[22] In general, "Christie’s work is not known for its
racial sensitivity, and by modern standards her oeuvre is rife with casual
Orientalism." The original title was based on a rhyme from minstrel shows
and children's games. Stein quotes Alison Light as to the power of the original
name of the island in the novel, Nigger Island, "to conjure up a thrilling
‘otherness’, a place where revelations about the ‘dark side’ of the English
would be appropriate".[23] Light goes on to say that "Christie's location [the
island] is both more domesticated and privatised, taking for granted the
construction of racial fears woven into psychic life as early as the
nursery."[23] Speaking of the "widely known" 1945 movie, Stein
added that "we’re merely faced with fantastic amounts of violence, and a
rhyme so macabre and distressing one doesn’t hear it now outside of the Agatha
Christie context."[22] She felt that the original title of the novel in the UK,
seen now, "that original title, it jars, viscerally."[22]
Best selling crime novel
This
is the best selling crime novel of all time, and what makes Agatha Christie the
best selling novelist.[2] It is Christie's best-selling novel, with more than 100
million copies sold; it is also the world's best-selling mystery and one of the
best-selling books of all time. Publications International lists the novel as
the sixth best-selling title.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None
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