
| And Then There Were None | |
![]() Cover of first edition featuring the original Ten Little Niggers Title |
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| Author | Agatha Christie |
|---|---|
| Original title | Ten Little Niggers |
| Cover artist | Not known |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Crime novel |
| Publisher | Collins Crime Club |
| Publication date | November 6, 1939 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 256 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | NA |
| Preceded by | The Regatta Mystery |
| Followed by | Sad Cypress |
And Then There Were None is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on November 6, 1939[1] under the title of Ten Little Niggers[2][3] and in US by Dodd, Mead and Company in January 1940 under the title of And Then There Were None[4]. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6)[2] and the US edition at $2.00[4]. The novel has also been published and filmed under the title Ten Little Indians. It is Christie's best-selling novel with 100 million sales to date, making it the world's best-selling mystery, according to the editors of Publications International, Ltd.
Contents |
The novel takes place on an island off the coast of Devon in late 1930s named Indian Island. Eight people of different social classes journey to the Soldier Island mansion are invited there by a Mr. and Mrs. U.N. Owen but the eight people don't know them. Upon arriving, they are told by the butler and his wife, Thomas and Ethel Rogers, that their hosts are currently away. Each guest finds in his or her room a slightly odd bit of bric-a-brac and a framed copy of the nursery rhyme "Ten Little Soldier Boys" ("Ten Little Niggers" in the original 1939 UK publication and "Ten Little Indians" in the 1940 US publication) hanging on the wall:
(In some versions the seventeenth and eighteenth lines read Two little Soldier boys playing with a gun; / One shot the other and then there was One.)
During a large dinner, the guests notice ten little figurines of soldiers on the dining room table. Later, when they gathered in the parlour, a gramophone recording (bearing the label Swan Song) is played, informing the ten that all of them are guilty of murder, though in each case they were not sentenced to death or heavy prison terms since the nature of the killings meant that the law could not touch them:
The guests realize they have all been tricked into coming to the island, but now have no way to get back to the mainland, as the boat which regularly delivers supplies stops arriving. They are then murdered, one by one, they share their darkest secrets and one by one, each of them were murdered paralleling a verse of the nursery rhyme, and one of the ten soldier figurines being removed after each murder. After hearing the gramophone, Ethel Rogers fainted. Now they began investigating and questioning each other until they shared their darkest past. First to die is Anthony Marston, whose drink is poisoned with cyanide (one choked his little self). Someone might have easily slipped the cyanide into the glass. The next morning, Ethel Rogers never wakes up, and is assumed to have received a fatal overdose of sleeping draught (one overslept himself) and she was dead. They suspected Rogers that he might kill his wife because she might tell the truth. They also suspected Dr. Armstrong and Emily Brent, who was bending and remained alone with her after she fainted. At lunchtime, General MacArthur, who had predicted that he would never leave the island alive, is found dead from a blow to the back of his head (one said he'd stay there) when Dr. Armstrong calls him to have a lunch. In growing panic earlier after General Macarthur died, the remaining guests searched the island for the murderer or possible hiding places, but found no one/nothing. Justice Wargrave establishes himself as a decisive leader of the group and he asserts that one of them must be the murderer and one of the remaining guests is U.N Owen. He also said that U.N means Unknown Owen!
The next morning, Rogers was missing and then Mr. Rogers was found dead in the woodshed, having been struck in the head with a large axe (one chopped himself in halves) while chopping sticks for the firewood. Later, that day after lunch, while the others went to the drawing room, Emily Brent stays in the dining room and later they found her dead because someone injected her of potassium cyanide—the injection mark on her neck is an allusion to a bee sting (a bumblebee stung one). The hypodermic needle is found outside, thrown from the window along with a smashed china soldier figurine. The five survivors—Dr. Armstrong, Justice Wargrave, Philip Lombard, Vera Claythorne, and Inspector Blore—become increasingly frightened. Wargrave announces that anything on the island that could be used as a weapon should be locked up, including Wargrave's sleeping pills and Armstrong's medical equipment; Lombard admits to bringing a revolver to the island, but it has gone missing. They decide to sit in the drawing room, with only one leaving at any one time—theoretically, they should all be safe that way. Vera, the one most wracked by guilt, goes up to her room and she thought that a hand touched her throat. Her loud scream attract the attention of Blore, Lombard, and Armstrong, who rush to her aid and later that hand who touched her throat was only a seaweed. When they return to the drawing room, they found Wargrave, dressed up in a judge's wig and gown, slumped against a chair with a gunshot wound in his forehead (one got into Chancery); Armstrong confirms his death.
That night, Blore hears someone sneaking out of the house. He searches the remaining rooms and discovers Armstrong missing from his room—so they thought he must be the murderer. Later, a china figurine was missing again. Vera, Blore, and Lombard (whose revolver has since been returned to him) decide it best to go outside when morning arrives. Morning arrives and Blore became hungry later he returned to the house alone but he did not returned; Vera and Phillip discover him dead in the terrace, his head crushed by a marble, bear-shaped clock (a big bear hugged one) from Vera's room above. They assume that Armstrong has committed the murder and leave to walk along the shore but they found Armstrong's drowned body along the cliffs (a red herring swallowed one) and realize that they are the only two left; though neither could possibly have killed the Inspector, their mutual suspicion has driven them to the breaking point and each of them assumes the other to be the murderer. As they lift Armstrong's body out of reach of the water, Vera swipes Lombard's revolver, shoots him dead on the beach (out in the sun; or, one shot the other), and returns to her room, discovering a noose hanging from the ceiling and a chair underneath it. Having finally been driven mad (or "hypnotically suggestible") by the experience and latent remorse for her crime, Vera hangs herself, kicking the chair out from under her, fulfilling the final verse of the rhyme (And then there were none).
The epilogue consists of a conversation between Inspector Maine, in charge of the unsolved case, and the Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard. The man who made all the arrangements for U.N. Owen's purchase of the island was Isaac Morris, a shady dealer known to efficiently cover his tracks when doing business. However, he cannot tell the police anything: he died of a drug overdose the day the party set sail. During the period when the killings took place and immediately after, no one could have got onto or left the island without being seen and the weather was too bad anyway, ruling out the possibility that "Mr. Owen" was some unidentified person who committed the murders while evading detection from the guests.
The police have concluded from various characters' diaries that Blore, Armstrong, Lombard, and Vera were definitely the last to die. Blore could not have died last, as the clock was dropped onto him from above, and he could not have set up a way for it to fall on him. Armstrong could not have been last since his body was dragged above the high-tide mark by someone else; nor could Lombard, since he was shot on the beach but the revolver was found upstairs in the hallway, outside the door of Wargrave's room. This leaves Vera, who might have been the killer — her fingerprints are on the pistol and it was from her window the clock was dropped on Blore — except for the fact that the chair from which she lept with the noose around her neck was found pushed against the wall out of reach from where she would have stood on it.
Hence, although one of the ten guests must have been the killer, none of them could have been.
The Emma Jane fishing trawler finds a letter in a bottle floating just off the Devon coast, and sends it to Scotland Yard, who recognise it as a confession by the late Justice Wargrave. In this narrative, he reveals that he has suffered from a certain sadistic temperament ever since childhood, when he performed torturous experiments on garden pests (a symptom which would later be defined under sociopathy). However, this quality juxtaposed uneasily against an innate sense of justice; he considered it abhorrent that any innocent person should die by his hand. Thus, with his mental make-up the way it was, he became a judge, ordering the death penalty in all cases where he firmly believed the accused person guilty, so he could enjoy seeing them crippled with fear by the knowledge that they would soon be hanged. But deep down Wargrave always desired to kill by his own hand and, after discovering that he was terminally ill, decided to do just that by renting an island off the Devon coast, seeking out and luring nine people, all of whom have caused death and escaped justice, then picking them off one by one, revelling in the mental torture each survivor experiences as their own fate approaches.
Before leaving he successfully poisoned the hypochondriac drug-dealer Isaac Morris - whose help he had previously solicited when making his purchase of the island - in retribution for causing the suicide of a young woman by leading her into substance abuse.
That night, after the gramaphone was heard, he put the cyanide into Marston's empty glass. Later, he put a poison Ethel Roger's brandy which she drank after she fainted and made her overdose. In that morning he killed General Macarthur. Morning again and while Rogers was chopping sticks, he killed him using the axe. Later, he injected Emily Brent a poison. Then there came, Justice Wargrave sets the seaweed into Vera's room. Later she screamed and attracts the attention of the other three men. Wargrave then, alone in the drawing room, sets himself and pretended to be dead and they found them. He said that Armstrong helped him. Armstrong is the one who studied the body of Wargrave and later put him into his room without the knowledge of the other three that he isn't dead. Later, that night, Wargrave had a rendezvous with Dr. Armstrong then he pushed the doctor off the island cliff and orchestrated the rest of the killings without suspicion.
He also killed Blore by letting the marbled clock fell into his head. Wargrave saw Vera shoots Phillip. After Vera (the guiltiest of the "condemned" according to the judge, since she deliberately allowed a child to drown but managed to pass herself off as a heroine who tried to rescue the boy) hanged herself, Wargrave, who had been watching from the bedroom closet, pushed the chair against the wall. He then wrote out his confession, putting the letter in a bottle and casting the bottle into the sea. He states that his only regret is that it was not enough to concoct an unsolvable mystery—he craves posthumous recognition of his brilliant scheme—therefore he explains three clues which should point to him as the killer in case his letter is not found:
The conclusion of the judge's letter indicates that after writing he shot himself while sitting on his bed, so that his body fell onto the bed as if it had been laid there. He had fastened the gun to the doorknob with a piece of elastic cord in such a way that the recoil would snap the gun out into the hallway as the door to his room closed.
Thus the police found 10 dead bodies and an unsolvable mystery on Soldier Island.
The Times Literary Supplement's review by Maurice Percy Ashley of November 11, 1939 stated that, "If her latest story has scarcely any detection in it there is no scarcity of murders." He continued, "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. It will be an extremely astute reader who guesses correctly."[5]
In The New York Times Book Review of February 25, 1940, Isaac Anderson detailed the set-up of the plot up to the point where 'the voice' accuses the ten people of their past misdemeanors 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."[6]
Maurice Richardson wrote a rhapsodic review in The Observer's issue of November 5, 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."[1]
An unnamed reviewer in the Toronto Daily Star of March 16, 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."[7]
Robert Barnard: "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."[8]
And Then There Were None has had more adaptations than any other single work of Christie's with the setting often being changed to locations other than an island and mostly utilising Christie's alternative ending from her 1943 stage play rather than that used in the book.
And Then There Were None will be released by HarperCollins as a graphic novel adaptation on March 2, 2009, adapted by François Rivière and illustrated by Frank Leclercq. ISBN 0-00-727532-3
The novel was originally published in Britain under the title Ten Little Niggers in 1939[2][3]. All references to "Indian" in the story were originally "Nigger": thus the island was called "Nigger Island" [3] rather than "Indian Island" and the rhyme found by each murder victim was also called Ten Little Niggers [3] rather than Ten Little Indians. Modern printings use the rhyme Ten Little Soldiers and "Soldier Island".
The UK serialisation was in twenty-three parts in the Daily Express from Tuesday, June 6 to Saturday, July 1, 1939. All of the instalments carried an illustration by "Prescott" with the first instalment having an illustration of Burgh Island in Devon which inspired the setting of the story. This version did not contain any chapter divisions[10].
For the United States market, the novel was first serialised in the Saturday Evening Post in seven parts from May 20 (Volume 211, Number 47) to July 1, 1939 (Volume 212, Number 1) with illustrations by Henry Raleigh and then published separately in book form in January 1940. Both publications used the less inflammatory title And Then There Were None. The 1945 motion picture also used this title. In 1946, the play was published under the new title Ten Little Indians (the same title under which it had been performed on Broadway), and in 1964, an American paperback edition also used this title.
British editions continued to use the work's original title until the 1980s and the first British edition to use the alternative title And Then There Were None appeared in 1985 with a reprint of the 1963 Fontana Paperback. [11] Today And Then There Were None is the title most commonly used. However, the original title survives in many foreign-language versions of the novel: for example, the Greek tittle is Δέκα Μικροί Νέγροι, the Spanish title is Diez Negritos, while the French title is Dix petits nègres. [12] A Dutch translation available as late as 1981 even used the work's original English title Ten Little Niggers. The 1987 Russian film adaptation has the title Десять негритят (Desyat Negrityat). The computer adventure game based on the novel uses "Ten Little Sailor Boys."
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