And Then There Were None

For the video game, see And Then There Were None (video game).

And Then There Were None (also known as Ten Little Indians and originally as Ten Little Niggers) is a detective novel by Agatha Christie first published in 1939.

Plot

The story focuses on ten strangers who are all (but one) brought, by misleading information, to an island off the coast of Devon, in southern England.

One by one they die, and gradually realise that the killer is amongst them. By the end, the story has become a locked room mystery, with all the characters dead and the police left with ten unsolved murders.

The characters, in order of death, are:

Anthony Marston, a young, reckless playboy
Mrs. Ethel Rogers, the nervous housekeeper
General John Macarthur, a retired World War I hero
Mr. Thomas Rogers, the butler, Mrs. Rogers' husband
Emily Brent, an elderly spinster and a religious zealot
Lawrence Wargrave ("the Blood-thirsty Judge"), a retired judge famous for the many death sentences he pronounced in his career,
Dr. Edward Armstrong, a Harley Street surgeon
William Blore, a retired police inspector, now a private investigator
Philip Lombard, a soldier of fortune
Vera Claythorne, a young teacher and ex-governess

Shortly after their arrival, a mysterious gramophone recording informs them that all ten of them are guilty of "murders," though in this case the killings cannot be dealt with by law: Marston, for instance, was responsible for the death of two children by reckless driving, but rather than be properly prosecuted, he simply had his licence withdrawn; Mr. and Mrs. Rogers deliberately neglected the care of a sickly employer; General MacArthur sent his wife's lover on a suicide mission during the war; Miss Brent's maid killed herself after being cruelly kicked out of the household when she got pregnant; Wargave knowingly sentenced an innocent defendant to hang; Armstrong fatally operated on a patient when he was drunk; Blore perjured himself in the trial of a gang leader who later died in prison; Lombard left a party of native retainers to die in the African bush; and Vera Claythorne willingly let a small boy in her care swim out to sea and drown but was cleared by a coroner's inquest.

The characters compare notes on the circumstances of their arrival on the island, and realize that they have all been brought there under false pretenses, but now have no means of getting away. On the first night, Anthony Marston dies of poisoning. In the morning, Mrs. Rogers fails to wake up and it is assumed that she had a fatal overdose of sleeping drugs.

At lunch the very same day, General MacArthur is found dead by a blow to the back of his head. After searching the island for the murderer or possible hiding spots, the survivors realize that the murderer can only be one of them, and whoever it is is playing a game – killing them in the manner poetically similar to a nursery rhyme, and also removing one of ten little figurines in the dining room after each murder. The survivors have a meeting and discover that none of them has an alibi for any of the deaths.

The next morning Rogers is found dead in the woodshed, having been killed with a large axe. Later that day, Emily Brent dies from an injection of potassium cyanide. The five remaining - Dr. Armstrong, Justice Wargrave, Philip Lombard, Vera Claythorne, and Inspector Blore – become increasingly paranoid. Later, Justice Wargrave is found dead, having been shot through the head.

That night, Dr. Armstrong leaves the house, and when the rest of the survivors search for him, all they can find is a smashed figurine.

Vera, Inspector Blore, and Lombard think it best to go outside when morning arrives. Blore decides to go back to the house to get some sustenance, and a dull thud is heard. When Vera and Philip check to see what happened, they find Blore crushed to death by a heavy marble clock. They assume Doctor Armstrong did it and decide to stay out of the house.

The two survivors get back to the beach only to find Armstrong's body washed up on the shore. Vera and Lombard then realize that they are the only two left. Even though neither could possibly have murdered the Inspector, the suspicion has driven them to a breaking point and each of them assumes the other to be the murderer.

Lombard reaches for his revolver, only to discover that Vera has pickpocketed it. She shoots him and then returns to the house, thinking she is finally safe. When Vera gets to her room, she discovers a noose hanging there, with a chair under it. Having finally been driven mad by the entire experience, she completely breaks down and hangs herself, thus fulfilling the final verse of the rhyme upon which the murders were carried out.

The epilogue to the novel consists of a conversation between two police concerning the unsolved mystery. They have concluded from the physical evidence and various characters' diaries that Blore, Armstrong, Lombard and Claythorne were the last to die, thus one of them must have been the killer. However, Blore could not have died last, as the clock was definitely dropped onto him from above. Armstrong could not have: his drowned body was dragged above the high-tide mark. Lombard could not have, since he was shot on the beach and the revolver was found upstairs in the house. That left Vera, who hanged herself from the ceiling... but the chair from which she leapt with the noose around her neck was found pushed against the wall, out of reach from where she might have stood on it. Hence, although one of the four must have been the killer, none of them could have been.

The postscript consists of a letter which solves the mystery. The late Judge Lawrence Wargrave wrote the letter to explain that he premeditated the murders to punish ten people who had killed, whether accidentally or not, but were not punished under law... Wargrave first freely divulges his own hunger for blood, combined with his love of strict justice (he never was able to punish someone whom he honestly thought of as innocent) and his delight in seeing the guilty punished. When a physician told Wargrave he was dying, he determined to die in a blaze of glory, rather than letting his life slowly trickle away.

Later, he details how he picked his victims (he mostly heard about the cases from people in his surroundings, and even met the man whose life was crushed after Vera caused the death of his beloved nephew, wanting to make him the inheritor of the boy's fortune) and how he murdered Marston, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, Macarthur, and Emily Brent. He then deceived Dr. Armstrong into pronouncing him "dead", this allowing the two to meet by the cliffs to discuss a strategy for determining the killer's identity. When Armstrong arrived, Wargrave shoved him over the edge, then went back to the house and pretended to be dead. His trick made it possible for him to kill Blore and orchestrate the deaths of Lombard and Vera.

After Vera (the one with more blame according to the judge, since she deliberately killed an innocent child but managed to pass as a victim) hanged herself, Wargrave pushed the chair against the wall, and wrote out his final message, indicating that he planned to shoot himself whilst sitting on his bed, so that his body would fall onto the bed as if it had been laid there. He 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. He then put the message in a bottle and cast it into the sea. Thus the police found ten dead bodies and an unsolvable mystery on the deserted island.

Film and theater

Christie had been disappointed in previous adaptations of her novels. As she had written a play before, she decided to adapt her own book herself. She decided that the staging of a play required the survival of two characters in order to carry the plot exposition. Consequently the resolution of the play is very different from that of the book (though the identity of the killer remains the same). This stage version dates from 1943. Because the play calls for performance with a small set (chiefly the main parlor of the deserted mansion) and an ensemble cast, it is very popular with schools and community-theater groups.

The story was adapted for the cinema as And Then There Were None in 1945 and again in 1974; and also filmed as Ten Little Indians in 1959 (as truncated television recording of the play), 1965 (see Ten Little Indians (1965 film)), 1974, 1989 and a Russian version entitled Desyat Negrityat was filmed in 1987. All but one of the films followed the play's humourous tone & happy ending, rather than the book's dark tone and downbeat resolution.

The rhyme

The book's original title "Ten Little Niggers" was taken from the chorus of an American comic song, written by Septimus Winner in 1868; there are many variants of the lyrics, of which "Ten Little Injuns" is probably the most familiar to modern audiences. The song is now considered by many to be racist and offensive.

The rhyme used in the novel is as follows:

Ten little Indian boys going out to dine;

One choked his little self and then there were nine.

Nine little Indian boys sat up very late;

One overslept himself and then there were eight.

Eight little Indian boys traveling in Devon;

One said he'd stay and then there were seven.

Seven little Indian boys chopping up sticks;

One chopped himself into halves and then there were six.

Six little Indian boys playing with a hive;

A bumblebee stung one and then there were five.

Five little Indian boys going in for law;

One got in Chancery and then there were four.

Four little Indian boys going out to sea;

A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.

Three little Indian boys walking in the zoo;

A big bear hugged one and then there were two.

Two little Indian boys sitting in the sun;

One got frizzled up and then there was one.

One little Indian boy left all alone;

He went and hanged himself and then there were none.

"Ten little Indians" & "And Then There was One" in popular culture

The memes "ten little Indians" and "and then there was one" have been used many times in modern days to refer to situations in stories – such as slasher films, other horror films, and disaster films — in which the characters die off one by one. This is how many films of those genres are structured, in order to provide gory scenes periodically, and to ultimately force the main character to face off against the villain alone. This main character in slasher films is often referred to as the "final girl" and shares many similarities of the doomed Vera Claythorne, the final victim in Christie's novel.

Trivia

"And Then There Were None" was adapted from Agatha Christie's book into a video game in 2005 by The Adventure Company. It was released in November of that year to mixed reviews, most of the slack going to changing the "Indians" to "Sailors" and altering the killer's motive and identity, though it is possible to see the original novel's ending when one finishes a puzzle after completing the main game. Four further books are to be adapted.

"Ten Little Indians" is a song by The Yardbirds along the same lines with the rhyme, although more dismal. In the song, the death of each "Indian" is related to breaking one of the Ten Commandments.

A Japanese doujin game, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, features an extra stage of a girl having the spell card named "And Then Will There be None?" and a theme music named "Is she the U.N. Owen?" (U.N. Owen is the killer's alias used in the novel, play, and films.)

"Zehn Kleine Jägermeister" (Ten Little "Jägermeister") is a song by the German band Die Toten Hosen, along the same lines as the rhyme, but with funny or satirical things happening to the characters (taking drugs, being arrested for tax evasion, dying of mad cow disease, etc.)

The Polish film Show, starring Cezary Pazura, tells the story of a reality show located on a remote island. Suddenly, the competitors start to die one after another. One of the competitors mentions Agatha Christie's novel.

A musical comedy spoof of the novel, titled Something's Afoot, was written and enjoyed a brief run on Broadway.

"Ten Little Indians" is the first phrase and recurring theme of the lyric to the song "Only One Woman," written by Bilgeri, an alias of the Bee Gees, which was a UK hit in 1969 for Graham Bonnet and Trevor Gordon under the name of The Marbles.

The Ben 10 episode name "And Then There Were 10" is a parody of the novel.

A quest in the Xbox 360 and PC game, Oblivion is based on the novel.

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