And Then There Were None

And Then There Were None  
And Then There Were None First Edition Cover 1939.jpg
Cover of first edition featuring the original Ten Little Niggers Title
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

Plot summary

Eight people of different social classes have been invited to go to the Soldier Island mansion in the Soldier Island by a Mr. and Mrs. U.N. Owen. 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 but "Ten Little Soldiers" in most modern publications) hanging on the wall:

Ten little Soldier boys went out to dine;
One choked his little self and then there were nine.
Nine little Soldier boys sat up very late;
One overslept himself and then there were eight.
Eight little Soldier boys traveling in Devon;
One said he'd stay there and then there were seven.
Seven little Soldier boys chopping up sticks;
One chopped himself in halves and then there were six.
Six little Soldier boys playing with a hive;
A bumblebee stung one and then there were five.
Five little Soldier boys going in for law;
One got into Chancery and then there were four.
Four little Soldier boys going out to sea;
A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.
Three little Soldier boys walking in the zoo;
A big bear hugged one and then there were two.
Two Little Soldier boys sitting in the sun;
One got frizzled up and then there was one.
One little Soldier boy left all alone;
He went out and hanged himself and then there were none.

(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, while they are having a dinner, a gramophone is being 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, each murder paralleling a verse of the nursery rhyme, and one of the ten soldier figurines being removed after each murder. First to die is Anthony Marston, whose drink is poisoned with cyanide (one choked his little self). That night, Thomas Rogers notices that one soldier figurine is missing from the dining table. The next morning, Mrs. Rogers never wakes up, and is assumed to have received a fatal overdose of sleeping draught (one overslept himself). 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 lunch. In growing panic, the survivors search the island for the murderer or possible hiding places, but find no one. Justice Wargrave establishes himself as a decisive leader of the group; he asserts that one of them must be the murderer and is playing a sadistic game with them-an example of the killer's twisted humor is that-with the exception of Wargrave-each of the "guests" has been invited to come to the Island by Mr/Mrs "U.N.Owen" {i.e. "Unknown"!}. Every time someone dies, a soldier figurine disappears.

The next morning, Rogers is missing and they notice one little figurine of soldier was missing and then Mr. Rogers is found dead in the woodshed, having been struck in the head with a large axe (one chopped himself in halves). Later that day, while the others went to the drawing room, Emily Brent stays in the dining room and she dies from an injection 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 discovers a strand of seaweed planted there; her screams attract the attention of Blore, Lombard, and Armstrong, who rush to her aid. When they return to the drawing room, they find 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 think he must be the killer. Vera, Blore, and Lombard (whose revolver has since been returned to him) decide it best to go outside when morning arrives; when Blore's hunger later makes him go back into the house, he does not return; Vera and Phillip discover him dead, his head crushed by Vera's marble, bear-shaped clock (a big bear hugged one). They assume that Armstrong has committed the murder and leave to walk along the shore. They find 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).

Epilogue

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 on or off 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 which she kicked away with the noose around her neck was found pushed against the wall, out of reach from where she would have had to stand on it.

Hence, although one of the ten guests must have been the killer, none of them could have been.

Postscript

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 was juxtaposed uneasily with 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.

After disposing of the first five guests(Marston, Ethel Rogers, Macarthur, Thomas Rogers and Emily Brent), Wargrave fooled Armstrong into helping him fake his own (Wargrave's) murder - under the pretext that it would rattle the 'real murderer' - then pushed the doctor off the island cliff and orchestrated the rest of the killings without suspicion.

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:

  1. Wargrave mentions in the letter that Edward Seton's death was justified because Seton, despite his charm and excellent performance on the witness stand, was genuinely guilty of the crime of which he was accused. After his death, more evidence emerged putting his guilt beyond doubt. Therefore, Wargrave was the only guest who did not wrongfully cause the death of anyone (before coming to the island), though paradoxically, he would then be the executioner.
  2. The "red herring" line in the poem suggests the fact that Armstrong was tricked into his death—and the respectable Justice Wargrave is the only one of the remaining houseguests in whom Armstrong would have been likely to confide.
  3. The bullet would leave a red mark in Wargrave's forehead similar to the mark of Cain, the first murderer described in the Biblical Old Testament.

The conclusion of the judge's letter indicates that, after disposing of the bottle with the letter, he would shoot himself while sitting on his bed, so that his body would fall onto the bed as if it had been laid there. He would first tie the gun loosely to a length of elastic cord looped around the doorknob, the other end of which would be tied to his eyeglasses beneath his body. After shooting himself (with a handkerchief wrapped round the gun to avoid fingerprints) the recoil would snap the gun towards the doorknob. The gun striking the doorknob would detach the elastic, which in turn would snap back and lie dangling innocuously from his eyeglasses.

Thus the police find 10 dead bodies and an unsolvable mystery on Soldier Island.

Characters in "And Then There Were None"

Literary significance and reception

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]

References to actual history, geography and current science

The island on which the novel is set is based upon Burgh Island off the coast of Devon with the main building, the Burgh Island Hotel, providing the template for the house in the novel.[9]

Film, TV and theatrical adaptations

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.

Stage

Main article: And Then There Were None (1943 play)

Film

Main article: And Then There Were None (1945 film)
Main article: Ten Little Indians (1965 film)
Main article: Gumnaam
Main article: Five Dolls for an August Moon
Main article: And Then There Were None (1974 film)
Main article: Desyat Negrityat
Main article: Ten Little Indians (1989 film)

Television

Other

Video game adaptation

Main article: Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None

Graphic novel adaptation

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

Publication history

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[11].

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. [12] 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. [13] 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."

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 "Review of Ten Little Niggers", The Observer (1939-11-05), pp. 6. 
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 Peers, C; Spurrier A & Sturgeon J (1999). Collins Crime Club – A checklist of First Editions (2nd ed.). Dragonby Press. pp. 15. ISBN 1871122139. 
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Pendergast, Bruce (2004). Everyman's Guide To The Mysteries Of Agatha Christie. Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing. pp. 393. ISBN 1412023041. http://books.google.com/books?id=nMS6y9YsqXkC&pg=RA3-PA393&ots=Ya0sD7j9g0&dq=%22ten+little+niggers%22+christie+%22and+then+there+were+none%22+%22ten+little+indians%22&as_brr=3&sig=PRCJUhB5jOlcQpz7QVTjsTzmIpg. 
  4. 4.0 4.1 "American Tribute to Agatha Christie - The Classic Years: 1940-1944". Retrieved on 2008-11-24.
  5. The Times Literary Supplement November 11, 1939 (Page 658)
  6. The New York Times Book Review February 25, 1940 (Page 15)
  7. Toronto Daily Star March 16, 1940 (Page 28)
  8. Barnard, Robert. A Talent to Deceive – an appreciation of Agatha Christie - Revised edition (Page 206). Fontana Books, 1990. ISBN 0006374743
  9. Poole S & Wagstaff V (2004). Agatha Christie: A Reader's Companion. London: Aurum Press. pp. 160-7. ISBN 1-84513-015-4. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1845132033/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link. Retrieved on 2008-11-25. 
  10. Taves, Brian (1987). Robert Florey, the French Expressionist. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. p. p. 152. ISBN 0810819295. 
  11. Holdings at the British Library (Newspapers - Colindale). Shelfmark: NPL LON LD3 and NPL LON MLD3.
  12. British National Bibliography for 1985. British Library. 1986. ISBN 0-7123-1035-5
  13. Amazon.fr : Dix petits nègres, nouvelle édition: Livres: Agatha Christie
  14. British National Bibliography British Library. 1986. ISBN 0-7123-1035-5
  15. Whitaker's Cumulative Book List for 1977. J. Whitaker and Sons Ltd. 1978. ISBN 0-85021-105-0

External links