And Then There Were None

For other uses, see And Then There Were None (disambiguation).

And Then There Were None

Cover of first edition featuring the original title, Ten Little Niggers
Author	Agatha Christie
Original title	Ten Little Niggers
Cover artist	Not known
Language	English
Genre	Crime novel
Publisher	Collins Crime Club
Publication date	6 November 1939
Publication place	United Kingdom
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 United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939 under the title of Ten Little Niggers and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company in January 1940 under the title of And Then There Were None. During the novel, ten people, who previously committed murder but escaped due to technicalities, are tricked into coming onto an island. Even though the guests are the only people on the island, they are all mysteriously murdered in the manner of the nursery rhyme, one by one. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00. 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 and the seventh most popular book in all time. And Then There Were None has been adapted into several plays, films, and a video game.

Plot summary

Eight people of different social classes have been invited to go to a mansion on Soldier Island (or Nigger Island in the original version), which in reality is based upon Burgh Island off the coast of Devon, 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 Soldiers" ("Ten Little Niggers" in the original 1939 UK publication and "Ten Little Indians" in the 1940 US publication) 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 in 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.

During a large dinner, the guests notice ten soldier figurines on the dining room table. Later, while they are having dinner, a gramophone record plays, informing the ten that each is guilty of murder. All of the guests acknowledge their awareness of and, in some cases, involvement in the deaths of the persons mentioned, while denying any malice or legal culpability.

The guests realize they have all been tricked into coming to the island, but cannot get back to the mainland, as the boat which had regularly delivered supplies has stopped arriving. They are then murdered, one by one, with 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, MacArthur, who had predicted that he would never leave the island alive, is found dead from a blow to the back of his head when Dr. Armstrong calls him to lunch (one said he'd stay there). 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 and Marston—each of the "guests" has been invited to come to the Island by Mr. and Mrs. "U.N.Owen" (a pun on "UNknOWN").

The next morning, Rogers is missing, and they notice one of the little soldier figurines is missing as well. Rogers is soon 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 are in 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 Ex-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 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 and Lombard search the remaining rooms and discover 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 makes him go back into the house, he does not return; as Vera and Phillip search for him, they discover his body on the front lawn, 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, kills him on the beach (out in the sun; or, one shot the other), and returns to her room (momentarily thinking the last rhyme of the poem was 'Got married and then there was none' because of her need for Hugo. Ironically, that is a version of the last line of the poem), discovering a noose hanging from the ceiling and a chair underneath it. Having finally been driven mad (or "hypnotically suggestible") by the experience, Vera hangs herself, kicking the chair out from under her, fulfilling the final verse of the rhyme (hanged himself 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 due to poor weather, 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 the forensic evidence and 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, whose fingerprints are on the pistol, and from whose window the clock was dropped on Blore; however, 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.

In the end, although one of the guests must have been the killer, none of them could have been, leaving the two inspectors baffled. Oddly no notice is taken of the rhyming clue which is in each guest's bedroom.

Postscript

A fishing trawler, the Emma Jane, 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, Wargrave reveals that he has suffered from a certain sadistic temperament ever since childhood, when he performed torturous experiments on garden pests, a symptom of 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 he became a judge, ordering the death penalty in all cases where he firmly believed the accused person guilty, so that he could enjoy seeing them crippled with fear by the knowledge of their impending death. Unsatisfied, Wargrave always felt a deep desire to commit a murder by his own hand. After discovering that he was terminally ill, he decided to do just that by renting an island off the Devon coast and luring nine people there, all of whom have caused death and escaped justice. He then killed them one by one, reveling in the mental torture each survivor experienced as their own fate approached. In the letter, Wargrave also claims that his extensive experience as a judge rendered him capable of confirming their guilt by observing their reactions to the murders, and that he did indeed intuit the guilt of all of the victims.

Having disposed of the first five guests in the manner above, Wargrave persuaded Armstrong to help him fake Wargrave's own murder, under the pretext that it would rattle the "real murderer." Later, upon meeting Armstrong on the cliff in the middle of night, Wargrave pushed the doctor into the sea, enabling him to orchestrate the rest of the killings without suspicion. The final victim, Vera, hanged herself while Wargrave secretly watched from the bedroom closet. Afterwards, Wargrave 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.

Wargrave finishes his confession by stating that he plans to shoot himself, but he craves posthumous recognition of his brilliant scheme. He argues that even if his letter is not found, three clues exist that should point to him as the killer:

1. Wargrave was the only guest who did not wrongfully cause the death of anyone before coming to the island. Edward Seton (the man whom the gramaphone accused Wargrave of killing by giving the jury a biased summation in his case) was indeed guilty (this fact is revealed in the investigation); thus paradoxically the one non-murderer of the guests-is the murderer!
2. The "red herring" line in the poem suggests 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. When he and Armstrong fake his murder - supposedly as part of a ruse to scare the 'real' killer into confessing - Wargrave paints a small red mark on his forehead to make it seem like he's been shot. The mark is similar to the one God bestowed upon Cain as punishment for killing his brother Abel; if he allows anybody else to see the mark that person must immediately kill him, thus dooming Cain to a life of isolation.

Wargrave then describes how he plans to shoot himself: he will loop an elastic cord through the gun and tie one end of the cord to his eyeglasses. The other end he will loop around the doorknob of an open door. Wargrave will then sit on the bed so that, after shooting himself, his body will seem as if he had been lying there. After shooting himself with a handkerchief wrapped round the gun to avoid fingerprints, the recoil will snap the gun towards the doorknob. The gun will strike the doorknob, detaching the elastic, which will snap back (closing the door in the process) and lie dangling innocuously from his eyeglasses. The gun will be found in the corridor outside the closed door, and a dead body on the bed.

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

Characters

The following details of the characters are based on the original novel. Stage and film adaptations have often varied with names and backgrounds, such as Judge Wargrave being renamed Cannon and Lombard accused of causing the death of his pregnant girlfriend.

"The Ten Little Indians"

• Anthony James Marston, a good-looking man with a well-proportioned body, crisp hair, tanned face and blue eyes. He was born to a wealthy family. He ran over and killed two children, feeling no remorse for the incident as he lacks any kind of moral responsibility.

• Mrs. Ethel Rogers, the cook and Mr. Rogers's wife. She is described as a pale-faced, ghostlike woman with shifty light eyes, who is scared easily. Despite her respectability and efficiency, she helped her domineering husband, Thomas, to kill an elderly employer of theirs by withholding her medicine, in order to inherit her money.

• General John Gordon Macarthur, a retired World War I hero, who sent his wife's lover, Arthur Richmond (also a soldier), to his death by assigning him to a "suicide" mission.

• Mr. Thomas Rogers, the butler and Mrs. Rogers's husband. One of the first people to come to the island, he is a very hard worker even in his old age. He killed an elderly employer with the help of his wife by withholding restorative drugs from her, in order to inherit her money.

• Emily Caroline Brent, an elderly woman of unyielding principles who uses the Christian Bible to justify her inability to show compassion or understanding for others. She dismissed her loyal maid, Beatrice Taylor, as punishment for becoming pregnant out of wedlock. As a result Beatrice, who'd also been abandoned by her family and left homeless, threw herself into a river and drowned.

• Justice Lawrence Wargrave, a retired judge, well known for liberally handing out the death penalty. He is accused of murder due to the judicial hanging of criminal Edward Seton, even though there were some doubts about his guilt at the time of the trial.

• Dr. Edward George Armstrong, a Harley Street surgeon, blamed for the death of patient while operating under the influence of alcohol.

• William Henry Blore, a retired police inspector and now a private investigator, is accused of having an innocent man, James Landor, sentenced to lifetime imprisonment as a scapegoat after having been bribed. The man later died in the prison.

• Philip Lombard, a soldier of fortune. Literally down to his last square meal, he comes to the island with a loaded revolver. Though he is reputed to be a good man in a tight spot, Lombard is accused of causing the deaths of a native African tribe. It is said that he stole food from the tribe, thus causing their starvation and subsequent death.

• Vera Elizabeth Claythorne, a young teacher, secretary, and ex-governess, who takes mostly secretarial jobs since her last job as a governess ended in the death of her charge. She let young Cyril Hamilton swim out to sea and drown so that his uncle, Hugo Hamilton, could inherit his money and marry her; however, the plan backfired, as Hamilton abandoned her when he realized what she had done. Of all the "guests" Vera is the one most tormented by latent guilt for her crime..

Minor characters

• Sir Thomas Legge and Inspector Maine, two policemen who discuss the case in the epilogue.

• Isaac Morris, the short Jew who is hired by Mr. Owen and arranges for Phillip Lombard to come to the island and meet Mr Owen for a later payment of 100 Guineas {105 GBP} to Lombard. Isaac Morris, as mentioned in the post script of the book, dies when he takes what is thought to be a pill to help him with his "gastrial juices" given to him by Mr. Owen. His crime was to have supplied a young woman with the illegal drugs that caused her death.

• Fred Narracott, the boatman who delivered the guests to the island. After doing so he doesn't appear again.

Publication history

Cover of first US 1940 edition with the title currently used in all English-language versions

The novel was originally published in Britain under the title Ten Little Niggers in 1939. All references to "Indian" in the story were originally "Nigger": thus the island was called "Nigger Island" rather than "Indian Island" and the rhyme found by each murder victim was also called Ten Little Niggers rather than Ten Little Indians. Modern revisionist 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.

For the United States market, the novel was first serialised 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 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. 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 title is Δέκα Μικροί Νέγροι, the Bulgarian title is Десет малки негърчета, the Spanish title is Diez negritos, the French title is Dix petits nègres and the Hungarian title is Tíz kicsi néger, while the Italian title, Dieci piccoli indiani, mirrors the "Indians" title. A Dutch translation of 1981 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."

• Christie, Agatha (1939). Ten Little Niggers. London: Collins Crime Club. OCLC 152375426. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) Hardback, 256 pp. (First edition)
• Christie, Agatha (1940). And Then There Were None. New York: Dodd, Mead. OCLC 1824276. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) Hardback, 264 pp. (First US edition)
• 1944, Pocket Books, 1944, Paperback, 173 pp (Pocket number 261)
• 1947, Pan Books, 1947, Paperback, 190 pp (Pan number 4)
• 1958, Penguin Books, 1958, Paperback, 201 pp (Penguin number 1256)
• Christie, Agatha (1963). And Then There Were None. London: Fontana. OCLC 12503435. Paperback, 190 pp. (The 1985 reprint was the first UK publication of novel under title "And Then There Were None". )
• Christie, Agatha (1964). Ten Little Indians. New York: Pocket Books. OCLC 29462459. (First publication of novel under title "Ten Little Indians")
• 1964, Washington Square Press, 1964, (Paperback - teacher's edition)
• Christie, Agatha (1977). Ten Little Niggers (Greenway edition ed.). London: Collins Crime Club. ISBN 0002318350. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help) Collected works, Hardback, 252 pp (Except for reprints of the 1963 Fontana paperback, this was one of the last English-language publications of novel under the title "Ten Little Niggers")
• Christie, Agatha (1980). The Mysterious Affair at Styles; Ten Little Niggers; Dumb Witness. Sydney: Lansdowne Press. ISBN 0701814535. Late use of the original title in an Australian edition.
• Christie, Agatha (1981). Ten Little Niggers (in Dutch) (Third edition ed.). Culemborg: Educaboek. ISBN 9011851536. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) (Late printing of Dutch translation preserving original English title)
• Christie, Agatha (1986). Ten Little Indians. New York: Pocket Books. ISBN 0671552228. (Last publication of novel under title "Ten Little Indians")

Literary significance and reception

Generally, And Then There Were None is considered one of Agatha Christie's best works. 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." 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." Many other reviews were as complimentary; in The New York Times Book Review of 25 February 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."

Such was the quality of Christie's work on this book that many compared it to her 1926 novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. 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."

Other critics laud the use of twists, turns, 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."

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."

Other recent commentators, however, have been more critical of the work, finding that Christie's original title and the setting on "Nigger Island" are integral to the work. These aspects of the novel, argues Alison Light, "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." Unlike novels such as Heart of Darkness, however, "Christie's location is both more domesticated and privatised, 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."

Film, TV and theatrical adaptations

And Then There Were None has had more adaptations than any other single work of Agatha Christie. However, they often utilised Christie's alternative ending from her 1943 stage play rather than that used in the book with the setting often being changed to locations other than an island.

Stage

In 1943, Agatha Christie adapted the story for the stage. In the process of doing so, she realized that the novel's grim conclusion would not work dramatically on stage as there would be no one left to tell the tale, so she reworked the ending for Lombard and Vera to be innocent of the crimes of which they were accused, survive, and fall in love. Some of the names were also changed with General Macarthur becoming General McKenzie, probably due to the real-life General Douglas MacArthur who was playing a prominent role in the ongoing World War II. On 14 October 2005, a new version of the play, written by Kevin Elyot and directed by Steven Pimlott opened at the Gielgud Theatre in London. For this version, Elyot returned to the book version of story and restored the original ending where both Vera and Lombard die and Wargrave commits suicide.

Film

There have been several film adaptions of Agatha Christie's novel. The first was adapted for the cinema screen in René Clair's successful 1945 US production. The second cinema adaptation of the book was directed by George Pollock in 1965; Pollock had previously handled the four Miss Marple films starring Margaret Rutherford. This film transferred the setting from a remote island to a mountain retreat in Austria. Another variant of And Then There Were None made in 1974 was the first colour English-language film version of the novel, directed by Peter Collinson from a screenplay by Peter Welbeck. This version was set in the Iranian desert. A version from the USSR, Desyat' negrityat (Десять негритят "Ten Little Negroes") (1987) was written and directed by Stanislav Govorukhin and is the only cinema adaptation to use the novel's original ending. The most recent film, Ten Little Indians, directed by Alan Birkinshaw, was made in 1989 and is set on the African safari.

Gumnaam is a 1965 uncredited Bollywood adaptation set in a remote Indian location by the sea. Many elements, including musical dance numbers and a comic relief butler, were added to Christie's story in a film directed by Raja Nawathe from a screenplay by Dhruva Chatterjee. In addition, 5 Bambole per la Luna D'Agosto (1970) is an uncredited giallo adaptation by Mario Bava.

Television

Several variations of the original novel were adapted for television. For instance, the United Kingdom created two of different adaptions, the BBC adaption in 1949 and ITV adaptation in 1959. In addition, the United States created Ten Little Indians, directed by Paul Bogart, Philip F. Falcone, Leo Farrenkopf and Dan Zampino with the screenplay by Philip H. Reisman Jr., that was a truncated TV adaptation of the play. West German adapted Zehn kleine Negerlein that was directed by Hans Quest for ZDF in 1969. A year later in 1970, Pierre Sabbagh directed Dix petits nègres for the French television adaption. Also, the CBS mystery/show Harper's Island is very similar to the novel.

Other variations

The K.B.S. Productions Inc. film, A Study in Scarlet (1933), predates the publication of Ten Little Niggers and follows a strikingly similar plot. Though it is a Sherlock Holmes movie, the movie bears no resemblance to Arthur Conan Doyle's original story of the same name. In this case, the rhyme refers to "Ten Little Black Boys". The author of the movie's screenplay, Robert Florey, "doubted that [Christie] had seen A Study in Scarlet but he regarded it as a compliment if it had helped inspire her". In addition, several parodies have been made. One, the 1976 Broadway musical Something's Afoot, stars Tessie O'Shea as a female sleuth resembling Agatha Christie's fictional Miss Marple. Something's Afoot takes place in a remote English estate, where six guests have been invited for the weekend. The guests, as well as three servants and a young man who claims to have wandered innocently onto the estate, are then murdered one by one, several in full view of the audience, with the murderer's surprise identity revealed at the end. For an encore, the murdered cast members performed a song titled "I Owe It All to Agatha Christie". An episode of Remington Steele called "Steele Trap" follows the plot very closely, with whimsical murders on a remote island. The Rene Clair film adaptation from 1945 is referenced several times. The current television series Harper's Island is an extended variation of the Ten Little Indians concept.

The Japanese anime series Urusei Yatsura based episode 75 (also titled "And Then There Were None") off of the book. In the episode, 10 of the 11 involved characters seem to die, leaving the main character alone to discover the murderer. He discovers the event to be an elaborate farce constructed by his supposedly murdered companions, whose purpose was to scare him. For an interesting twist, the song: Cock Robin is used instead of "Ten Little Soldiers". In addition the Japanese visual novel Umineko no Naku Koro ni, currently airing in the form of an anime adaptation[1], was heavily influenced by the book. Similarities can be seen in such features as the characters being trapped on an island as they are murdered one-by-one in accordance with a rhyme, the seeming "unsolvable" nature of the crimes and in the many situations described as "closed room" scenarios, akin to the orchestration by Wargrave of his own murder as revealed in the book's postscript.

In 2005, The Adventure Company released And Then There Were None the video game as the first in a series of releases of PC games based on Christie novels. In February 2008 it was ported to the Wii console. In addition, And Then There Were None was released by HarperCollins as a graphic novel adaptation on 30 April 2009, adapted by François Rivière and illustrated by Frank Leclercq.

External links

• And Then There Were None at the official Agatha Christie website
• Ten Little Niggers (UK TV: 1948) at IMDb
• Ten Little Niggers (UK TV: 1959) at IMDb
• Ten Little Indians (US TV: 1959) at IMDb
• Zehn kleine Negerlein (West German TV: 1969) at IMDb
• Spark Notes for novel