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And Then There Were None

Author	Agatha Christie
Original title	Ten Little Niggers
Cover artist	Stephen Bellman
Language	English
Genre	Mystery, crime, psychological thriller, horror
Publisher	Collins Crime Club
Publication date	6 November 1939
Publication place	United Kingdom
Pages	272
Preceded by	Murder Is Easy
Followed by	Sad Cypress
Website	And Then There Were None

And Then There Were None is a mystery novel by English writer Agatha Christie, her best selling novel and described by her as the most difficult of her books to write. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939, as Ten Little Niggers, after the blackface song, which serves as a major plot point.

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. 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.

Plot summary

On a hot 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" (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 describes each visitor in turn, accuses each of having committed murder but escaping justice, and then asks if any of "the accused" wishes to offer a defence. All but Anthony Marston and Philip Lombard deny the charges, and Miss Brent refuses to discuss the matter.

They discover that none of them actually knows the Owens, and Justice Wargrave concludes that the name "U.N. Owen" is shorthand for "Unknown". After the recording, Marston finishes his drink and immediately dies from cyanide poisoning. The remaining guests notice that one of the ten figurines is now broken, and the nursery rhyme appears to reflect the manner of death ("One choked his little self and then there were nine").

The next morning, Mrs Rogers' corpse is found in her bed; she had died in her sleep from an overdose of chloral hydrate. By lunchtime, General MacArthur is found dead, from a heavy blow to his head. Two more figurines are found to be broken, and again the deaths parallel the rhyme. Miss Brent relates the account of the gramophone charge against her to Vera Claythorne, who later tells the others.

A search for Mr Owen shows that nobody else is on the island except the remaining seven. The island is a "bare rock" with no hiding places, and no one could have arrived or left; thus, they conclude that any 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, and after breakfast, Miss 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 then suggests searching all the rooms, and any potentially dangerous items they can think of 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 briefly by Dr Armstrong and pronounced dead from a gunshot to the forehead.

That night, Lombard appears surprised when he finds his gun returned to his room. Blore catches a glimpse of someone leaving the house but loses the trail. He then discovers Armstrong is absent from his room, and the remaining three guests conclude that Armstrong must be the killer. 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 then 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.

Vera and Lombard are now confident that Armstrong is the killer. However, shortly afterwards, the duo come upon Armstrong's body washed up on the beach. They realize that Armstrong could not have killed Blore. Panicked, each concludes the other must be the killer. Quickly regaining her composure, Vera suggests moving the doctor's body past the shore, but this is a pretext. 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. With visions of her former lover Hugo urging her on, she adjusts the noose and kicks the chair out from under her.

Two Scotland Yard officials are puzzled by the identity of U.N. Owen. Although they can partially reconstruct the deaths from Marston to Wargrave with the help of the victims' diaries and a coroner's careful report, they conclude that U.N. Owen was one of the victims, but are unable to determine which one; they also think that none of the last four victims (Armstrong, Blore, Lombard, or Claythorne) can be U.N. Owen at all; for example the chair on which Vera stood to hang herself had been set back upright, indicating that someone was still alive on the island after her suicide, presumably the killer.

Postscript from the Killer

In a postscript, 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. It is not known how long after the killings the bottle was discovered.

In the confession, Justice Wargrave writes that he has long wished to set an unsolvable puzzle of murder. His victims would be of his choosing, as they were not found guilty in a trial. He explains how he tricked Dr Armstrong, who trusted the judge, into helping him fake his own death under the pretext that it would help the group identify the killer. He explains that he replaced the chair in Vera's room. Finally, he reveals how he used the gun and some elastic to ensure his own 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. He describes how his first victim was Isaac Morris, the sleazy lawyer and drug trafficker who anonymously purchased the island and arranged the invitations on his behalf, making nine murders and two suicides. Morris was poisoned before Wargrave departed for the island. Wargrave's intention is to stymie the police as to which person on the island was the murderer. He states that, although there are three clues that could guide the police to the correct killer, he is confident the mystery will remain unsolved until the confession is read.

Characters

The following details of the characters are based on the original novel published in England.

• Anthony James Marston, an amoral and irresponsible young man, killed two young children (John and Lucy Combes) while driving recklessly, for which he felt no real remorse and accepted no personal responsibility, complaining only that his driving licence had been suspended as a result. He was the first island victim.
• Mrs Ethel Rogers, the cook/housekeeper and Thomas Rogers' wife, described as a pale and ghost-like woman who walks in mortal fear. She was dominated by her bullying husband, who coerced her into agreeing to withhold 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 the second victim.
• 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.
• Thomas Rogers, the butler and Ethel Rogers' husband. He dominated his weak-willed wife, and they killed their former elderly 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 was still serving the others.
• Emily Caroline Brent, an elderly, religiously rigid, socially respectable spinster who accepted 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 put 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.
• 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 arrived 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.
• Philip Lombard, a soldier of fortune. Literally down to his last square meal when he met Isaac Morris who made the proposition which brought 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 U N Owen might be Wargrave, but the others reject this. He and Vera are the only victims not killed by Justice Wargrave.
• 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. Her job as a governess was ended by the death of her charge, Cyril Hamilton. Claythorne let the boy drown so his uncle Hugo Hamilton could inherit the family estate and marry her. Hugo rejected her when he somehow realized what she had done.
• 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 a lifelong hidden sadistic urge to kill, but only the guilty. Finding himself terminally ill, he devises and carries out this plot.
• Isaac Morris is a sleazy and unethical lawyer hired by Wargrave to purchase the island (under the name U N 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's is the first death chronologically, as he died before the guests arrived on the island. Morris was responsible for the addiction and suicide of a young woman through his narcotics activities. The victim was the daughter of a friend of Wargrave. A hypochondriac, Morris accepted a lethal cocktail of pills from Wargrave to help treat his largely self-imagined physical ailments.
• Fred Narracott, the boatman who delivered 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 which 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."

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."

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."

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."

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."

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." 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."

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".

Current published version of the rhyme

Main article: Ten Little Injuns

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 travelling 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.

19th-century original verses

This children's rhyme was originally written as songs in the 19th century, one in Britain in 1869 and one in the US in 1868.

1869 & 1868 verses

Ten Little Niggers (Frank Green)

Ten Little Indians (Septimus Winner)

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

Ten little Injuns standin' in a line, One toddled home and then there were nine; Nine little Injuns swingin' on a gate, One tumbled off and then there were eight. Refrain : One little, two little, three little, four little, five little Injuns boys, Six little, seven little, eight little, nine little, ten little Injuns boys. Eight little Injuns gayest under heav'n, One went to sleep and then there were seven; Seven little Injuns cutting up their tricks, One broke his neck and then there were six. Six little Injuns kickin' all alive, One kick'd the bucket and then there were five; Five little Injuns on a cellar door, One tumbled in and then there were four. Four little Injuns up on a spree, One he got fuddled and then there were three; Three little Injuns out in a canoe, One tumbled overboard and then there were two. Two little Injuns foolin' with a gun, One shot t'other and then there was one; One little Injun livin' all alone, He got married and then there were none.

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. The book retailed for seven shillings and six pence.

In the United States it was published under the title And Then There Were None, again 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.

In the original UK novel 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. (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 changed to the current definitive title in 1985.

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. 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 the original title of the novel "Even in 1939, this title was considered too offensive for American publication." 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". 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." She felt that the original title of the novel in the UK, seen now, "that original title, it jars, viscerally."

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