Summary: Epilogue
I have wanted—let me admit it frankly—to
commit a murder myself. . . . I was, or could be, an artist in crime!
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Two policeman, Sir Thomas Legge and Inspector Maine, discuss
the perplexing Indian Island case. They have reconstructed much
of what happened on Indian Island from diaries kept by various guests. It
is clear to them that the murderer was not Blore, Lombard, or Vera.
When they arrived, the police found the chair Vera kicked away to
hang herself mysteriously set upright against the wall. We learn
that Isaac Morris, who hired Lombard and Blore and bought the island
in the name of U. N. Owen, died of an apparent sleeping-pill overdose
the night the guests arrived on the island. The police suspect that
Morris was murdered. The police know that the people
of Sticklehaven were instructed to ignore any distress signals from
the island; they were told that everything taking place on the island
was part of a game being played by the wealthy owners of the island
and their guests.
The rest of the epilogue takes the form of a manuscript
in a bottle, found by a fisherman and given to the police. It is
written by Judge Wargrave, who writes that the manuscript offers
the solution to an unsolved crime. He says he was a sadistic child
with both a lust for killing and a strong sense of justice. Reading
mysteries always satisfied him. He went into law, an appropriate
career for him because it allowed him to indulge his zeal for death
within the confines of the law. Watching guilty persons squirm become
a new pleasure for him. After many years as a judge, he developed
the desire to play executioner. He wanted to kill in an extraordinary,
theatrical way, while adhering to his own sense of justice. One
day, a doctor mentioned to Wargrave the number of murders that must
go unpunished, citing a recently deceased woman he felt sure was
killed by the married couple who worked as her servants. Because
the couple withheld a needed drug in order to kill her, the murder
could never be proven. This story inspired Wargrave to plan multiple
murders of people who had killed but could not be prosecuted under
the law. He thought of the “Ten Little Indian” rhyme that he loved
as a child for its series of inevitable deaths.
Wargrave took his time gathering a list of victims, bringing
up the topic of unpunished murders in casual conversations and hoping
someone would mention a case of which they knew. Wargrave learned
he was terminally ill and decided to kill himself after doing away
with his victims. Wargrave’s tenth victim, we learn, was Isaac Morris,
who acted as his agent in making the arrangements for Indian Island,
and who had been responsible for selling drugs to a young acquaintance
of Wargrave, who subsequently killed herself. Before leaving for
Indian Island, Wargrave gave Morris poison, which he claimed was
a cure for Morris’s indigestion.
Wargrave killed Marston and Mrs. Rogers first, he writes, because
they bore the least responsibility for their crimes—Marston because
he was born without a sense of moral responsibility, and Mrs. Rogers
because she was under the sway of her husband when they murdered
their elderly employer. Next he killed General Macarthur, sneaking
up on him near the ocean. Wargrave goes on to describe how he tricked
Armstrong into becoming his ally: Armstrong, he notes, “was a gullible
sort of man . . . it was inconceivable to him that a man of my standing
should actually be a murderer.” He notes that he killed Mr. Rogers
while the butler was out chopping sticks. At breakfast, he poisoned
Emily Brent. Later, Armstrong agreed to help Wargrave fake his death,
and pretended to examine the body of the judge and find a gunhot
wound on his forehead. Wargrave arranged to sneak out
and meet the Armstrong by the shore that evening. There, he pushed
Armstrong over a cliff into the ocean.
After Armstrong’s death, Wargrave returned to his room
and played dead. Killing Blore was easy, since the ex-policeman
foolishly came up to the house alone, and Wargrave then watched
with satisfaction as Vera disposed of Lombard. Wargrave writes that
he would have killed Vera himself, but he wanted to make her death
fit the rhyme, so he set up her room in a suggestive way, with a
noose hanging down and the smell of the sea wafting in, letting
Vera’s own guilt drive her to suicide.
Wargrave says he wrote the manuscript because he takes
an artist’s pleasure in his own work and wants recognition. He wonders
if the police will pick up on three clues: first, that Wargrave
was the odd man out—he was not really guilty of a murder, as the
rest were, since in condemning Edward Seton to death he condemned
a guilty man. Second, the line about the “red herring” points to
the fact that Armstrong was somehow tricked into his death. Third,
Wargrave’s death by a bullet through the forehead will leave a red
mark like the brand of Cain, the first murderer in the biblical
book of Genesis.
