Summary: Chapter XIII
Armstrong raised the limp hand. . . .
He said—and his voice was expressionless, dead, far away: “He’s
been shot . . . ”
(See Important Quotations Explained)
The uneasy group sits in the drawing room. Armstrong
seems particularly nervous; he lights cigarette after cigarette
with shaky hands. The guests use candles, since Rogers is no longer
around to operate the house’s generator. Vera offers to make tea,
and the other four go with her to watch her make it. They tacitly
agree that only one person will go anywhere at a time, while the
other four stay together.
Later, Vera gets up to take a shower. She enters her
room and suddenly feels as if she were again at the seashore where
Cyril drowned. She smells the salt of the sea, and the wind blows
out her candle. She feels something wet and clammy touch her throat,
and screams. The men rush to the rescue and find that it was a piece
of seaweed hanging from the ceiling that scared her. Lombard thinks
it was meant to frighten her to death. Blore fetches a glass of
alcohol, and they feud over whether he might have poisoned it. Suddenly,
they notice that Wargrave is not with them. They hurry downstairs,
and find him sitting in a chair, dressed in the red curtain that
was missing and a gray judge’s wig made from some wool that Emily
had lost. Armstrong inspects Wargrave and says that he has been
shot in the head. Wargrave’s body is carried to his room. Again,
everyone notices the similarity to the “Ten Little Indians” poem:
“Five little Indian boys going in for law; one got in Chancery [dressed
like a judge] and then there were four.”
Summary: Chapter XIV
The remaining four eat canned tongue for dinner and then
go to bed. Everyone thinks he or she now knows the killer’s identity,
although no one makes an accusation aloud. Entering his room, Lombard notes
that his gun is back in its drawer. Vera lies awake, tormented by
memories of Cyril’s drowning. She recalls telling him he could swim
out to the rock, knowing that he would be unable to make it and
would drown. She wonders if Hugo knows what she did. Vera notices
a hook in the ceiling and realizes that the seaweed must have hung
from it. For some reason, the black hook fascinates her.
Lying in bed, Blore tries to go over the facts of the
case in his head, but his thoughts keep returning to his framing
of Landor. He hears a noise outside. He listens at the door and
hears it again. Slipping outside into the hall, he sees a figure
going downstairs and out the front door. Blore checks the rooms
and finds that Armstrong is not in his room. He wakes Lombard and
Vera. The two men tell Vera to remain in her room, and they hurry
outside to investigate. In her room, Vera thinks she hears the sound
of breaking glass and then stealthy footsteps moving in the house.
Blore and Lombard return without finding anyone: the island is empty,
and Armstrong seems to have vanished. In the house they find a broken
windowpane and only three Indian figurines in the dining room.
Analysis: Chapters XIII–XIV
The death of Wargrave and the disappearance of Armstrong
mark the novel’s climax. Although neither we nor the remaining characters
realize it at this juncture, Wargrave is not dead; rather, he and Armstrong
have conspired to fake his death. Armstrong does not suspect Wargrave,
largely because of Wargrave’s place in society, and this trust reflects
Armstrong’s fatal obsession with social status. He thinks that the
trick of faking Wargrave’s death will confuse the murderer and flush
him out into the open. Instead, it leads to Armstrong’s own death
and fundamentally changes the murderer’s relationship to the rest
of the group. Before these chapters, Wargrave is simply part of
the group, one suspect among many. Now, his place on the island
has changed, since everyone else (except for Armstrong, his co-conspirator)
believes him to be dead. His deceit makes him more vulnerable, in
a sense, since if anyone catches a glimpse of him moving around
the island, his guilt will be obvious. At the same time, however,
no one else is even aware that he is alive, which increases his
freedom of action dramatically. He can do as he pleases, and, as
long as he returns to his room undetected and pretends to be dead,
no one will even suspect him.
Of course, our understanding of these climactic scenes
is complicated by the fact that their crucial events are hidden
from us. Christie leaves us in the same situation as the remaining
guests—Blore, Vera, and Lombard—which dramatically increases the
suspense of the narrative. From this point onward, the murders seem
to defy rational explanation. For instance, Armstrong vanishes from the
island while everyone else is asleep. The deeds of the murderer thus
take on an almost supernatural quality, one that is heightened by
their continued correspondence to the “Ten Little Indians” poem.
One of the obvious themes of Christie’s novel is the working out
of justice, since all the murder victims are being punished for earlier
crimes. As the novel nears its end, this justice seems to be delivered
not by any human agent, but by some supernatural power, as if a
vengeful God is doling out punishment.
