And Then There Were None

First, there were ten - a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a
private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them,
is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to
reveal - and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder. One by one
they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. And only the dead are above
suspicion.

“And Then There Were None” is a mystery novel by Agatha Christie, considered her
masterpiece and described by her as the most difficult of her books to write.

“And Then There Were None”, written in 1939, breaks more rules of the mystery genre. No
detective solves the case, the murderer escapes from the law’s grasp, and the plot construction
makes guessing the killer’s identity nearly impossible. Despite this rule-breaking, or perhaps
because of it, “And Then There Were None” ranks as one of Christie’s most popular and
critically acclaimed novels. It was made into a stage play, and several film versions have been
produced, the most celebrated of which is the 1945 version starring Barry Fitzgerald and Walter
Huston.

The whole novel is a thrilling page-turner, practically forcing us to stay up too late flipping pages
to find out who’s the next to die.

The novel achieves this delicious suspense by making sure that we never know more than the
characters do. We don’t get to see the killer moving through the night while everyone is asleep.
We don’t look inside the killer’s head. We only know that everyone is dying off one by one, just
like the creepy old nursery rhyme predicts.

Christie manages to keeps us in suspense even though she uses an omniscient third-person
narrator.

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 bumble bee 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 little soldier boy left all alone;

He went and hanged himself

And then there were None.

—Frank Green, 1869

How’s this for an ending: police officers find ten dead bodies on the island and clear evidence
that someone else killed them. What are they supposed to do with that?

Luckily, Christie clears things up for us with an epilogue, which reveals the mystery via a real-
life message in a bottle. No, seriously. A message in a bottle washes up on shore, stuffed with
Justice Wargrave’s detailed explanation of engineering the whole setup at Soldier Island. So, the
ending wraps up everything up by solving the supposedly unsolvable mystery.

It also gives us some insight into the mind of a killer. Wargrave reveals the logic—ahem,
“logic”—behind his decision to commit the crimes and then confess to them:

Why?

Yes, why?

It was my ambition to invent a murder mystery that no one could solve.

Eight people, all strangers to each other, are invited to Indian Island, off the English coast. Vera
Claythorne, a former governess, thinks she has been hired as a secretary; Philip Lombard, an
adventurer, and William Blore, an ex-detective, think they have been hired to look out for trouble
over the weekend; Dr. Armstrong thinks he has been hired to look after the wife of the island’s
owner. Emily Brent, General Macarthur, Tony Marston, and Judge Wargrave think they are
going to visit old friends.

When they arrive on the island, the guests are greeted by Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, the butler and
housekeeper, who report that the host, someone they call Mr. Owen, will not arrive until the next
day. That evening, as all the guests gather in the drawing room after an excellent dinner, they
hear a recorded voice accusing each of them of a specific murder committed in the past and
never uncovered. They compare notes and realize that none of them, including the servants,
knows “Mr. Owen,” which suggests that they were brought here according to someone’s strange
plan.

In the novel, ten people are enticed into coming to an island under different pretexts, e.g. offers
of employment or to enjoy a late summer holiday, or to meet with old friends. All have been
complicit in the death(s) of other human beings but either escaped justice or committed an act
that was not subject to legal sanction. The guests are charged with their respective "crimes" by a
gramophone recording after dinner the first night and informed that they have been brought to
the island to pay for their actions. They are the only people on the island, and cannot escape due
to the distance from the mainland and the inclement weather, yet gradually all ten are killed in
turn, in a manner that seems to parallel the ten deaths in the nursery rhyme. Nobody else seems
to be left alive on the island by the apparently last death. A confession in the form of a postscript
to the novel, unveils how the killings took place and who was responsible.

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

Ten strangers arrive on an island invited by an unknown host. Each of them has a secret to hide
and a crime for which they must pay.
This is the story that made Agatha Christie the best-selling novelist of all time and is read the
world over in more than 50 languages. “It was so difficult to do,” she writes, “that the idea had
fascinated me.” It was an idea which is now the basis for many Hollywood horror films and has
become a cliché to modern audiences, but it was Agatha Christie who was the first to do it and so
successfully that the story has become her most adapted piece.

Christie began the adaptations, determined to challenge herself further by moving the story to the
stage. It was performed in 1943 under the book’s original UK title, Ten Little Niggers, and
changed the ending as both she and the producers were concerned about leaving the audience on
a low note. More recently in 2005, Kevin Elyot, screenwriter for many of the Poirot and Marple
episodes, wrote a new version of the play, restoring the original ending of the novel and using
the US title.

The first adaptation for cinema was in 1945 with René Clair’s seminal film. This escalated
Christie’s stories to a whole new level and paved the way for an influx of adaptations, some of
which Christie approved of and some which were made without her permission. 1949 saw And
Then There Were None (again adapted under its original UK title) broadcast on the BBC,
making it the first of Christie’s novels to appear on TV. Another British channel, ITV, produced
their own version in 1959 and an American TV version was also made. Subsequent adaptations
include the 1965 film by George Pollock (famed for the Margaret Rutherford Marple films) and
the 1974 version by Peter Welbeck, the first to be made in colour.

The Hindi film Gumnaan in 1965 added Bollywood touches, including music and comedy, to the
plot but was an unlicensed production which Christie had not approved. Similarly, a West
German adaptation, Zehn kleine Negerlein, was directed by Hans Quest in 1969. In 1970 the
story appeared on French TV and there was even a 1981 six-part adaptation made in Cuba. 1987
saw a Russian version titled Desyat' negrityat; this was rare in its use of the novel’s original
ending. 1989 saw another US film, Ten Little Indians, directed by Alan Birkinshaw.

The story has also inspired many parodies including the spoof Murder by Death (1976), which
starred Sir Alec Guinness, Maggie Smith and Truman Capote among others, and even an episode
of US cartoon Family Guy, titled And Then There Were Fewer (2010).
It was made into a PC game in 2005 by The Adventure Company, the first in a series of Agatha
Christie games. The identity of the killer was changed and it was ported to Wii in 2008. In 2009
HarperCollins, Christie’s long-standing publishers, released a graphic novel adaptation and in
2010 BBC Radio 4 produced a full-cast 90 minute dramatisation.