And Then There Were None: Chapter 14-Epilogue

For all his sagacity, for all his caution and astuteness, the old judge had gone the way of the rest.

Self-righteous smug old hypocrite. Sitting up in court feeling like God Almighty.

Going over the whole business from the beginning, methodically, painstakingly, as he had been wont to do in his police officer days. It was thoroughness that paid in the end.

He had heard a footfall just outside his door. The hair rose slightly on his scalp. He knew fear again....Someone creeping about stealthily in the night.

He could hear sounds everywhere now, cracks, rustles, mysterious whispers—but his dogged, realistic brain knew them for what they were—the creations of his own heated imagination.

Blore went on stolidly: "If you're speaking the truth—there's only one thing to be done. As long as you have that revolver, Miss Claythorne and I are at your mercy. The only fair thing is to put that revolver with the other things that are locked up—and you and I will hold the two keys still."

They had made another abortive search of the island.

Vera said vehemently: "I didn't! I didn't! You've no right to say that!"

A sudden feeling of lassitude, of intense weariness, spread over Vera's limbs.

The terrace was peaceful and innocuous-looking in the sunshine.

Vera said with a raucous laugh: "Cold? I should be colder if I were dead!"

She held it steadily and unwaveringly.

Lombard's leaping body stayed poised in midspring then crashed heavily to the ground.

Vera came warily forward, the revolver ready in her hand.

He wasn't a very savoury gentleman, Mr. Morris. He was implicated in that share-pushing fraud of Bennito's three years ago—we're sure of that though we can't prove it.

He can wangle figures until the best chartered accountant in the country wouldn't know if he was on his head or his heels!

But there was a good deal of comment at the time—nine people out of ten thought Seton was innocent and that the judge's summing up had been vindictive.

Dr. Armstrong now. Well-known man. Had a consulting-room in Harley Street. Absolutely straight and aboveboard in his profession. Haven't been able to trace any record of an illegal operation or anything of that kind.

I have a definite sadistic delight in seeing or causing death.

But side by side with this went a contradictory trait—a strong sense of justice.

It is abhorrent to me that an innocent person or creature should suffer or die by any act of mine.

On at least two occasions I stopped cases where to my mind the accused was palpably innocent, directing the jury that there was no case.

I have always been strictly just and scrupulous in my summing up of a case.

My imagination, sternly checked by the exigencies of my profession, waxed secretly to colossal force.

It must be a fantastical crime—something stupendous—out of the common!

It had fascinated me as a child of two—the inexorable diminishment—the sense of inevitability.

His complete callousness and his inability to feel any responsibility for the lives he had taken made him, I considered, a type dangerous to the community and unfit to live.

To assuage that unhappiness he had taken a considerable quantity of drink.

He was in the maudlin confidential stage.

Without much hope of any result I automatically started my routine conversational gambit.

I did not tell the doctor of my decision—that my death should not be a slow and protracted one as it would be in the course of nature. No, my death should take place in a blaze of excitement. I would live before I died.

Tabulating the information I had collected about my prospective victims, I was able to concoct a suitable bait for each.

He accepted unhesitatingly—the man was a slight hypochondriac.

He was a gullible sort of man, he knew me by sight and reputation and it was inconceivable to him that a man of my standing should actually be a murderer!

I hinted to him that I had a scheme by which it might be possible to trap the murderer into incriminating himself.

We all submitted to a rigorous search.

It was then that I intimated to Armstrong that we must carry our plan into effect.

Would the consciousness of her own guilt, the state of nervous tension consequent on having just shot a man, be sufficient, together with the hypnotic suggestion of the surroundings, to cause her to take her own life?

There is a natural craving for recognition which cannot be gainsaid.

They know, therefore, that one of the ten people on the island was not a murderer in any sense of the word, and it follows, paradoxically, that that person must logically be the murderer.