And Then There Were None Chapters 10 - 12 Summary

After being told by Justice Wargrave the murderer must be one of them, the survivors start to look at each other in a new light. Vera Claythorne thinks Dr. Armstrong must be the murderer, because he was the one who gave Mrs. Rogers a sedative and he was alone when he discovered the body of General Macarthur. She thinks he might have gone mad from the stress of being a physician. Meanwhile, Philip Lombard suspects Justice Wargrave, because he as a judge is used to pronouncing judgement on others and the feeling of power might have made him feel omnipotent.

In another room Mr. Blore tells Mr. Rogers he has an idea who is behind the deaths, but he will not name names. The same goes for Justice Wargrave, he tells Dr. Armstrong he has a strong feeling about who is at fault, but again he declines to give a name.

Miss Brent is in her room writing in a notebook about the happenings on the island. She begins to express her feelings about the murders when out to the blue she writes, "THE MURDERER'S NAME IS BEATRICE TAYLOR..." She looks at what she has written and suddenly crosses it out, because she has no idea why she wrote those words.

The guests all gather for tea and later dinner, trying to act as normal as possible, but Miss Brent comments on the disappearance of two skeins of grey knitting-wool and Mr. Rogers informs the group of a missing bathroom curtain. The two events are dismissed as inconsequential to the matters at hand. The women and then the men all go to bed and make sure they bolt their doors. Mr. Rogers makes sure the dining room is locked up so no one can remove any more figurines from the table.

The next morning Philip Lombard cannot find Mr. Rogers in the house. He seeks out Mr. Blore, awakening him to ask him to help look for Mr. Rogers. Eventually everyone in the household joins in the search for Mr. Rogers, who is found dead in the wash-house. He has been hit in the back of the head with a large chopper, he was using a smaller chopper to cut wood for the household. Once again a figurine is missing from the dining room table, this despite the precautions Mr. Rogers had taken the night before.

Vera Claythorne begins to laugh uncontrollably and is asking about the presence of beehives on the island. The rest of the guests think she has gone mad, but as she points out, the murders are following the nursery rhyme posted in each of their rooms. The next line speaks of six little Indians playing with a hive, so she feels the next death must involve bees or a beehive.

Philip Lombard makes a case for Miss Brent as the killer. He tells Blore that he has heard of spinsters going mad before, and as Miss Brent is a spinster and a very religious self-rightous woman, he would not be surprised if she is the killer. Another factor pointing to her guilt is the walk she took by herself that morning, she had been warned not to go out alone, so he surmised the only reason she would do so is if she knows she has nothing to fear, because she is the killer. Mr. Blore acknowledges this line of reasoning does make sense.

Mr. Blore also confesses he did set up James Landor by giving false testimony at his trial. But in his mind it was worth it, because he received a promotion from Mr. Landor's conviction.

Try as they might to act normally around one another, each of them is suspecting the other of being the killer. After breakfast Vera Claythorne offers to the dishes, but Miss Brent tells them she must decline because she is feeling a bit dizzy. As the others take care of the dishes, Miss Brent begins to feel drowsy and then she sees a bumble bee on the window pane. After a while she thinks she feels the bee sting her, in the side of her neck, it is the last sensation she ever has. She is now victim number five.

The rest do not notice her absence, until it is time for them to gather in the drawing-room for a meeting about the recent events. Mr. Blore tells the others of his suspicions regarding Miss Brent and they decide to look for her. They find her dead in the chair she had been sitting in at breakfast. She has been injected with a hypodermic syringe, probably containing cyanide.

The doctor admits he has brought a syringe with him, but after looking for it in his medical case, finds it is not there. Miss. Claythorne has noticed the bumble bee on the window and points out to the others the bee, whose presence follows the nursery rhyme.

Justice Wargrave suggests they gather all the medicines and weapons they have brought to the island and secure them in one place. They, also, all submit to having their person's and rooms searched; it is found that Mr. Lombard's gun is missing. They decide to locate the gun, after the syringe and a figurine are found lying outside the window of the dining-room.

The group has now lost two more members, in a manner which loosely follows the nursery rhyme. They are growing more and more suspicious of each other with each new death. The anxiety and mystery of the deaths are working to cause each person to imagine the worst from the others.



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