This is a test of human nature, but also an analysis of human nature, an island, a villa and ten dead people, who is the murderer?
Why do the protagonists in the novel die mysteriously in the isolated island one by one? What the hell is going on in this island?
The story begins with eight letters, each of which corresponds to an invitation to one person, a total of eight people are invited to the mysterious and rich island, Indian Island,
The eight men were Judge Vogrove, teacher-in-law Vera Claythorne, businessman Philip Lombard, colonel's daughter Miss Emily Brent, General MacArthur, Dr. Armstrong, handsome man Anthony Marston and former police officer Mr. Bloor.
Although these eight people, with very different styles and do not know each other, they all made the same choice after receiving the invitation letter:
They chose to go to Indian Island.
Author: Agatha Christie
After some tossing and turning, the eight of them arrived at the Indian Island Villa, where two housekeepers were receiving them.
One was in charge of their daily lives, named Rovis, and the other was in charge of their food, Rovis's wife.
Vera was taken upstairs by Mrs. Rogers to a room with a window next to the sea, and Vera looked at everything in the room and was very happy, but suddenly found a nursery rhyme that did not match the style of the room at all.
This nursery rhyme is written about ten Indian boys:
The first boy suddenly choked to death while eating,
The second boy had been sleepless for years and suddenly fell asleep one day.
The third boy went hunting in the city and died in the city.
When the fourth boy was cutting down a branch, one accidentally hacked himself to death.
The fifth boy loves to fight lawsuits, and as a result, he is entangled in lawsuits and dies.
The sixth boy, because he likes to play with honeycombs, is stung to death by a horse bee.
The seventh boy went out to sea to fish, and accidentally entered the sea,
The eighth boy was caught by a bear in the zoo,
The ninth boy died of sunburn because he was sad in the sun,
The last boy hanged himself because he was left alone.
Rowis was a little surprised to see the lyrics of the nursery rhyme, but the beauty of the room soon made her forget about the nursery rhyme.
Meanwhile, Anthony was taking a bath, Mr. Bloor was wearing a tie, and Lombard felt something was wrong, but at sea he had not found the tools to return to shore and could only stay.
Brent sat in his bedroom in his silk pajamas, reading the Bible and muttering:
"He who does evil will suffer his sins, and he who does evil will go to hell."
The bell of the meal rang, and they gathered in the dining room, drinking a few pots of small wine together, and gradually became familiar,
They suddenly noticed that there were ten small porcelain men in the center of the round table where they were eating, and Vera spoke of the Indian nursery rhymes in her room.
Others echoed Vera's suggestion that there were also Indian nursery rhymes in their rooms, but they only thought it was the pleasure of the villa owner,
For them, this half day on the island, eating delicious meals and drinking delicious wine, blowing a comfortable sea breeze, this half day of life is like a dream.
Suddenly everything around him became quiet. There is a "voice" coming into the ear, and the tone is cold and harsh:
"Ladies and gentlemen, please be quiet!"
Everyone was taken aback, looked back and forth, left and right, and looked at each other. Who's talking? But the loud and clear "voice" continues, and you are accused of the following crimes:
Armstrong, you caused the death of Louisa Chris.
Emily Brent, you are solely responsible for the death of Atrice Taylor.
Bloor, it was you who caused James's life to whine.
Vila Claythorne, you murdered Cyril
Lombard, you have committed the crime of killing twenty-one men from the East African tribe.
MacArthur, you deliberately murdered your wife's lover, Richmond.
Anthony Marston, you killed John and Coombs.
Thomas Rogers and Ethel Rogers, you killed Jennifer.
Wargrave, you murdered Edward Seton.
It turned out that Rogers, the butler, had obeyed the orders of his employer Owen and had his wife put the record on the record player.
After Rogers' wife, the housekeeper, put the record on the record player, the sound came out and she was frightened and fainted. They placed Mrs. Rogers, who had fainted on the ground, and began to inquire about the record player.
After one by one, it was found that everyone had received a letter from Owen before coming to the island,
According to everyone's dictations, except for Vera, who was invited to be the secretary, and the doctor who consulted, the other letters had characters they did not know at all.
Although the form of Irving on each letter is different, each letter has the appearance of the opening letter "U" and "N", which together mean: anonymous
They began to panic and recounted the people who had just been mentioned in their voices, and each of them said:
"I am not a sinner."
For those who died, they were all innocent. They hurriedly asked how the food in Rogers' villa was served.
Rogers said that usually the next morning someone came to the island on a yacht to deliver food, so they decided to leave the island when the next day's food delivery person came.
But Anthony was so excited that he didn't want to go, he wanted to solve the puzzle,
He sat in a chair at the table and drank a glass of brandy excitedly, but his throat was suddenly choked and he died in that chair.
It was so sudden that all of them lost their breath and looked at the dead Anthony in a daze, and one of them opened his mouth to break the silence.
The doctors leaned over Anthony's nose and mouth and found that the brandy contained potassium chloride, and they suspected that Anthony had been murdered, but the wine had been poured by Anthony himself, possibly by suicide.
It was already twelve o'clock in the night, and they didn't want to go upstairs to rest, and it seemed that they could be at ease together, and they thought silently,
Bloor broke the quiet occasion and spoke his opinion, believing that Anthony would not commit suicide, and Armstrong responded: "I agree!" ”
But the others didn't want to delve into the issue, and Brent urged everyone to go to bed first. They said goodnight to each other and went into their respective rooms.
Judge Wargrave was in the room thinking of Edward Seton, who had been sentenced to death by himself at the time, and what he said was always justified, making everyone think that he should not be sentenced to death.
He also explained the questions raised by the other party very clearly, but Vogueleve still believed that he was guilty and should be executed.
General MacArthur tossed and turned on the ship thinking about Richmond's face, which he liked Richmond,
Because Richmond is his brother, but his wife Leslie betrayed him and fell in love with Richmond,
At that time, Leslie wrote letters to them all before the war, but the letters were in the wrong pockets, so he deliberately let Richmond die in battle.
Of course, Leslie didn't know what he did, and still lived with Richmond after his death, but Leslie was always lost after Richmond's death, and a few years later he fell ill with lung disease and left this world.
Leslie's death is now fifteen or sixteen years away, and he has been hiding from remembering Richmond's death and other people's accusations.
He suddenly thought that it was good to be in the small island house, which was much freer than the small house in his family.
Vera said in bed, "Hugo Hugo, why do you think you're staring at me tonight," and she couldn't forget the boy Cyril.
That night, Cyril took her hand and kept arguing, "I'm going to swim to the reef."
Cyril is Hugo's nephew, and Hugo says he loves her, but never proposes to her, knowing that Hugo didn't propose to her because of Cyril.
Cyril was born deficient, weak and weak, lacking in endurance, and he was a child who did not have much to live for. Thinking of this, Vera began to struggle, drank a few sleeping pills, and fell asleep.
The next morning, Dr. Armstrong suddenly had a dream, and he dreamed of the woman on the operating table, and the woman shouted: "Life is death, all the time there is no death...".
The patient was still laughing, and he desperately asked the nurse to bring him a drink and then operate on the woman, but his hand with the scalpel was trembling...
His body was pushed by Rogers, and he woke up suddenly, he saw Rogers's face turn pale, and after asking, he learned that Rogers's wife had suddenly fallen asleep and died.
Rogers wanted him to see the cause of his wife's death, and he didn't have the tools, so the cause of Rogers' wife's death became a mystery.
The rest of the people were chatting in the living room, waiting for the arrival of the yacht, and at breakfast, each of them did not mention the island, but talked about the news, trying to forget the dead man last night,
Armstrong didn't want to disturb the nature of the meal at breakfast, and only after breakfast did he say that Rogers' wife had died in her sleep.
When the Amsterdam doctor finished speaking, some screamed loudly, and some cowered to the side in fear.
The deaths of two people in succession made them realize the seriousness of the matter, but they did not know the death of Rogers's wife, nor could they verify anything.
It was already ten o'clock, the yacht still hadn't come, and they knew it wasn't coming.
Rogers suddenly brought Mr. Armstrong into the kitchen and said what he thought was very strange, the ten little porcelain men at the round table last night,
After Anthony's death, there were only nine left, and this morning, after Rogers' own wife died, there were only eight left on the table...
Brent invited Vera to climb to the top of the island to see if the ship was coming, Vera agreed, and Brent and Vera told Tyler about it.
Taylor is Brent's servant, in Brent's view, Taylor is not an honest girl, she is morally corrupt and debauched, Brent misreads Taylor,
She was pregnant with a wild man outside, and Brent's family couldn't tolerate her for a minute.
Brent also did not want to be accused of being covered up by her parents for protecting Taylor, and Taylor, who no one wanted, had nowhere to go and committed suicide by throwing himself into the river.
Vera looked at her in horror and asked, "Haven't you ever self-condemned?" ”
Brent said quietly and gently, "Me? What can I condemn myself? ”
There was no guilt on her face, her eyes were calm, both cold and confident, and in Vera's view, this old Brent was not ridiculous in an instant, but terrible.
Lombard and Dr. Armstrong believe that Anthony was murdered and Rogers' wife committed suicide.
They thought again of the fact that the ten little porcelain men had become eight, and they remembered the nursery rhyme:
Ten little Indian boys, running for food; choking to death one can't be saved, and only nine of the ten remain. Nine Indian boys, really sleepless late at night; when they fell asleep, they slept to death, and there were only eight left of the nine.
So the two of them decided that Owen must be on this island.
They pulled Bloor and they went on the isolated island looking for Owen, and the three of them circled around the island, saw MacArthur sitting by the sea as if he had gone mad, and heard him shouting softly, "Leslie....",
In order to find Owen, the three of them ignored MacArthur and searched the island, they searched up and down, and found nothing.
I wanted to go back to the house again, and I searched all the small corners of the house, but I still couldn't find anything, and the three of them stood at the entrance of the highest floor, looking at each other.
They were covered in cobwebs, and their faces were ugly, because they knew: there was no one else on the island except the eight of them!
Lombard said suspiciously that they had made a mistake and that all their reasoning would have to start all over again.
At this moment, the lunch bell rang, and everyone stopped what they were doing and gathered at the round table in the living room, and General MacArthur did not come,
Dr. Armstrong got up to look for him, and after a while there was a sudden sound of running footsteps outside, and they were facing each other.
As if they already knew what was going on, they looked toward the door in unison, "dead" Vera snapped the two words out, and Armstrong said, "Yes, he's dead." ”
There was another moment of silence, and the seven men looked at each other and lost their voices for a moment. They carried General MacArthur's body to his bed, and the storm came.
The judge gathered everyone together and asked everyone to say what they were doing in the afternoon, and after the explanation, everyone scrambled to say that it was not themselves.
But everyone's alibi was vague, they all had the opportunity to kill MacArthur, and the memories ended here, each returning to his room with different thoughts.
Before everyone returned to the room, the judge instructed everyone to lock the door, and Bloor said with the judge's words:
"It's best to hold two chairs against the door."
Rogers also carefully locked every part of the kitchen with locks, saying:
"There will be no more Indian tricks tonight, I'll take care of it."
The next morning, at dawn, Lombard woke up, and when he woke up, he went to get the others up one by one, and they got up and went downstairs.
They all gathered at the breakfast table, but Rogers did not appear for a long time, and Vera suddenly found that there were suddenly only six small porcelain men left on the round table.
Not long after, in their laundry room in the courtyard, they found Rogers hacked to death by an axe, and Vera suddenly lost control of her spirits and shouted:
"Is there honey in the isolated island?" Where do we go to get honey. ”
Then he screamed:
"Don't be silly, that nursery rhyme, look at the four of them dying exactly like the Indian boy!"
She laughed again, and Armstrong stepped forward and slapped Vera, who woke up.
Everyone walked silently to the kitchen, and the six people were calm and self-assured on the outside, but in fact, they were thinking in the clouds and rain,
Thinking about whether it was my turn next, thinking about who among them was Owen, looking at the six remaining porcelain dolls on the table, thinking to myself, how many will be left tonight?
Distraught, the judge sent everyone back to his room, saying that after half an hour of lunch, he would gather everyone together again.
But at this moment, Emily Brent suddenly began to feel dizzy, and she felt sleepy, as if she could fall asleep at once.
There was a buzzing in her ear, and she thought it was the sound of a bee, and she wanted to shout, help, but there was no sound in her mouth, and suddenly, her neck felt like it had been stung by a bee.
Half an hour later, Emily Brent did not come, Vera wanted to shout brent, but Bloor suddenly suspected that Brent was the murderer, and asked everyone to shout together.
They found Brent still sitting in the chair she had sat in after lunch, and Bloor said, "My God, she's dead." ”
There were only five small porcelain figures left on the table.
They began to suspect each other, they put Dr. Armstrong's medicine in a locked cupboard, they searched their respective rooms for dangerous goods, and Lombard found his pistol gone,
They began to look for the pistol, and at six forty o'clock in the afternoon Vera suddenly felt unwell and returned to the room, but when she returned to the room, Vera felt that she was about to suffocate.
The others rushed to Vera's room and rescued Vera in time, but at this time, the judge was shot and died on the sofa downstairs.
At this point, the vanished pistol was back in Lombard's hand.
The next day, Armstrong suddenly disappeared, and there were only three small porcelain men left on the table.
Vera, Bloor and Lombard thought Armstrong was absconding, the three of them sat together, Bloor did not want to sit passively, he returned to his room,
Suddenly, Vera and Lombard heard a loud noise, and they ran to Bloor's room, only to find that Bloor had been killed by a bear-shaped clock.
The two of them thought that Armstrong was ghosting and could not stay in the room, so they went to the beach, and in the process of walking around outside, they found Armstrong's body.
Vera proposes to move Armstrong's body from the seashore to the shore, and while moving the body, Vera steals Lombard's gun and kills Lombard.
But when she returned to the room, she saw that there was a rope noose in the room, and she thought that Cyril had come to her, and she put her head on the rope noose.
At this moment, she seemed to see Hugo watching her, watching her walk towards the destined path.
The isolated island killings were discovered shortly after by the British Police Service. Sir Thomas Legg, a special officer of the British Police Department to inquire about this incident,
They are investigating what really happened to this isolated island, they have guessed countless murderers, but they still have not found a trace.
But at sea was a letter from Judge Vograve's statement about the whole process of the crime, which told everything that happened here, but the secret of the isolated island drifted with the letter at sea, and no one knew.
All the people here are guilty, and if they are not punished by law, then they are not judged by law.
What these people do is very shocking and disgusting, but people cannot kill others because of their own desires.
Desire erodes everyone, desire is to make a person psychologically mad, people can not escape desire, but desire can be controlled,
Anyone who cannot control their desires will eventually be sentenced.