And Then There Were None

During the whole life of investigating tons of mysterious murder cases, the assassination in Soldier Island seems to be the most suspicious and challenging case to me. Ten strangers are gathered together on an isolated island by a mysterious host. Subsequently, when they reveal the darkest secret of their devilish past, one by one, they die. The most impossible factor was that all of the ten bodies were found on the island, so no one would have the ability to be the murderer. That piece of the puzzle does not seem to fit. The case took me days and nights to collect evidence and give the perfectly fit explanation for all of it.

Looking at the scene overall, initially I have my eyes mostly on two people, Emily Brent and Justice Wargrave. The first suspicious person was Emily Brent. Brent was a hypocritical woman. She delighted with her holiness and by that she was able to fool everyone with her righteous behavior. With her prestigious mind, Brent believes that all the sinfulness will eventually lead to punishment. No matter what affects the punishment would create, and how painful it would be, her “moralistic” action toward other people will make her become more righteous. Moreover, Brent always acted as proper and neat toward other’s death. She didn’t feel surprised or panicked for the murderer. She consumed their actions, and drove themselves into their own death. This demonstrated the ideal killer: an emotionless type of person. However, the fact that Brent was killed by the cyanide syringe poison proved that she apparently couldn’t have done it. It must be someone else.

I now move on to my second subject, Justice Wargrave. Justice appeared as a fair judge who was always trying his best to help other people to find the killer. Once the murders begin, he is one of the calmest of the group, acting as a leader and helping to organize everyone’s thoughts on what to do. For a moment, we thought that he was a good person. However, the truth wasn’t as simple as that. I later conducted search on his profile and discovered that he had a reputation as a hanging judge, a cold blooded type of person. This could lead to the conclusion that what Wargrave did was simply control everyone to participate, and then follow his deathly scheme. However, once again Wargrave was killed with a shot on his head proving that he couldn’t be the killer. The most two suspicious subjects have been eliminated, and I was stuck from here. This seemed like the most unsolvable case to me.

Nevertheless, as I look closely at the report again, I noticed one unusual subject, Vera Claythorne. Vera was the last left standing on the island. She is willing to do anything in order to serve her own purpose, even denying that she was capable of committing the most heinous act, murder. Moreover, with her athletic figure and intelligence, she could come up with an unsolvable murder plan. By using her observation, she also recognizes the relation between the poem, the death and ten Indian figures, which she had carefully planned before. Furthermore, her unstable emotions disclose her guilt. Vera shows her nervousness, unsettled actions and hysteria toward danger, revealing that she would definitely be the killer. Vera couldn’t hide her feelings about what she was going to do. Her crime was cold, calculated and heartless.

Poisoning Anthony Marston