Ten strangers, one island, a nursery rhyme that kills in order.
Who drives the story
A former governess haunted by the little boy, Cyril Hamilton, she let swim out to sea — and by Hugo, the uncle she loved who believed her guilty. She survives longest, kills Lombard in panic, and hangs herself at the rhyme's command.
A retired criminal judge with a lifelong hunger to kill and an equally strong sense of justice. He orchestrates all ten deaths, fakes his own murder, and confesses in a bottle.
A soldier of fortune who abandoned twenty-one men to die and carries a revolver he won't surrender. He survives to the final two, then is shot with his own gun.
A Harley Street doctor who once operated drunk on a patient. He is duped into helping stage Wargrave's death, then pushed off a cliff into the sea.
A former police inspector turned private investigator who arrives under the fake name 'Mr. Davis' to keep an eye on things. His old perjury sent a man to die in prison; a marble bear-clock ends him.
A pious elderly spinster who cast out her pregnant servant Beatrice Taylor and refuses to feel responsible. She is sedated and injected with cyanide, a bee left by her side.
A retired World War I general who sent his wife's lover, Arthur Richmond, on a fatal mission. He stops fighting, waits by the sea, and takes a blow to the head.
The butler and cook who serve the absent hosts and once withheld their employer's medicine for money. She dies in her sleep; he is felled at the woodpile with an axe.
Also in the story
A wealthy, careless young man who ran down two children and felt nothing. He dies first, choking on cyanide in his drink.
A shady agent who bought the island and made every arrangement for the unknown buyer. He dies of a barbiturate overdose before the story even starts.
How they are connected
She survives longest, kills Lombard in panic, and hangs herself at the rhyme's command.
Dr. Edward ArmstrongMr Justice Wargrave
He is duped into helping stage Wargrave's death, then pushed off a cliff into the sea.
Go deeper
Guilt without punishment · The killer as judge · Order as horror · Isolation strips the mask
Themes explainedThe full story act by act, the ending explained and a quick quiz.
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