History Fridge / AndThenThereWereNone

** All the guest rooms were upstairs. Wargrave's was the first room at the top of the stairs, as Legge and Maine note that the revolver was found just inside the door of the room at the top of the stairs-Wargrave's room. I don't recall any significance to room placement being discussed in the book. Maybe Wargrave did it since the "Owens" left exacting instructions for the Rogers', and felt that one of the things they'd be exacting about was a list of each room for each guest.

While the record of missionaries in British colonies was...mixed, most of them insisted they were helping the natives by providing a higher level of civilization for their converts.

*** Vera isn't alarmed because they all assume Armstrong took the seventh figure himself and disposed of it before going into hiding. Vera has dialogue where she says that she believes Armstrong took it and got rid of it to convince the other three that he was dead, and believes the "red herring" has to do with him NOT being dead. With that in mind, three is correct. They find Armstrong isn't the killer, then she shoots Lombard thinking HE'S the killer, and notes before she goes upstairs they're behind the times and breaks two herself.

* Why did U.N. Owen give clear instructions as to which guest should stay in which room? At least to ensure that 1) Vera gets a room which is upstairs and contains some seaweed (or how did this whole seaweed prank work?) Possibly having the bear clock specifically in Vera's room also mattered - to throw suspicion on her having arranged it as a trap in her own room); 2) Wargrave gets a room downstairs which he is most likely to enter and exit unnoticed at night, and so that his suicide gun contraption would work exactly as practiced beforehand (since it was probably tailored to the specific room layout, by the look of things). Not sure if other locations had any significance though.

*** Probably the latter then, since, as said before, with the apparent death of everyone but Vera and with seemingly no chance for anyone to have entered the house to remove the third figurine, it's rather, on the contrary, a "correct" number of figurines (two or one) that would/should have alerted Vera...

*** Probably the latter then, since, as said before, with the apparent death of everyone but Vera and with seemingly no chance for anyone to have entered the house to remove the third figurine, it's rather, on the contrary, a "correct" number of figurines (namely, two) that would/should have alerted Vera...

* Why did U.N. Owen give clear instructions as to which guest should stay in which room? At least to ensure that 1) Vera gets a room which is upstairs and contains some seaweed (possibly the bear clock also mattered, to throw suspicion on her having arranged it as a trap in her own room); 2) Wargrave gets a room downstairs which he is most likely to enter and exit unnoticed at night, and so that his suicide gun contraption would work exactly as practiced beforehand (since it was probably tailored to the specific room layout, by the look of things). Not sure if other locations had any significance though.

* Why did U.N. Owen give clear instructions as to which guest should stay in which room? At least to ensure that 1) Vera gets the room upstairs and with the seaweed (possibly the bear clock also mattered, to throw suspicion on her having arranged it as a trap in her own room); 2) Wargrave gets a room downstairs which he is most likely to enter and exit unnoticed at night, and so that his suicide gun contraption would work exactly as practiced beforehand (since it was probably tailored to the specific room layout, by the look of things). Not sure if other locations had any significance though.

*** As a clue for whom, exactly? U.N. Owen giving Vera a last chance to realize something's wrong? Or you mean like a Doylist kind of clue just for us readers?

*** As a clue for whom, exactly? Last chance for Vera to realize something's wrong? Or you mean like a Doylist kind of clue just for us readers?

* Why did U.N. Owen give clear instructions as to which guest should stay in which room? At least to ensure that 1) Vera gets the room with the seaweed (possibly the bear also mattered, to throw suspicion on her having arranged it as a trap in her own room); 2) Wargrave gets a room which he is most likely to enter and exit unnoticed at night, and to practice his suicide gun contraption beforehand (which was probably tailored to the specific room layout, by the look of things). Not sure if other locations had any significance though.

--> Constance Culmington, he reflected to himself, was exactly the kind of woman who ''would'' buy an island and surround herself in mystery. [[RewatchBonus Nodding in gentle approval of his logic]], Lawrence Wargrave allowed himself to drift to sleep.

** By the way, it's strange that the police don't mention Constance at all - Dame Agatha must have totally forgotten about her :)

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[[folder: Book]]

--> Constance Culmington, he reflected to himself, was exactly the kind of woman who ''would'' buy an island and surround herself in mystery. [[RewatchBonus Nodding in gentle approval of his logic]], Lawrence Wargrave allowed himself to drift to sleep.
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[[folder: 2015 television mini-series]]
[[AC: Fridge Brilliance]]
* At the climax, Wargrave delivers a MotiveRant to Vera while she's hanging precariously from the noose, in which he explains why he did what he did. Why? It could just be Wargrave wanting to reveal his perfect crime to someone before he dies, but there's another possible explanation. While begging for her life, Vera points out that there are no more bullets for Wargrave and offers to help him throw the blame on Lombard if he'll spare her. After Wargrave points out some possible holes in her proposed story, Vera assures him that "they believed me last time," and it's only ''after'' this that Wargrave pulls away the chair she's balanced on and leaves her to die. While Vera's crime is arguably the most abhorrent, it's also the most potentially ambiguous -- her story is very plausible, she's already been cleared by a coroner's court, her innocent act has been incredibly convincing ("Miss Claythorne, how beguiling you are!"), only two people know for sure exactly what happened in her case and one of them is dead. While he certainly suspects, Wargrave can't actually know for certain that it ''wasn't'' just a tragic accident in her case... until she herself tells him that it wasn't. Wargrave isn't just gloating or explaining the plot for the audience; he's baiting Vera so that he can confirm for himself that she ''is'' a murderer before he carries out her 'sentence'.
** Wargrave may also have had another reason to talk to Vera instead of simply letting her hang herself without interference linked to how guilty he found her. In the book, he says that he wanted to save the guiltiest people for last so that they would experience the greatest psychological torment and the most painful deaths. Vera had, in spite of everything that happened, managed to enter a strange sort of zen state where she believed herself to be the [[FinalGirl final surviving heroine]] who had bested the treacherous villain Lombard and would now [[FaceDeathWithDignity gracefully accept her fate to reunite with Cyril]], but Wargrave revealing himself to her destroyed that small bit of peace of mind and turned her into a pathetic, flailing woman who realized that she had made the worst decision possible in killing Lombard instead of listening to him, experienced a lengthy period of agony from the noose literally tightening around her neck as Wargrave talked to her, and only confirmed that she was a ManipulativeBitch who lied to everyone about Cyril's death and was willing to throw the man she had seemingly fallen in love with under the bus to save her life through her desperate attempts to bargain with Wargrave. By not letting Vera calmly hang herself and instead making it clear to her that she had ''not'' in fact "won", Wargrave both exposes Vera as the AssholeVictim she is ''and'' ensures that she suffers the most prolonged and painful death of the cast as the one he considered to be the guiltiest.
** And why is Vera Wargrave's "favourite"? Because she's both the worst murderer of the lot and is also the most convincing in her innocent act. It's far more satisfying to expose, break and destroy her than, say, Anthony Marston, a little brat who's too self-absorbed and narcissistic to even bother pretending he didn't do it.
*** One most convincing in her innocent act was probably Emily Brent, whou wouldn't even admit to herself her actions had anything to do with the girl's death. It might be symbolic that both Anthony's and Vera's victims were children.
*** But is that convincing, or is that just denial? Emily Brent might have convinced ''herself'' of her own innocence, but everyone else probably didn't have to spend very long with her to realise that there's more than a hint of smug self-righteousness, self-satisfaction and hypocrisy to her character.
* The use of "Soldier Boys" instead of "Indian" or "Nigger," and "Soldier Island," works so well in the series, and not only because it removes unnecessary, racist artifacts of the language. In the screenplay, the Great War looms over the entire cast like a stormcloud. Those who remember living and fighting in the war (especially Armstrong and Macarthur) are deeply scarred by it. The use of the world "Soldier" just brings this nightmare back to those that remember.
** It's not the only nightmarish war looming over events either, although the characters don't know it. [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII The story is set in late August 1939.]]
*** It ''is'' hinted at though, as when Lombard remarks: "there's always another war..."
* At the beginning of the series, Vera becomes uncomfortable with Lombard ogling her on the train and moves to sit in the same compartment as Wargrave. This cleverly foreshadows Vera's ultimate fate -- her distrust of Lombard in spite of their sexual attraction to each other causes her to abandon him and enter a place where Wargrave lies in wait.
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