Summary: Chapter XV
The remaining three eat breakfast. The storm is gone,and they feel as though a nightmare has passed. Lombard begins tomake plans to signal the mainland. They discuss Armstrong’s mysteriousdisappearance, and Lombard and Blore get into an argument: Blorefinds it sinister that Lombard has his revolver again, but Lombardrefuses to give it up. Blore suggests that Lombard may be the killer,and Lombard asks why he wouldn’t simply shoot Blore if he were the murderer.Vera scolds them for being distracted. She points out the versein the rhyme that applies to Armstrong’s death: “A red herring swallowedone and then there were three.” A “red herring” is a term for afalse lead or a decoy, and she thinks that Armstrong is not reallydead and that he has tricked them somehow. Blore points out thatthe next line is about a zoo, which the murderer will have a difficulttime enacting on their island, but Vera says impatiently that theyare turning into animals.
Vera, Blore, and Lombard spend the morning on the cliffstrying to signal a distress message to the coast using a mirror,but they get no answer. They decide to stay outside to avoid thedanger of the house, but eventually Blore wants to fetch somethingto eat. He is nervous about going alone, but Lombard refuses tolend him the revolver. When Blore is gone, Lombard tries to convinceVera that Blore is probably the killer. Vera says she thinks Armstrongmust still be alive. She then suggests that the killer could bealien or supernatural. Lombard thinks this mention of the supernaturalindicates Vera’s troubled conscience and asks her if she did killCyril. She vehemently denies it at first, but when he asks if aman was involved, she feels exhausted and admits that there wasa man involved. They hear a faint crash from the house and go toinvestigate. Blore has been crushed by something thrown from Vera’swindow: the bear-shaped marble clock that stood on her mantle. Thinkingthat Armstrong must be inside the house somewhere, the two go towait for help. On their way to the cliffs, they see something onthe beach below. They climb down to look and there find Armstrong’sbody.
Summary: Chapter XVI
Vera and Lombard, dazed, stand over Armstrong’s body.Vera looks at Lombard and sees his wolflike face and sharp teeth.Lombard nastily says that the end has come. Vera suggests they movethe body above the water line. Lombard sneers at her, but agrees.When they are finished, Lombard realizes something is wrong andwheels around to find Vera pointing his revolver at him. She haspicked it from his pocket. He decides to gamble and lunges at her;she automatically pulls the trigger and Lombard falls to the ground,shot through the heart.
Vera feels an enormous wave of relief and severe exhaustion.She heads back to the house to get some sleep before help arrives.As she enters the house, she sees the three statues on the table.She breaks two of them and picks the third up, trying to rememberthe last line of the poem. She thinks it is “He got married andthen there were none.” She begins to think of Hugo, the man sheloved but lost as a result of Cyril’s drowning. At the top of thestairs she drops the revolver without noticing what she does. Shefeels sure that Hugo is waiting for her upstairs. When she opensthe door of her bedroom, she sees a noose hanging from the blackhook that previously held the seaweed. She sees that Hugo wantsher to hang herself, and then she remembers the real last line ofthe poem: “He went and hanged himself and then there were none.”Without a second thought she puts her head in the noose and kicksaway the chair.
Analysis: Chapters XV–XVI
The apparent end of the novel is calculated to leave usin a state of utter confusion. Since we have no idea that Wargraveis still alive, it seems that the murderer must either be Vera orLombard. Yet we are left with no idea how either one could possiblyhave killed Blore, whose death takes place while the two are togetherby the sea, or, for that matter, how either could have killed Armstrong,since both of them are asleep in the house when he goes outside.Additionally, there is the matter of the Indian figurines, whichcontinue to disappear like clockwork even when the house is apparentlyempty.
When all of these facts are considered, the only possibleconclusion is the correct one—namely, that someone else is stillalive on the island. Yet all the evidence that the novel has providedthus far suggests that this is impossible. In their final confrontation,both Vera and Lombard accept it as a given that they are alone onIndian Island, and each assumes that the other is the killer. Ina way, their behavior is irrational, since they should know thatneither one of them could possibly have killed Blore. This kindof perfect rationality, however, may be too much to ask of a pairof human beings who have endured such a strange and terrible sequenceof events. In the end, both Lombard and Vera accept the logic ofthe poem, and they assume that everyone who seems to have died reallyis dead. A careful examination of the evidence is beyond their capabilities.
