What happens in Epilogue of And Then There Were None?
The Epilogue of And Then There Were None shifts away from the island story, presenting itself as a discovered document — a manuscript found in a bottle on the sea floor by a fishing trawler. In this document, Justice Lawrence Wargrave admits, in thorough and self-satisfied detail, to orchestrating the deaths of all ten individuals on Soldier Island. He shares that, driven by a lifelong desire to kill but also by a strong respect for the law, he crafted the perfect crime: choosing ten people guilty of crimes that went unpunished, enticing them to the island with false stories, and eliminating each one according to the rhyme of the Ten Little Soldiers. Wargrave explains how he staged his own death — using Lombard's gun and Armstrong's unsuspecting help — and how he ultimately shot himself with a setup designed to throw the gun into the sea, leaving no weapon behind and no living suspect. He ends his confession with clear enjoyment, confident that a clever detective will eventually piece together the mystery.
Analysis
Christie's Epilogue is a bold structural choice: after keeping the killer's identity hidden for fifteen chapters filled with growing anxiety, she reveals the truth not through a dramatic scene but via a posthumous document — a message in a bottle, discovered by chance. This decision is both playful and deeply unsettling. Wargrave's voice here is calm, almost scholarly, lacking the intense drama that characterized earlier moments. This flat tone is intentional; it reflects the judge's twisted mindset, treating mass murder as a clever puzzle that he has solved.
Through this confession, Christie reinterprets every detail the reader took at face value — Wargrave's "death," Armstrong's disappearance, the missing revolver — revealing how completely the story had been manipulated. The Ten Little Soldiers rhyme, which served as a countdown of dread throughout the novel, is now exposed as a script authored by Wargrave, blurring the line between killer and creator. This self-referential aspect draws in the reader: we have also found entertainment in the deaths, just as Wargrave wanted his audience to do.
The bottle as a means of delivery is Christie's nod to detective fiction norms. While the genre typically requires a detective to piece together the truth, here it's the criminal who constructs it and sends it to future generations. The epilogue thus concludes the novel with a sense of cold irony: true justice is never achieved.
Key quotes from Epilogue
“The whole thing was a most gratifying performance. I congratulate myself on it unreservedly.”
Wargrave concludes his written confession, his tone one of undisguised self-admiration that underscores the chilling absence of remorse.
“I have always been so unfortunate as to have a judge's mind. I have wanted to see the guilty suffer.”
Wargrave explains the psychological contradiction at his core — a lawman whose devotion to punishment curdled into a private appetite for killing.
“I wanted to commit a murder myself. I recognized this as the desire of the artist.”
In a pivotal self-diagnosis, Wargrave equates homicide with aesthetic creation, reframing his crimes as a perverse work of art.
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- cogitate
- To think deeply and carefully about something; to ponder or reflect at length on a problem or question.