And Then There Were None: ten crimes the law could not touch
A gramophone record accuses ten people of crimes no court ever tried them for. And someone on the island has decided to act as the court.
Ten people who do not know each other receive an invitation to an island off the Devon coast. On the first night, after dinner, a gramophone record accuses them one by one: every guest, and also the couple who keep the house, is responsible for someone’s death. Then they begin to die, in the order set by an old nursery rhyme hanging in every room.
The most interesting thing in And Then There Were None (1939), probably Agatha Christie’s best-selling novel, is not the mystery but the list of accusations. None of the ten has been convicted. A governess who let a child swim to his death, a doctor who operated drunk, a pious lady who threw her pregnant maid out on the street, a judge who sent a man to the gallows. They are crimes the law could not touch.
// The theoryThe dark figure on an island
Criminology calls the gap between the crimes that are committed and those that come to light and are punished the dark figure of crime. Christie builds the novel out of that material: harms no one reported, no one could prove or the law did not even regard as crime. Several of the guests are, moreover, respectable people. When Edwin Sutherland began to speak of white-collar crime, in that same year of 1939, he was pointing at something similar: the crimes of people in good standing rarely reach a court.
The murderer knows this better than anyone. Judge Lawrence Wargrave confesses at the end that two equally strong impulses lived in him all his life, a desire to kill and a fierce sense of justice, and that his office let him satisfy both within the law. Walter Reckless’s containment theory (1961) explains that balance: we all feel pushes towards crime, and we are held back by an inner and an outer containment. When an incurable illness takes Wargrave’s future away, the outer one disappears, and the inner one only decides whom to kill: culprits who got away with it.
Two brakes
Reckless distinguished between outer containment (one’s position, the rules, the people around us and what we stand to lose) and inner containment (self-concept, self-control and a sense of responsibility). Wargrave keeps the second intact when he loses the first, and that is why his crimes take the shape of a sentence.
Judge Wargrave
Read Judge Wargrave’s full case file · Containment →
// The suspectsFive guests in the archive
Besides Judge Wargrave, the archive holds four of his victims, each with a theory of their own. Vera Claythorne was cleared by the inquest, but not by her guilt, and psychoanalytic criminology helps explain her end. Philip Lombard left twenty-one men to die in East Africa and justifies it with a pub version of evolutionism: survival comes first.
Emily Brent reasons from Kohlberg’s law-and-order stage and feels no guilt at all over her maid’s death: she did the right thing. And Dr Armstrong is the textbook white-collar case: he operated drunk, the patient died and his profession protected him, as Sutherland’s differential association describes.
The island corrects the impunity, but Christie does not let the reader celebrate. The avenger is also a murderer who enjoys it, and his sentence allows no appeal. The novel raises the question criminology asks of any vigilante justice: who watches the one who judges.
// In the archiveThe And Then There Were None case files
All five have a full case file, with the theory that best explains each and its weak point. They are gathered in the And Then There Were None hub.
Three key ideas
- The ten accused in And Then There Were None share one thing: their crimes went unpunished, because no one reported them, they could not be proved or the law did not punish them.
- The dark figure of crime and Sutherland’s white-collar crime, from that same year of 1939, describe the same impunity of respectable people that Christie brings to the island.
- Reckless’s containment theory explains Judge Wargrave: when he loses his outer brakes he keeps the inner ones, which is why he only kills the guilty.
Sources · further reading
- Reckless, W. C. (1961). “A New Theory of Delinquency and Crime”. Federal Probation, 25, 42-46.
- Sutherland, E. H. (1940). “White-Collar Criminality”. American Sociological Review, 5(1), 1-12.
- Christie, A. (1939). And Then There Were None.
// Quick challengeWhich theory best explains Judge Wargrave?
Frequently asked questions
Who is the killer in And Then There Were None?
Judge Lawrence Wargrave. He fakes his own death with Dr Armstrong’s help and explains everything in a confession he puts in a bottle and throws into the sea, found after everyone has died.
Why does Judge Wargrave kill?
According to his confession, he always had a desire to kill and an equally strong sense of justice. Incurably ill, he decides to satisfy both by choosing people guilty of deaths the law had not punished.
What is each guest accused of in And Then There Were None?
Each is responsible for an unpunished death: Vera Claythorne let a child drown, Lombard abandoned twenty-one men in Africa, Emily Brent threw out her pregnant maid, Armstrong operated drunk and Wargrave sent a man to the gallows, among others.