Episode 79: And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie)

Sarah Harrison: Welcome to Tea Tonic & Toxin, a book club and podcast for anyone who wants to explore the best mysteries and thrillers ever written. I’m your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters: And I’m your host Carolyn Daughters. Pour yourself a cup of tea, a gin and tonic …

Sarah Harrison: … but not a toxin …

Carolyn Daughters: And join us on a journey through 19th and 20th century mysteries and thrillers, every one of them a game changer.

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Sarah Harrison  01:51

Listeners, if you want your episodes in a more timely fashion, feel free to reach out and support Tea Tonic and Toxin, because we both have full-time jobs. We are not celebrity podcasters just yet. We’re on the verge, we’re just about to break through.

Carolyn Daughters  02:10

We’re a little backlogged, for sure.

Sarah Harrison  02:12

And Then There Were None book by Agatha Christie is a perfect December selection. It’s holiday like, it’s festive.

Carolyn Daughters  02:37

Our listener of the episode is Lisa Hogan from League City, Texas. Lisa says she rarely wins anything, but she did win And Then There Were None book by Agatha Christie that we were giving away on social media. We’ll be having these contests as well. All you have to do is rate us on your favorite podcast software. You need to follow us on our social platforms or sponsor us, any of these things will get you in the running for these free books we’re going to be giving away throughout 2025 and it also gives you a shout out and a really cool sticker.

Sarah Harrison  03:34

Let’s be real. Show subscribers always win. And I like to call it a flat packet of swag. Is what you get if you subscribe to this show, anything that’s flat that we have that fits in an envelope we send to you right now that includes three different stickers, three different styles bookmark.

Carolyn Daughters  03:54

And who knows? Random things from Sarah’s house?

Sarah Harrison  03:59

Some glitter, some of my children’s toys, etc. That is for you. For subscribers, you can subscribe on our platform, where it says support the show, or subscribe to our Patreon. Both links are in the show notes, and we will send you that flat, flat swag packet coming out. It’s pretty cool. I put all kinds of drawings on there and little wax seals. You know, receive a really fun piece of mail in the mail.

Carolyn Daughters  04:33

I want to get this. I don’t think I’ve seen some of these pieces. Maybe I need to do more for the show. I’m not doing quite enough, but I’m going to step it up in 2025.

Sarah Harrison  04:46

All right, we are also really excited to talk about And Then There Were None book by Agatha Christie. Ten people, each with something to hide and something to fear, are invited to an isolated mansion. One on Indian island by a host who surprisingly fails to appear on the island. They are cut off from everything but each other in the inescapable shadows of their own past lives. One by one, the guests share the darkest secrets of their wicked pasts, and one by one, they die, which among them is the killer? And Will any of them survive? Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion with a “B” copies in English and another billion in 100 foreign languages. That’s wild. She died in 1976 after a prolific career spanning six decades, published in 1939. And Then There Were None book is our final book selection of 2024. Tune in to see what we’re reading in 2025 and then there were nine ranks, number 19 on the list of America’s 100 most loved books by the Great American Read in 1990 Crime Writers Association ranked it 19th on their list of the top 100 crime novels of all time in 1995 Mystery Writers of America raked at 10th. In 2015 to mark her 120/5 birthday, it was named the world’s favorite Agatha Christie in a vote sponsored by Christie’s estate. You can learn more about And Then There Were None book and all our book selections and upcoming selections at teatonicandtoxin.com.

Carolyn Daughters  06:49

Today, we are so excited to have in studio Ann Claire to discuss And Then There Were None book by Agatha Christie. Ann Claire is the author of Dead and Gondola, the first book in her Christie Bookshop mystery series. That book was released in 2022 the second book in the series, last word to the wise, was released in 2023 her Bookmobile Mysteries, Santa Fe Cafe Mysteries, and Cyclist Guide Mysteries are available in print, e book and audio book formats on Amazon and from other booksellers, a Cyclist’s Guide to villains and vines. The second book in the Cyclist Guide Mysteries is scheduled to be released in May 2025 Anne earned degrees in geography, which took her all over the world. Now she lives with her geographer husband in Colorado, where the mountains beckon from their kitchen windows. When she’s not writing, you can find her hiking, gardening, herding house cats ,and enjoying a good mystery, especially one by Agatha Christie.

Ann Claire  07:50

Thank you. I’m so excited to be here we talk about Agatha Christie.

Sarah Harrison  07:55

You’re the perfect person to talk about Agatha Christie.

Carolyn Daughters  08:01

We’ll give everybody a teaser here. We’re doing a separate episode to talk to Ann about her writing about her background, Dead in Gondola, her various mystery series. So please listen to that episode as well.

Sarah Harrison  08:16

We read Dead and Gondola, and it really was, I felt like it was, it was a love letter to Agatha Christie. In so many ways. There’s so much Agatha Christie trivia. So many Agatha books are pivotal to the plot. It was really cool. And I think we wanted to open by having you read a little bit of And Then There Were None book.

Ann Claire  08:39

I will give it my best. I was saying I’m not an audio book narrator, but I will give it my best. What I will say is Dead and Gondola is very much a cozy mystery. And Then There Were None book is slightly less so.

Sarah Harrison  15:25

For our listeners, we will dive into Dead and Gondola on the next episode.

Carolyn Daughters  15:37

We’ll talk a lot about what a cozy mystery is and what some of the elements of it are.

Sarah Harrison  15:44

Do you consider And Then There Were None book a cozy mystery. Is all Agatha Christie’s work considered being cozy? Or what would you consider this particular book?

Ann Claire  16:01

It would definitely. It’s definitely not cozy mystery, is it? Would we call it a suspense? I was reading up on it. And Then There Were None book by Agatha Christie is almost like a horror novel.

Sarah Harrison  16:15

I feel like Agatha Christie gets dropped into that genre, but nothing felt super cozy about their desolate island madness.

Carolyn Daughters  16:25

There are 10 people are on this island, ostensibly, just the 10 of them alone on this island. And it’s a perfect locked door mystery, because nobody else can come and go and blocked Island, locked Island, yeah. That is a theme of a lot of the Golden Age mysteries. And we see it also in Dead and Gondola, where they’re all snowed in. And so it’s probably not somebody from three towns over who is going to commit the murder in the book. And so we have this island with these people. And n talking about the books on our list, the 12 that we choose each year. We do spoil them so we can talk about what happens.

Sarah Harrison  17:18

I think we have to the expectation is these are old books, and even though I’ve never read them until the book club, okay, if you’re listening to the episode, you know what’s going to happen. We do not, however, spoil our books by contemporary authors. Super wild. So Sarah, this was the first time you had read And Then There Were None book by Agatha Christie?

Carolyn Daughters  17:44

It is. How many times have you read it, Ann?

Ann Claire  17:47

I was trying to remember when I first read it. I saw your questions there, and I thought, when did I first I can’t I feel like I should remember, but I don’t remember when I first read it. I’ve known the story. I was on the breaker story for a long time. But then when I sat down to read it, I realized I forgotten who did it. So in a way, it was like I was reading it again. I have bad memory for things. I could read them over and over.

Sarah Harrison  18:10

That is wonderful. Were you surprised?

Ann Claire  18:14

As I got into it, it came back.

Carolyn Daughters  18:23

It’s this island where nobody else is but Sarah. I think when you read it, you thought, well, somebody else must have been on the island.

Sarah Harrison  18:34

I’m not going to say I’m remembering this plot perfectly, but reading And Then There Were None book by Agatha Christie reminded me so much of the movie Knives Out, which I think was based on this book. And I recall, have you seen the movie? There are hidden areas, right? And people like the twist. It’s a little bit different. And I said, Of course there has to be somebody. Well, you can’t possibly think you’ve searched the whole island, and that even if somebody was there, they could move. I definitely thought there was someone else on the island, and I was quite surprised when there wasn’t. It really was one of them.

Carolyn Daughters  19:17

U.N. Owen, this guy and his wife send these letters off to everybody, bringing them to this island. Maybe U.N. Owen is hiding under one of the crags or by the water, or who knows where. The island seems small enough that they seemed able to walk it and confirm that nobody else was there.

Sarah Harrison  19:40

You just said U.N. Owen, and it just made me remember who in And Then There Were None book was the person that put U.N. Owen together to be unknown, who was the person that it

Carolyn Daughters  19:49

It might have been justice at work.

Ann Claire  19:51

I want to verify now. Like, Oh, he like, couldn’t stand for no one to get his meaning. Hey, dummies. This is meaningful.

Carolyn Daughters  20:10

I got to lead you to water here. This is artistry here.

Ann Claire  20:13

I don’t think I would have gotten that myself if I were in that situation.

Sarah Harrison  20:16

No way. This seems like a stretch, really.

Carolyn Daughters  20:19

Until Justice Wargrave dies, or we think that he dies, he seems like the perfect candidate, because he was a judge, and he’s also very stern. He’s described as cruel, predatory, inhuman. A hanging judge. Very fair in the sense that if somebody, if he believes the person was innocent, he’s not trying to get them thrown in jail. He’s not trying to get them hung but if he thinks they’re guilty, he does everything in his power, including influencing juries to get that individual convicted. I think for a lot of readers, he’s the perfect candidate for the killer. And then what throws a lot of readers for a loop is that Justice Wargrave dies midway through And Then There Were None book by Agatha Christie.

Sarah Harrison  21:13

Did you get the impression that he was very fair when you were reading it?

Ann Claire  21:18

I read And Then There Were None book by Agatha Christie a couple times to see if it was clear that the person he’d condemned was, I guess in the end, they figure out that he was, he was guilty. But I don’t know if I got the impression right away that maybe he’d done it.

Sarah Harrison  21:34

It seemed to me like he was predisposed to want to find people guilty, and so that did seem like, will it put him in the category of potential murder like everyone else, like he would rather somebody get killed than somebody go free?

Ann Claire  21:50

He did seem like my prime candidate. When I was trying to remember still who it was, I thought.

Carolyn Daughters  21:56

But then it feels too obvious. They’re sitting around the table and I’m reading it, and I had read it before, and I had thought, okay, there, she’s being heavy handed here, which I think is genius, right? Because she’s going to make it look like a red herring. You guys think it’s the judge and that.

Sarah Harrison  22:14

You read it before, though, but I don’t think it did, because they were all murderers. So if I had thought and the other people in the party hadn’t gotten the memo that the guy was actually guilty, they thought that the judge, in fact, got an innocent guy hung and so he was just in the same crowd as everyone all these like commonplace, average murderers together. As the new reader here, it didn’t come across heavy handed to me until and not until, because I never did, but at the end, when it does reveal that the guy, oh, new evidence came out. He was in it, he was he was guilty. I think if I had stopped reading and went to bed, maybe my brain could have processed it, but as it was, I just kept confusedly reading And Then There Were None book, and then it all spilled out.

Carolyn Daughters  23:14

We learned that. So the judge has this predilection for punishment and that he has perhaps sociopathic tendencies, right? He but he references the fact that he tried to keep all of that in check and always direct it toward a guilty party. Now he’s, in many cases, determining somebody is a guilty party, even if the jury is possibly inclined to say something different. So he, I think he’s a dangerous guy who took the sort of professional position that enabled him to have the power to do the thing that he just had an inclination to do. I think from childhood on.

Sarah Harrison  24:03

You’ve seen Dexter, right?

Carolyn Daughters  24:07

I have not, but I know what Dexter is.

Sarah Harrison  24:09

To me, he felt like the original Dexter must have been based on this guy. Like, Yes, I’m a psychopath, but with the with the sense of justice. I’m only going to take it out on the bad guys.

Carolyn Daughters  24:26

Now, Knives Out does remind me of And Then There Were None book by Agatha Christie. There’s a lot of movies influenced by this book, and one of my favorites growing up is the movie clue. Have you ladies seen clue?

Sarah Harrison  24:41

I think it has been a really long time since I’ve seen it.

Carolyn Daughters  24:47

I’ve watched it, so sometimes you see a movie when you’re young, or a TV show, and you’re like, it’s great, and then you come back 20 years later and you think, oh my gosh, I can’t believe I ever liked that show. I really like Clue. Even in the present day. People are murdered one by one in this desolate house in New England and but it’s a comedy. It’s really quite funny and charming and enjoyable. But I think that And Then There Were None book by Agatha Christie, there’s this concept of fair play in Agatha Christie, in the golden age, where the reader should be able to figure out who the murderer is. So Sarah, you were saying, Okay, if I had gone to sleep after learning that this guy was, in fact, guilty, that the judge didn’t murder this guy, that the guy was actually guilty and deserved the punishment he got. Like, at what point? I guess? What I’m trying to ask is, is fair play coming into play in this book, and in what way, like, Could a reader have figured it out. Sarah, for example, if you had the next day continued reading and said, Wait a minute, why is the judge one of these guilt, quote, unquote, guilty parties?

Sarah Harrison  26:10

Well, that’s a tricky part. And I’m interested to get your perspective on this too. And since you probably read every single act of an Agatha Christie book, really.

Carolyn Daughters  26:19

There are so many.

Ann Claire  26:22

Yeah, you can read forever.

Sarah Harrison  26:24

Two clues that stopped me at the end. And the first one was they said they found the handkerchief, like it has, was like, somewhere close to the door at justice work, page room. That’s news, but I did remember she dropped the handkerchief. Well, she did drop the handkerchief annoyingly, and maybe it just didn’t say where she dropped it, and it was just inside his door. But that was the first clue that really started to erode my deep seated belief that someone else had to be on the island. And then the second one was where they said he was innocent or guilty, the guy the judge had hanged. New evidence came out later he really was guilty. And I was like, whoa, that means the judge wasn’t a murderer. He would be the only one that really wasn’t a murderer. As my brain is processing and wondering, Well, did the murderer just not know he wasn’t a murderer? But that really was the big now, could you have figured out what he did? Absolutely not. But I don’t think that necessarily is counter to fair play, though I’m here to be educated, but I do think, like I said, if I’d gone to bed and been like, it’s got to be him, then obviously he’s the only one that’s different. He’s the one that doesn’t belong, right? Then I would have come to that conclusion. I don’t know. What do you guys think about And Then There Were None book?

Ann Claire  27:52

I’ve been thinking of that too. Oh, really. Well, at the end there and there were the clues he wrote out, the clues that he listed at the end in his message in a bottle, right? One of them was the nursery rhyme itself, about the red herring. And after I read that and thought about it, well, okay, that’s a little, that’s a bit of a but it also throws through suspicion away from him. I thought it went on to the next guy. The next guy. I don’t know if there’s fair play in this one. I’m not sure. I don’t know. I’m here to be educated. Ladies would have certain ideas. I don’t know if you could figure that out. Maybe that’s Christie being innovative in this one, being a rebel through the mystery writing genre. Like, okay, I’m going to hide him, and you’re not going to hear his thoughts, those particular thoughts about what he’s doing or seeing him again, because he goes out in his thoughts too. It’s not like we get his thoughts later.

Carolyn Daughters  28:43

That was the other thing.

Sarah Harrison  28:45

She rotated around on whose thoughts she was giving. You win. And I did try, I suppose I could be more methodical. I’m not at all. When I’m reading a book, I make notes, but they’re not methodical. But if you went down and I was like, well, whose thoughts haven’t I got? Because as you’re getting them, you’re finding out, do they really do murder? And if they’re a murderer, of course she’s going to hide those particular thoughts. So I’m like, whose thoughts am I not getting? But even that she always left it to be, there were two or three people whose thoughts I didn’t get in this round.

Carolyn Daughters  29:23

And Then There Were None book is Roger Ackroyd like, in the sense that we get the murderers thoughts, but we don’t get all of their selection. Because if you get all of their thoughts, then the murder is essentially just saying, hey reader, by the way, the other guys don’t know, but you do. Here’s the deal. And so we can’t get all of their thoughts. And some characters we learn less about than others, Mr. And Mrs. Rogers, I don’t think we get to know very well, for example.

Sarah Harrison  29:57

They didn’t have any guilty thoughts. Everyone was weird. They were a weird couple.

Ann Claire  30:04

I was thinking that if we didn’t know the ending, then they would be suspicious. I thought Rogers maybe, well, hiding.

Carolyn Daughters  30:10

He went because they were there when everybody else arrived. So maybe they had, they set the scene, waiting for them to arrive.

Sarah Harrison  30:18

But it was so weird to me about Rogers. There’s like, right after his wife murdered, they’re like, Oh, how terrible was for breakfast.

Ann Claire  30:29

I enjoyed all the eating throughout the weekend.

Sarah Harrison  30:33

Nobody, including Rogers, thought, maybe I’ll stop serving everyone. Maybe I’ll get your own toes. What was your thoughts about Rogers position and all this?

Ann Claire  30:45

It’s like you said, Isn’t it that their positions became it set them up to become victims, in a way too. Didn’t like he was out there chopping up twigs for the fire, and that’s because he was out there alone. He gets whapped on the head. And then other characters don’t see members of their classes capable of doing it, or they don’t think women are capable of doing it. And that that comes back to get them too, doesn’t it? So that’s I thought was neat through And Then There Were None book by Agatha Christie.

Carolyn Daughters  31:17

Sarah, you and I talked a little bit, I think about this, the idea that, okay, these murders are happening in order, from the killer’s point of view, from the least culpable to the most and then one of the worst guys imaginable is the first one murdered, which is Anthony Marston, who ran down John and Lucy Combes, who I guess were children. He’s like, I don’t even know why I’m here. Oh, wait. Oh, wait, maybe it has to do it like those kids I ran down.

Ann Claire  31:57

That was bad luck, because he lost his driver’s license for a whole year.

Carolyn Daughters  32:04

He goes first, and next is Mrs. Rogers. And the idea behind Mrs. Rogers is she had been influenced by her husband to behave badly. And so, yes, she behaved badly, but the influence made her number two and But Anthony being number one threw me.

Sarah Harrison  32:23

Who would you have put for number one? Or where would you have put Anthony in the line of?

Ann Claire  32:27

Low the list, I think, when she got two kids and he wasn’t even remorseful, yes. Who would I put on the top on the list in And Then There Were None book?

Sarah Harrison  32:39

Mrs. Rogers.

Carolyn Daughters  32:46

I only remember because I have this cast of characters list.

Sarah Harrison  32:51

Carolyn made this.

Ann Claire  32:52

Yes, it’s wonderful.

Carolyn Daughters  32:54

I love it. And you put the rhyme next to it. So who would you put? I think, I think Ethel Rogers would be up at the top, and probably MacArthur, the general.

Sarah Harrison  33:06

That’s interesting. Tell me more.

Carolyn Daughters  33:10

He is not innocent of anything like Emily Brent, he sends somebody off into the world, and that person doesn’t survive.

Sarah Harrison  33:27

Medium like Emily. Emily fired her maid. He sent this guy to the front line in an area where he knew he was going to die, which I think is it’s a lot closer to actual murder than firing somebody.

Carolyn Daughters  33:41

Yes, I think it was very much a heat of passion action for him. And it doesn’t excuse the action, but some of these guys.

Sarah Harrison  33:50

He was literally wronged, I would say, with General MacArthur, like his wife really was cheating on him with this guy, and his friend really was two timing him and sleeping with his wife and almost no one else, I think 00, other people were wronged. Only MacArthur was wrong.

Carolyn Daughters  34:09

Vera Claythorne, when she’s thinking back, felt wronged because she was in love with this man, and she wasn’t not going to be able to marry this man. There are several of these characters who send somebody away, and then something terrible happens to the person who is sent away. And in this case, it’s a child who she is a nanny for.

Ann Claire  34:36

And watch those nannies.

Carolyn Daughters  34:47

In And Then There Were None book, I got the sense that John MacArthur, if, okay, so there’s the pattern, right? You stop, you think, you act. Children are taught this, right? So I all. Felt like if General MacArthur had stopped thought and then acted, instead of being in the heat of the moment, he might have done something different. And I also sensed with him great regret. He said, we are all dying here this we’re on this island. We’re all going to die. And he welcomed it. He did have regret, and they and so to me, he felt what more sympathetic than many of the characters, including Philip Lombard, who killed 21 members of an East African tribe, didn’t bat an eye, he’s like, Ah, whatever. And then Vera, who sent a child to his death, so that her love, or the man she loved, would then inherit this money, and then she’d be able to marry him. And so, just so, so selfish, so incredibly, irreparably sociopathic, yes. So, I mean, what about you ladies? Like, okay, so Mrs. Rogers, I think we agree. Would be one of the first,

Sarah Harrison  36:04

Not for me.

Carolyn Daughters  36:09

Tell us more.

Sarah Harrison  36:10

I would probably make the first. Emily brunt, she didn’t actually do anything other than fire someone. She didn’t send anyone to the front line. She didn’t withhold medicine. There was no life. I mean, that’s clearly, it was a big situation.

Ann Claire  36:25

She doesn’t come off as a nice character in And Then There Were None book, but, yeah, she’s a jerk.

Sarah Harrison  36:29

She’s a jerk. But I did have trouble saying that’s a murderous behavior, because you didn’t know that she was going to kill herself, right? Right? That’s good. She might move back in with her mom, or something. Who knows, what her pregnant mate would have done for those who haven’t listened?

Carolyn Daughters  36:46

Her servant commits suicide. So would Agatha Christie have done better, potentially, to have made it Emily Brent’s daughter or something, like, something closer to her, or like, how? How could the story of Emily Brent resonate in a different way because she’s being held accountable by the judge?

Sarah Harrison  37:07

Yeah, she is, I think. Well, what do you think, Ann? What makes Emily a murderer for your heart?

Ann Claire  37:17

And what makes her a murderer for the judge, for the judge to think, maybe, I think not so much Agatha Christie, but what he is thinking, and maybe he was judging her more harshly than we are thinking, Maybe he thinks so. That’s just awful, although I don’t know if that goes to his character too. I don’t know, I don’t know about that one.

Sarah Harrison  37:36

I think if she had kicked her daughter out or something, that would have definitely been worse. Yeah, she’d have nowhere to go. Maids get fired all the time. Not that it doesn’t suck. It always sucks to get fired from your job.

Carolyn Daughters  37:51

To clarify, we are not against maids and nannies with this podcast. No, definitely not.

Sarah Harrison  37:57

Now we should dedicate this episode to Kristen. This one’s for you. But I mean, people lose their jobs. People lose their jobs, and frustrating and terrifying social circumstances. I don’t think it makes the people that fire them a murderous or murderer, but the judge did here. I think if it was her mom, or if it made put her in a more desperate situation, or as an employer, felt like you owed somebody’s life more then I could sympathize a little bit more.

Ann Claire  38:30

He went around collecting those stories from people, which I thought was an interesting idea, just chatting people up. He sees them, hey, who have you known gotten away with murder? And told me, that’s one of the stories. So other people were thinking that she’d done it through, or somebody else was thinking that she was a murderer, weren’t they?

Sarah Harrison  38:46

Where would you have put the first guy in And Then There Were None book? Anthony Marston.

Ann Claire  38:50

I think I agree with you, Carolyn, that he would been down at the at the end there to see if he could get any remorse too. Why let him off if he has no remorse and then he’s killed two children. That’s the value difference.

Sarah Harrison  39:04

I think we’re differing on is like, how did the person feel about their deeds? It seems to play less into where the judge is ranking them. And I feel like, for me, a lack of remorse makes you more seriously evil.

Ann Claire  39:22

He could very well do that again. He was speeding on the way in his sports car on the way there. He could have run over anyone. And I think Vera is awful as she is, at least, had she had guilt about this torment.

Sarah Harrison  39:35

The doctor accidentally killed his person too, because he was he was drunk, and Anthony was speeding, so they’re both making bad decisions. They both accidentally killed somebody, but the doctor is one of the last people.

Carolyn Daughters  39:48

And presumably the doctor is not continually killing people.

Sarah Harrison  39:51

Yeah, he stopped drinking. His career flourished.

Carolyn Daughters  39:56

The judge describes Marston as, I think. Says a type born without that feeling of moral responsibility which most have, and so he’s saying he’s doesn’t have the capacity to feel and therefore can’t be held as responsible as everyone else.

Sarah Harrison  40:13

Therefore needs to be put away sooner. But Lombard was the same. Maybe Lombard had the capacity, but he was just so racist. Because his immediate response was like, well, they were natives, and that’s another he didn’t kill him. He left them to die. And he was like, they’re natives. They don’t feel it like we white people do. That was crazy.

Ann Claire  40:38

It was terrible at first, it looked it sounded like Vera was sympathetic, didn’t it? Then she was agreeing with that. Vera, she’s getting worse and worse. Vera has some issues.

Carolyn Daughters  40:48

Vera is not that sympathetic.

Ann Claire  40:49

No, she’s really not.

Carolyn Daughters  40:52

There are several film versions of And Then There Were None book. And the most recent one is multiple episodes. It’s like four or some number of episodes, interesting. And it’s, I think, really well done, and it goes into that takes this, these slivers of backstories of these characters, and really builds them out. So we get the flashbacks. And the character of Vera, I think, is much more sympathetic in this version, which is maybe 2022 or something, 2023 it’s quite recent. Lily James, I think plays Vera. I think I’m right, and so I felt for her more certainly in the film than I do in the book. And in the book, I don’t feel too much for too many of these characters.

Sarah Harrison  41:43

I like General MacArthur. I did feel for him. And like, when he describes, like he wanted things to go how he adored his wife, and that this was just so nuts. But then after the murder, like she just wasn’t the same to him. And she lost her sparkle, and then he was like, oh, and then she died anyway.

Carolyn Daughters  42:05

So he murdered this he sent this guy off who ended up dying, and as if the removal of that guy is going to restore whatever he had at home. And he gets this very cold life lesson that, no, you can’t, you can’t magically erase this thing and then go back to this idyllic state that you may have had at some point in the past. And his story just felt sad to me, and he felt to me, of all of the characters the one I felt the most for.

Sarah Harrison  42:42

Definitely the Rogers, Ethel Rogers. I guess my only beef with her is it’s just an assumption that she was less involved. They don’t ever see anything. That makes me believe that. It goes back to like, well, a woman would have been less involved, but, we have a woman as the most guilty person on the list, and Vera says, I’m not getting why? Maybe she is less involved and maybe she’s not.

Carolyn Daughters  43:08

So do you both think that the judge felt Philip Lombard and Vera Claythorne were tied because I don’t think he knew who was going to shoot who or what? I don’t know that he knew exactly how that was going to end up playing. How could he know that, although the noose is in her room, so I guess they prepped it, but what if? What if he had shot her?

Sarah Harrison  43:33

I feel like he did know that Vera Claythorne in And Then There Were None book was a good girl. I mean, she’s placed as athletic as clever, and there seems to be a feeling of not wanting to kill women. So he might know that Lombard might leave these natives to die, but he’s not going to jump and kill Vera Claythorne immediately, and he didn’t. It was her that pulled his gun. I think we’re meant to believe that he, he knew it would play out that way, but he was like, please that it did, because he knew Lombard is not going to come in and commit suicide, right.

Ann Claire  44:11

It’s not happening. But what if neither of them had acted, that’s the thing too. They should know. They should have known they talked about that was a little bit of a plot thing, because they knew Lore. Had gone off and gotten crushed by the bear. Right? The bear’s dead to the cloth from her room, from her room. But then we’re together when that happened. So then when she started thinking, well, some somebody else is around here. We were standing together.

Sarah Harrison  44:37

They jump. And that was something I was reading. I was like, Wait guys, wait guys. Talk it out gradually. Here both of them were, like, I see how it is. I do see how it is.

Carolyn Daughters  44:50

This might make me a bad person, but I wasn’t thinking, think it out. Oh, really, I was thinking, I don’t really care if these two people die. Carolyn’s murder in her home. So, I mean, so the question that I have then is, did their responsibility for the deaths that they committed each of these people, or that they allowed to happen or sent people away to experience like did that impact how you felt when these characters are murdered on the island. For me, I wasn’t like, oh no. It was more. For me, it was a who’s murdered next, not a, oh my gosh. How do we stop the murders, right?

Ann Claire  45:30

We didn’t see that coming.

Carolyn Daughters  45:35

Am I being a little too draconian here? Maybe I am.

Sarah Harrison  45:40

I think you’re being a little draconian, but I don’t know. I guess I came at And Then There Were None book from a different perspective. I’d like to hear you guys on that there’s this theme from the very beginning of the ordinariness of these people. The boat man is even put on his guard, and that’s his major clue to go back is like, this isn’t a typical boat of party rich people. These are really ordinary people, um, and they just didn’t seem to go together. And so as I’m reading and thinking about each thing that they did to me, and so maybe, maybe I’m really just demented here. But I was just like, it makes you think, oh, you these people, you walk around on the street. Oh, this sporty nanny, or this good looking Adonis driving character who’s into cars. Are they actually these murderers and what would people do? And, and I think this so there was this pivotal thing I read early on in high school. This really probably informs my perspective a lot, and it was called the Milliken experiment. Have you guys heard of it? Okay, let me tell you about this experiment. It’s illegal to do now, so it’s really important that it did happen. But they were studying the behavior of citizens, Nazis and how, how did these people get to where they were? And so the experiment goes like this. Whatever the universe today is, come in for this experiment on it was reinforced learning, or something, you have a person that’s looking at images on a screen, and then you have in here, in the back room if they get it wrong, you give them a mild electric shock. And so it’s presented as a learning experiment, all right, but it’s not, it’s an experiment on the person giving a mild electric shock. And so if they get it wrong, and they go, and they get it wrong again, because it’s really an actor in the room. And as each time they get it wrong, they’re instructed to turn it up a little bit more, and they have this actor in there screaming, murder, going silent, and in the room is just this white coated guy being like, turn up the voltage, please. And almost all of them did it really, it’s a wild experiment. So almost just every ordinary person they pulled off the street to do an experiment who had no requirement or obligation to be there. Some guy saying, Turn up, turn up the voltage, please. Not even forcing them or locking the door. They stayed there, and they did it, and they cried and they were upset, but they still did it, and it was all just about the banality of evil. That probably is the backdrop for everything that I read this, where I believe that these ordinary people can do horrible things, and so when I’m looking at them, I am still seeing, I’m not seeing here’s an evil person in disguise. I’m like, here’s an average person in this crazy situation. That is, I don’t know how far out of reach of everyone. So that is, that was that, sorry, it’s a long story, but that’s my backdrop.

Ann Claire  49:07

I think that’s what’s cool about Agatha Christie, though. Anybody who books this fair play for be that murderer in And Then There Were None book? There had been a kid on this island. That kid would have been in the mix too, right? She would have held back.

Carolyn Daughters  49:20

That’s a really interesting experiment. I am intrigued by the phrase the banality of evil. Yes, I think in the right circumstances or the wrong circumstances in the perfect storm, many people, if not all people, could, could commit a murder. I’m not saying that I would purchase an island, even if I had the cash that I would send these letters out, that I would map out this strategy. I wouldn’t do any of these things, but I have trouble. Feeling for these characters now that they’re dead. So I’m not cheering on, and I can’t wait who’s next. It’s more like, what I’m trying to figure out what’s happening and who’s doing what, and but I’m not feeling for them. I’m not feeling sadness that they’re gone. So maybe that’s the harsh part for me, is I don’t know that I would go so far as the judge goes, but I still think it’s a tough one, because most of the characters are not written in a way where we’re like, Oh, I hope Vera Claythorne makes it like I did feel.

Sarah Harrison  50:46

I did feel worse for Vera Claythorne, though, and I don’t know, and tell me what you think here, but in this, in the same way, not the same way, but General MacArthur’s heart was involved in his murder, hers was in a different way, I think.

Ann Claire  51:03

I think she was written more. No one was the central character word, but we saw a lot more of her.

Sarah Harrison  51:08

She did have remorse. She had remorse.

Ann Claire  51:10

There were times when you could start to feel her remorse, aren’t there? And then she’d say something horrible at the very end. She goes off to the swim, off to the rock. So then you realize that she didn’t. She’s not really. She’s not redeemable, is she? I, too, had sympathy for I think, because maybe we did hear a lot from her.

Sarah Harrison  51:32

Whenever they showed remorse, I guess to me, like the guiding factor of the list was probably like remorse, if they show that or felt that in any way, I thought maybe they should be a little lower on the list. Not that they were innocent.

Carolyn Daughters  51:45

In And Then There Were None book, it was General MacArthur for me. He was just he was resigned to it. Before he came to the island, he was basically living a life of isolation because he wasn’t even around his friends and family any longer. Because he felt okay whenever I’m with them, I feel like their eyes are on me. And so he started shutting himself away. It’s as if his culpability, his sin, his crime, is visible to the world around him, and all he can do is just sequester in this small town, in his house. And so I did feel like he had more acknowledgement, remorse, accountability, than most of these people. The reason Vera Claythorne really bothers me, and the thing I see is different between her, say, and MacArthur, is she’s the ward of this child. If we’re if we’re not going to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves, we’ve basically thrown in the towel. So I find her extremely dangerous for the lengths she’ll go to get the thing that she wants. And now, just to be clear, it’s not that they can’t get married, but he didn’t, I think he wouldn’t marry her. He would not marry her when he was poor. They’re on this beautiful vacation.

Ann Claire  53:07

That’s his fault, isn’t that she needs to fight Yes, but Daniel, marry.

Carolyn Daughters  53:11

I’m not saying it would be justified if, if he truly had been prevented from marrying her. But he wasn’t prevented from marrying her. He said, my future husband wouldn’t be as wealthy as he would be otherwise, and so we can’t get married. And therefore I have to get rid of this child so he can come into his money, so we can be obscenely wealthy and get married. I have a lot of difficulty with her.

Sarah Harrison  53:42

Although I do think it was, I think the not getting married was on him, and I think she bought it more than she should have it did. I got the impression because they would be like, Oh, Vera Claythorne, would you like to take a stroll in the evening? And then as soon as they were out of the house, it was like, Oh, my love. So he was putting up a false face between his life and with her. And I think she bought it, and she thought he didn’t really like the kid, and she didn’t really like the kid, and it sounds like he was perhaps a dislikable kid.

Ann Claire  54:12

It sounds like she didn’t like many kids, actually, for her, talk about, oh, she doesn’t like being a sports.

Sarah Harrison  54:18

I’ve met nannies like that. I have, indeed.

Ann Claire  54:21

She can’t get a post without kids in the summer, so she’s absolutely happy to have this secretarial post.

Carolyn Daughters  54:28

Interesting.

Ann Claire  54:29

Maybe I’m skipping ahead in And Then There Were None book. I was reading about the play version of it. Did you read about that? It has different ending, and I have not seen it. I’m only basing this on what I read, okay, that when Christie put on the theater version of it, she had Vera Claythorne and lumbar get married, like, run off in a romance, like they make it and again, I’ve just only read about this. I haven’t seen the play. So people correct me if this is true, not true, but because she said, Oh, she wants theater crowds to be so depressed after leaving doing. Something, but that takes away from these are the most culpable of the two, doesn’t it?

Sarah Harrison  55:05

does. But I did. I got the vibe that it could have gone that direction. It’s shocking, but on a level, not shocking, because I felt like Agatha Christie was playing up this sort of partnership that was developing, and this trust that was developing between them and they were talking, maybe I just like redemption stories more than justice stories.

Carolyn Daughters  55:26

But he didn’t really seem to feel any he didn’t.

Sarah Harrison  55:29

He has some more work to do on himself.

Ann Claire  55:33

He’s not a good catch, maybe in the play.

Carolyn Daughters  55:35

He felt sort of Marston-like to me, in the sense of how responsible he held himself, anything? He was probably the worst. He had to be the worst,

Sarah Harrison  55:48

I agree. And that’s why I was like, why is Marston first and this guy next to last, when they essentially just don’t care about the people they’ve killed? And Marston killed children, not people involved in a war, right?

Carolyn Daughters  56:11

I do want to ask this question, and I want to see what you both think. But the final person to die is Vera Claythorne, and she does not know who the murderer is. Did this shock you? Did you want her to know? Did you want this last person to have everything revealed, and then we get this epilogue, and the reader is let in, but did you want her to know?

Ann Claire  56:39

I want to ask what you all think. What would have felt like if she’s about to kick the chair away and then she sees him, that would have been like. That would have been the horror scene, creepy scene.

Sarah Harrison  56:51

That would have been really interesting, I guess. No, I didn’t feel like she needed because she thought she knew, she thought it was long bird, right? But, um, she didn’t know I was I was fine with getting the message in the bottle. It’s wild, but I certainly put messages in bottles before. Messages and bottles probably not, but they found his in And Then There Were None book by Agatha Christie. I feel like she would have had to be at the moment right when she kicked the chair away, because she had to be in this really demented state to commit to half-delusional suicide.

Carolyn Daughters  57:35

Sarah, it sounds like you were not bothered by the fact that we as readers learn in the epilogue. How about you, Ann?

Ann Claire  57:44

I like the epilogue, because it explained everything in his voice. Can see other ways that I am not questioning Agatha Christie’s judgment on this heaven sakes. But no, it could have gone another way when he told it, but I think he can get more out more details about his rationale and his and his clues in that bottle. So I like the bottle. He explained that. She explained everything, right?

Sarah Harrison  58:06

I actually learned the chair that got put back, that was maybe one of my favorite parts.

Ann Claire  58:11

Yeah, it was creepy. So leave the police gifting. They go in there.

Sarah Harrison  58:16

She must have but the chair was against the wall.

Carolyn Daughters  58:24

So it might never have been solved. I do recommend that recent, and we’ll share links to this and all of that, the recent series, And Then There Were None book, because it’s really interesting the way it it’s done. I believe, if I’m remembering correctly, Vera Claythorne knows.

Sarah Harrison  58:44

Really? Then why would she kill herself?

Carolyn Daughters  58:47

She doesn’t all these different in there. She dies. I will say she dies, but it’s more she’s going to kill herself, and then she realizes what’s happening and who’s making it happen, and it’s too late for her to, oh, get out of this news.

Ann Claire  59:09

That’s so many endings.

Carolyn Daughters  59:13

There’s a million. And the older version, there’s many older versions. One of the older versions I watched, I think, was fairly true to this story, and didn’t build out any of the characters, really, in any significant way this one does. So you learn about Bloor, you learn about Marty Philip Lombard and Vera Claythorne and you start, you get a sense of them. And I felt more for them in that movie than I do in And Then There Were None book by Agatha Christie.

Sarah Harrison  59:52

This has been a pleasure. And of course, we can just keep talking about this book, because we spend an hour re ranking all the books.

Ann Claire  59:59

And this was. Much fun. I was thinking of ranking.

Sarah Harrison  1:00:04

Well, it’s a good shortcut to talk about who is really the worst person, and how do you determine level of guilt when it comes to death? Come back for our next episode ,listeners, where Ann Claire is going to discuss Dead and Gondola, as well as her many other books. She’s prolific. Thank you.

Ann Claire  1:00:26

Thank you so much. It’s been so much fun.

Sarah Harrison 
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Carolyn Daughters
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Sarah Harrison
We want to thank you for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. We absolutely adore you. Until next time, stay mysterious.