How does the book, "And then there were none" by Agatha Christie end?????

Question

Hello....I was assigned to read the book, "And then there were none" by Agatha Christie.....but the thing is, our teachers tore out the last few pages so that we don't know who the guilty person was. Plus, I am a very fast reader, and I've already finished the book even though we've only had it for one day. Who is the killer and can you please give me some evidence as to why?? I believed that it was Armstrong, until I read in the epilogue that Vera's chair was pushed against the wall after she hung herself. What in the world happened? Can someone please fill me in???

Who is Wargrave??? And just so you know, our teacher IS going to tell us, but not fast enough for me!!!! Please help!

Oh...right. Wargrave was the judge. But he was dead!!! From a shot...remember the whole get up with the wool on his head as a wig and all that stuff?

Answer 1

The rest of the epilogue takes the form of a manuscript in a bottle, found by a fisherman and given to the police. It is written by Judge Wargrave, who writes that the manuscript offers the solution to an unsolved crime. He says he was a sadistic child with both a lust for killing and a strong sense of justice. Reading mysteries always satisfied him. He went into law, an appropriate career for him because it allowed him to indulge his zeal for death within the confines of the law. Watching guilty persons squirm become a new pleasure for him. After many years as a judge, he developed the desire to play executioner. He wanted to kill in an extraordinary, theatrical way, while adhering to his own sense of justice. One day, a doctor mentioned to Wargrave the number of murders that must go unpunished, citing a recently deceased woman he felt sure was killed by the married couple who worked as her servants. Because the couple withheld a needed drug in order to kill her, the murder could never be proven. This story inspired Wargrave to plan multiple murders of people who had killed but could not be prosecuted under the law. He thought of the “Ten Little Indian” rhyme that he loved as a child for its series of inevitable deaths.
Wargrave took his time gathering a list of victims, bringing up the topic of unpunished murders in casual conversations and hoping someone would mention a case of which they knew. Wargrave learned he was terminally ill and decided to kill himself after doing away with his victims. Wargrave’s tenth victim, we learn, was Isaac Morris, who acted as his agent in making the arrangements for Indian Island, and who had been responsible for selling drugs to a young acquaintance of Wargrave, who subsequently killed herself. Before leaving for Indian Island, Wargrave gave Morris poison, which he claimed was a cure for Morris’s indigestion.
Wargrave killed Marston and Mrs. Rogers first, he writes, because they bore the least responsibility for their crimes—Marston because he was born without a sense of moral responsibility, and Mrs. Rogers because she was under the sway of her husband when they murdered their elderly employer. Next he killed General Macarthur, sneaking up on him near the ocean. Wargrave goes on to describe how he tricked Armstrong into becoming his ally: Armstrong, he notes, “was a gullible sort of man . . . it was inconceivable to him that a man of my standing should actually be a murderer.” He notes that he killed Mr. Rogers while the butler was out chopping sticks. At breakfast, he poisoned Emily Brent. Later, Armstrong agreed to help Wargrave fake his death, and pretended to examine the body of the judge and find a gunhot wound on his forehead. Wargrave arranged to sneak out and meet the Armstrong by the shore that evening. There, he pushed Armstrong over a cliff into the ocean.
After Armstrong’s death, Wargrave returned to his room and played dead. Killing Blore was easy, since the ex-policeman foolishly came up to the house alone, and Wargrave then watched with satisfaction as Vera disposed of Lombard. Wargrave writes that he would have killed Vera himself, but he wanted to make her death fit the rhyme, so he set up her room in a suggestive way, with a noose hanging down and the smell of the sea wafting in, letting Vera’s own guilt drive her to suicide.
Wargrave says he wrote the manuscript because he takes an artist’s pleasure in his own work and wants recognition. He wonders if the police will pick up on three clues: first, that Wargrave was the odd man out—he was not really guilty of a murder, as the rest were, since in condemning Edward Seton to death he condemned a guilty man. Second, the line about the “red herring” points to the fact that Armstrong was somehow tricked into his death. Third, Wargrave’s death by a bullet through the forehead will leave a red mark like the brand of Cain, the first murderer in the biblical book of Genesis.

Wargrave closes by describing the mechanism by which he will pull the trigger of the revolver from a distance and have the revolver flung away by an elastic band, thereby shooting himself so that he falls back on his bed as though laid there by the others. He concludes that men from the mainland “will find ten dead bodies and an unsolved problem on Indian Island.”

Answer 2

I've only read the play that is based on the book (but it was also written by Christie)...it's called "Ten Little Indians" and it has alternate endings in which different people are responsible for the murders

but then I wiki-ed the book and it says:
"Vera then returns to the house, thinking she is finally safe. When Vera gets to her room, she discovers a noose (rope) hanging there, with a chair under it. Having finally been driven mad by the entire experience – along with terrible feelings of guilt for her actions – she breaks down and hangs herself in the room, thus fulfilling the final verse of the rhyme:"

and the epilogue:
"After Vera (the guiltiest of the "condemned" according to the judge, since she deliberately killed an innocent child for his inheritance but managed to pass as a heroine who tried to rescue the boy) hanged herself, Wargrave, who had been watching from the bedroom closet, pushed the chair against the wall. He then wrote out his final message, putting the message in a bottle and casting the bottle into the sea. He states that his only regret is that it was not enough to invent an insoluble mystery – he wishes someone would realize just how clever he has been – therefore he explains three clues which point to him as the killer, in case his letter is not found:

1. Wargrave mentions in the letter that Edward Seton's death was justified because the police knew that he was guilty. Therefore, Wargrave was the only guest who did not murder anyone (that is, before coming to the island).
2. The "red herring" line in the poem suggests the fact that Armstrong was tricked into his death-and that Wargrave is the only one Armstrong would confide in.
3. The bullet would leave a red mark in Wargrave's forehead similar to the mark of Cain, the first murderer in the Old Testament.

The conclusion of the judge's letter indicates that he planned to shoot himself whilst sitting on his bed, so that his body would fall onto the bed as if it had been laid there. He fastened the gun to the doorknob with a piece of elastic cord in such a way that the recoil would snap the gun out into the hallway as the door to his room closed. Thus the police found ten dead bodies and an unsolvable mystery on Indian Island."

Answer 3

He faked his death; the doctor (don't remember his name) was in on it.
The judge was tired of people who deserved to die slipping through the fingers of the law. He chose 10 people he thought deserved to be killed for their secret crimes, and killed them in order of how guilty he thought they were, starting with the least guilty. Then he ended it by killing himself by rigging a gun to a strap on a door handle to make it appear that he was murdered along with the other bodies, and keep the authoritites guessing.

Answer 4

Try thinking of the first person killed as not really dead!!!!

Answer 5

well i reallly want to tell you but your teacher may have torn out those pages b/c she/he wanted YOU to do the work and research it!!!