There wasn't anything to show whether it was accident or suicide."
Legge said slowly:
"Care to know what I think, Maine?"
"Perhaps I can guess, sir."
Legge said heavily: "That death of Morris' is a damned sight too opportune!"
Inspector Maine nodded.
He said: "I thought you'd say that, sir."
The Assistant Commissioner brought down his fist with a bang on the table.
He cried out: "The whole thing's fantastic - impossible.
Ten people killed on a bare rock of an island - and we don't know who did it, or why, or how."
Maine coughed.
He said: "Well, it's not quite like that, sir.
We do know why, more or less.
Some fanatic with a bee in his bonnet about justice.
He was out to get people who were beyond the reach of the law.
He picked ten people - whether they were really guilty or not doesn't matter -"
The Commissioner stirred.
He said sharply: "Doesn't it?
It seems to me -" He stopped.
Inspector Maine waited respectfully.
With a sigh Legge shook his head.
"Carry on," he said.
"Just for a minute I felt I'd got somewhere.
Got, as it were, the clue to the thing.
It's gone now.
Go ahead with what you were saying."
Maine went on: "There were ten people to be - executed, let's say.
They were executed.
U.N.
Owen accomplished his task.
And somehow or other he spirited himself off that island into thin air."
The A.C. said: "First-class vanishing trick.
But you know, Maine, there must be an explanation."
Maine said: "You're thinking, sir, that if the man wasn't on the island, he couldn'l have left the island, and according to the account of the interested parties he never was on the island.
Well, then the only explanation possible is that he was actually one of the ten."
The A.C. nodded. Maine said earnestly:
"We thought of that, sir.
We went into it.
Now, to begin with, we're not quite in the dark as to what happened on Indian Island.
Vera Claythorne kept a diary, so did Emily Brent.
Old Wargrave made some notes - dry legal cryptic stuff, but quite clear.
And Blore made notes too.
All those accounts tally.
The deaths occurred in this order: Marston, Mrs. Rogers, Macarthur, Rogers, Miss Brent, Wargrave.
After his death Vera Claythorne's diary states that Armstrong left the house in the night and that Blore and Lombard had gone after him.
Blore has one more entry in his notebook.
Just two words: 'Armstrong disappeared.'
"Now, sir, it seemed to me, taking everything into account, that we might find here a perfectly good solution.
Armstrong was drowned, you remember.
Granting that Armstrong was mad, what was to prevent him having killed off all the others and then committed suicide by throwing himself over the cliff, or perhaps while trying to swim to the mainland?