CONFESSION
Thursday, October 25, 1945
A MANUSCRIPT SENT TO SCOTLAND YARD BY THE MASTER OF THE EMMA JANE, FISHING TRAWLER....
"From my earliest youth I realized my nature was a mass of contradictions. I have to begin, an incurable romantic imagination. Even as child, I found fascination in the idea of putting a document in a bottle, and casting it into the waves. It is for this very reason I write this confession…in hopes that it will be found in the sea, and an unsolved mystery will for once, be explained...
I was born with other traits besides my romantic fancy. I have a definite sadistic delight in causing death. I remember experimenting with wasps..and other household pests. From an early age, I had a lust to kill.
But side to side with this came a contradictory trait...a strong sense of justice. Crime and punishment had always fascinated me. I have always fancied detective stories, and I grew to believe that the innocent shall prevail...
and the guilty punished!With in due course I came to preside over the law. It gave me extreme pleasure to watch as a criminal writhed and squirmed on the docks...straight to his doom. I never, ever received pleasure for watching an innocent man squirm. I was careful to make sure that justice was served to the innocent who came before me. But most of the time, they were guilty.
I will say here that such was the case with Edward Seton. He was a good looking lad, and he made a good impression on the jury, but there was no doubt in my mind that he was guilty of the crime of what he was accused of; the brutal murder of an elderly woman who trusted him.
However, for some years to pass, I recognized a change in myself. I no longer felt the strong desire to judge, as much I did to act. That’s when I suddenly realized…
I wanted to commit murder myself!
I must…I must…
I must commit a murder! What’s more, not just any ordinary murder, but murder...on a grand scale! I wanted something theatrical…impossible! I wanted to kill…yes,
I wanted to kill. I however was restrained by my innate sense of justice. The innocent must NOT suffer. And then…suddenly the idea came to me! It was a casual remark during conservation with my doctor who said that to commit murder, it must be in a way the law cannot touch!
He referenced one case of which an elderly patient of his who had recently died. He was convinced her death was due to the withholding of an important drug from the married servants who attended on her and stood to benefit substantially from her death. He them mentioned that were similar cases going on all the time…cases of deliberate murder…and all quite untouchable by the law.
That was the starting point, for what was soon to come. …
A childish rhyme of my infancy came back to my mind…the rhyme of the ten little Indian boys. It had fascinated me as a child…the exorable diminishment …
the sense of inevitability. It was then I secretly began to collect victims…
I will not dwell on the process of doing this, but the first two I collected were Mr. and Mrs. Rogers. The servants previously mentioned by the doctor. After that, I discovered the others through various means of conversation…
During the time I was in a nursing home, I collected the case of Dr. Armstrong from a violently teetotal sister who warned me of the evils of drinking. She recounted the tale a while back in a hospital where a doctor under the influence of alcohol killed a patient of whom he was operating. A carless question as to where the sister had trained etc. gave me all the necessary data needed to track him down.
A conversation with two old military gossips in my Club put me on track of General MacArthur.
A man who had recently returned from the Amazon gave me the devastating résumé of the activities of one Philip Lombard.
An indignant memsa-hib recounted the tale of Emily Brent and her wretched servant girl.
Anthony Marston I selected from a large group of people who committed similar offences. His complete callousness and inability to feel irresponsibility made him dangerous to the public…and unfit to live.
Ex-Inspector Blore came my way naturally, some of my professional brethren were casually discussing the Landor case with freedom and vigor. I took a serious look at his offence. The police as servants of the law must be in high order of integrity. For their word is believed to be preface by their profession.
Finally there was the case of Vera Claythorne. I discovered about her during an Atlantic crossing when I encountered a young man named Hugo Hamilton who had quite the drink earlier. He was unhappy as he recited to me the story of an old lover of his, who drowned his younger cousin so that he could inherit the fortune. He didn’t say much more, but it was easy to trace back and reconstruct the story.
I needed a tenth victim. I found him in a man called Issac Morris; a shady little Jewish dope peddler, who was responsible for inducing the daughter of a friend of mine to take drugs. She committed suicide at age twenty-one.
Now for the actual mechanics of the crime of Indian Island. To acquire the island, using Morris to cover my tracks was easy enough. He was an expert in that sort of thing. Tabulating the information I gathered from my soon-to-be victims, I was able to provide suitable bait for each. None of my plans miscarried. They all arrived at Indian Island on the 4th of August, the party included myself.
Morris was easily taken care of. He suffered from indigestion. Before leaving London, I gave him a capsule to take last thing at night. I mentioned that it had done wondered to my own gastric juices. He accepted it unhesitatingly, not knowing what it really was. I had no fear that he would leave behind any compromising documents or memorabilia. He was not that sort of man.
The order of death on the island was selected by me with special care. There were among the guests, varying degrees of guilt. Those of the lightest guilt should be snuffed out first, for I would leave the prolonged mental strain and suffering to the more cold-blooded offenders….
Anthony Marston died first. His death was instant. Marston was a man born without a sense of moral responsibility that most of us possess. He was amoral…pagan.
After Marston, I had Mrs. Rogers pass away in a peaceful sleep. In my opinion, Marston and Mrs. Rogers were the two with the least guilt on their minds, thus they died at the start. Mrs. Rogers had acted mostly under the influence of her husband.
I need not describe how closely those two met their deaths. The police would be able to work that out quite easily. Potassium Cyanide is easily obtained for household wasps and I easily slipped it into Marston’s glass during his little piano ditty.
During recent bouts of pain, I had acquired a sleeping draught…Chloral Hydrate. When Rogers pulled out some brandy for his wife, I slipped the majority of it in when he set it on the table. It was easy for suspicion had not set in at that point.
General MacArthur met his death quite painlessly. He did not hear my come up behind him prepared with one of the Indian statuettes from the Parlor. I had timed everything perfectly when I easily bludgeoned him, and returned to the terrace. His offense was one of jealous rage, which clearly affected him. In my opinion, he was dead long before he arrived at Indian Island.
By now, a search had been made of the island, which concluded that the killer could only be one of the seven of us. That at once created an atmosphere of suspicion. I soon would be in need an ally. I choose Dr. Armstrong for that part. He was a gullible sort of a man who could not believe a man of my standing would possibly be a murderer! All his suspicions were directed towards Lombard and I pretended to concur in these. I hinted to him that I had a scheme by which it might be possible to trap the murderer by incriminating himself. Armstrong was keen on this scheme and was easily taken in…
I killed Rogers on the morning of August 6th. He was chopping sticks for lighting a fire and did not hear me approach.
In the confusion of finding Rogers, I slipped into Lombard’s room and abstracted his revolver. I knew he would have one on him, in fact I had instructed Morris to suggest it in the letter.
At breakfast, I slipped the last of my Chloral into Miss Brent’s coffee. I then led her outside to rest. When the others were gone, I slipped back outside and found her nearly unconscious. It was then easy to inject a strong dose of cyanide into her neck. The bumblebees were really rather childish, but I wanted to stick as close to the nursery rhyme as best as possible.
After that, it was discovered that the revolver was missing, and we had subjected to rigorous search. But by then, the revolver was safely hidden away and I had no more cyanide or chloral on me.
It was then I intimated to Armstrong that our plan must now be carried out into effect. It was simply this…I must appear to be the next victim. At any rate once I was supposed to be dead, I could move about the house and spy on the unknown murderer.
Armstrong was keen on the idea. We carried it out that evening. A little bit of red lipstick on the forehead…the red towel and wool and the stage was set. Once Vera Claythorne screamed when she discovered the seaweed planted in her room, Armstrong and I stayed behind and got ready before I headed upstairs to take my place…
The effect of when they found me was all that could be desired. Armstrong was the one who fired the revolver I gave him. He was also the only one to examine me closely when he turned to the others and gave the verdict that I had been shot through the head...
I had a rendezvous with Dr. Armstrong outside of the house at a quarter to two. I took him up a little behind the house at the edge of a cliff. I said that here we can see if anybody approaches. Nobody will see us because the cliff would block their view from the bedrooms. He was still quite unsuspicious….and yet, he ought to have been warned…if only he remembered the words of the nursery rhyme; “A red herring swallowed one…” He took the red herring alright!
It was easy. I uttered an exclamation; was that the opening of a cave!? He leaned right over. A quick vigorous push sent him tumbling into the heaving sea below, only to wash up on shore hours later...
I returned to the house. It must have been my footfall Blore heard. I then snuck up to Armstrong's room and this time left making noise so that I
should be heard. I heard a door open when I got to the bottom of the stairs. They must have just glimpsed my figure as it went out the door.
It was a minute or two before I was followed. I simply went straight around the house and entered through the Dining Room window. My entrance broke the glass. I then went upstairs and returned to my room...
Now came the moment I had anticipated….three people who were so afraid of each other, anything might happen…
and one of them had a revolver! I watched them from the windows of the house. When Blore came up alone, I had the teddy bear on the balcony poised and ready….
Exit Blore.
From a distance, I watched Vera Claythorne shoot Lombard with his own revolver. A daring and resourceful young woman she always was; I always knew she would be a match for him and more....
I then set the stage in Vera's bedroom. It was an interesting psychological experiment. Would the conscience of her own guilt, the state of nervous tension of having just shot a man be sufficient, along with the hypnotic suggestion of her surroundings be enough for her to take her own life? It was. Vera Claythorne hanged herself before my very eyes as I stood watching from the doorway…
And now for the last stage. I came forward, picked up the chair and propped it against the wall. The revolver was found on the beach where she dropped it. I was careful to preserve her fingerprints.
And now?
I shall finish writing this, enclose it in a bottle, and cast it to the sea...
Why?
Yes, why?
It was my ambition to create a murder mystery that nobody could solve...
In this I would have assumed that the mystery of Indian Island would remain unsolved. There are a couple of clues the police may discover in which they would be more clever than I had thought, but there is little to say about that.
After entrusting this bottle and message to the sea, I shall go to my room and sit once more in the chair. Attached to my eyeglasses are what seems like a length of fine black cord...but it is elastic cord. I shall sit upon my glasses. The cord I shall loop around the door handle and attach it, not to solidly, to the revolver. What I think will happen is this:
My hand, protected with a handkerchief, will press the trigger. My hand will fall to the side, the revolver, pulled by the elastic will recoil to the door, jarred by the door handle, will detach itself from the elastic and fall. The elastic released will hang down innocently from my glasses under my body. The handkerchief should cause no comment whatsoever.
I shall be found as I was. Dressed in a wig and cape, shot neatly through the forehead in accordance to the record kept by the fellow victims. Time of death cannot be stated with any accuracy by the time our bodies are found.
When the sea goes down, there will come from the mainland boats and men.
They shall find ten dead bodies, and an unsolved mystery on Indian Island. "
Signed,
Lawrence Wargrave.
