Vera Claythorne had always been a rather quiet woman.
Even though she was daring and opinionated for a young woman of her time, she usually kept to herself—had always, even before Cyril, before Hugo…she did this in her new life too. Where she lived in London under the name Una Nancy Owen (the only thing she kept in her life of that horrifying week) it was always cold and rainy, and she never went out much. And when she did, she could sense the people gossiping behind her back about her detached gaze, the deadened look on her face, and her irritating habit of humming that singsongy poem about the ten little soldiers under her breath…
Her fingers loosened on the small china figure in her hand, and it tumbled to the floor before smashing on the fender. Vera, ignoring the soldier, reached out with fluttering, uncertain fingers before touching the rough surface of the rope.
Of course. Of course, this was how it ended. It had started with Cyril, after all, and Cyril had choked her with his cold, dead hand from the ceiling just a day ago, hadn't he? Hadn't he? Was this rope his way of asking payment for his death?
"You can go to the rock, Cyril…" Hadn't she said that, such a long time ago? Wasn't it, she thought, dreamily putting one foot up on the chair kindly set up below the noose, natural that she should die practically by Cyril's hand as he had died at hers?
Vera's hand strayed onto the noose—
And froze.
She'd read the papers, of course, practically devoured them after the story about Soldier Island had come out. Her whole little apartment (once again bought under the name of 'Una Owen') was coated in little newspaper clippings about the scandalous story. It was yet another gray, dreary day when Vera chose to reread the newspapers, and as she'd read them dozens of times, only a few phrases leapt out at her.
Ten people, found dead…Soldier Island…a mystery that has the world in uproar….unknown murderer…
Unknown, indeed, Vera thought, smirking as she dropped the newspaper back onto her desk. U.N. Owen. Her alias's first two initials and last name…something she had stolen from him.
But, of course, he was nothing to worry about. His little sadistic game had ended up backfiring on him in the end, and now he was the ninth little soldier boy. He had not outlived the others, as he had planned to, due to Vera's quick thinking and cunning, of course…
Yes, that judge had thought he'd had her snugly trapped in his web. But how surprised he had been, those last few moments of his life…
An unmistakable footfall from downstairs.
For a couple beats Vera stood there, breathlessly hovering by the noose, as he twisted her fingers and listened to the intruder calmly walking about the kitchen area downstairs. Then she heard the unmistakable sound of a chair grinding back on the floor. And then nothing.
But everyone was dead save her…
A distinctive cough from downstairs. The chair shifting about on the smooth tiled floor.
Somebody was downstairs.
Had Lombard faked his death? Was he under the impression that she was dead…or was he waiting for her to come downstairs?
No. She had shot Lombard, she was positive. Had watched the blood pool red in a perfect circle surrounding his heart. Lombard was dead.
So, was Lombard not the murderer after all? Had the murderer put this noose here—Vera immediately backed away from it, fingernails digging into the soft skin of her face now—so that she would kill herself and leave the murderer, the unknown U.N. Owen, alone and safe and alive, the only one still intact on Soldier Island?
Vera moaned quietly into her hands, her heart fluttering like an erratic moth behind her breast. So she had misjudged. Lombard was not U.N Owen, and not only was U.N Owen (the insane creator of this sadistic game) still very much alive, but he was the only one in this house with her.
Only a staircase away…
She only returned to St. Treneddick five years after the fiasco on Soldier Island. Once she had bought a vacation home there with the money that she had scrounged up through a job of washing clothes for people in the neighborhood, she promptly sailed out there and settled in. After unpacking, Vera donned the wedding dress that Hugo had picked out for her and walked down to the beach.
Could she, even after five years….? Yes, there it was. The rock—seeming so much farther away now—was still there, the rock that Cyril had tried to swim out to. The rock that she had encouraged him to swim out to…
Had Hugo known about that?
Yes. She was certain. Vera had seen the surety in Hugo's eyes when she swore that she had only been distracted before seeing Cyril swimming helplessly out to sea…the recognition that what she was saying was a lie. And sometimes, especially now on this beach, she could still see Hugo, his gleaming dark hair and boyish blue eyes, feel the warmth of his arms surrounding her and delighted in hearing the charming whisper of his voice in her ears…
She felt remorse for Cyril's death, Vera decided, looking out at that red-and-orange horizon (not unlike on the day the sun had set on the last victims of Soldier Island), but only for Hugo's sake. Only for the despair in Hugo's eyes on the day that Cyril's body had descended into the ground forever.
She couldn't say the same for the people on Soldier Island.
Vera's shaky fingers closed on the cold metal of the revolver that she had dropped in her trancelike state on the staircase. She had been terrified out of her mind on the quiet descent down the stairs that Owen had already stolen the revolver, but it was still there. It slid into her hand and greeted her like an old, familiar friend, and she prepared to take the last step down the stairwell that would reveal her to U.N. Owen.
She heard a soft sigh from the kitchen. Perhaps Owen meditating over the deaths of his victims, just as she had meditated over the death of Cyril…?
Sucking in a deep breath, Vera tightened her hand on the gun.
Courage, my girl, she thought to herself, and stepped out from behind the staircase, extending the gun out in front of her.
A man with a high, bald head sat with his back to her, at the head of the table and contemplating over the centerpiece that had once held ten little china soldier boys. Heart threatening to shatter her ribs now, Vera took another step forward, and this time, the floorboard gently creaked beneath her.
Justice Lawrence Wargrave turned in his seat to face her, his small, shrewd little eyes as always calculating and assessing her, drinking in the gun in her hands, the shakiness of her fingers, and the slight shock in her eyes.
"Oh, Miss Claythorne," he said softly, returning his gaze back to the empty centerpiece. "You passed your test with flying colors."
It was no good, trying to outrun them. Anthony Marston's purpling face gaped at her from her mirror. Dr. Armstrong stared with a beaten, twisted face at her in her dreams. Rogers's bloodied face looked back at her in the rainy puddles that she splashed in on the way to work, and worst of all, Philip Lombard's shocked, startled face, touched with the luster of blood, followed her in shop windows and wherever she walked.
And she could always feel Wargrave's malicious leer prickling the back of her neck, his taunting and predatory smile. The smile that said two words quite clearly.
I win.
Against herself, Vera drew closer to the table. The gun was now shaking violently in her grasp and she worried for herself should it go off by accident.
"You." This was all she seemed to be able to stammer out.
An animalistic smile (that was barely even a smile!) peeled back Wargrave's lips.
"You say it as though you should be surprised," he continued in that cold, quiet voice. "But I did leave subtle clues for you along the way, did I not?" Still smiling, he took a step towards her.
Vera cocked the gun once more, but all this elicited out of the judge was a dry chuckle. "My dear Miss Claythorne, you wouldn't shoot me. You could never, not after you murdered Cyril Hamilton and Philip Lombard. Three deaths on your conscious….rather a heavy load, no?"
"It's better than seven," Vera replied, proud of her voice for staying steady.
For a moment she thought she saw a sour look pervade Wargrave's mask, but in another second he was smiling again. "Those deaths were all within the realms of justice. All those seven had committed murders, and none of those seven were punished for it! The same goes for you and Philip Lombard. And speaking of you, Miss Claythorne…it appears that you did not succumb to my little psychological experiment. I guessed that you would be more than a match for Philip Lombard, and you were, yes you were, but you didn't die like you were supposed to, did you?" And for a fleeting second, Vera thought she could see the child that had been fascinated by the little nursery rhyme that Wargrave and set up in each and every bedroom. "Did you, now, hmm?" Wargrave continued. "This creates a little bit of a….ahem…a hiccough in my plans. You passed the test, didn't you? But there can only be one soldier left, by the end of the game."
She didn't like thinking about Wargrave. She didn't like thinking of anything connected to Soldier Island. In her new life as Una Owen, Vera threw herself furiously into her washing, into her work, and when there was none of that left, she took long walks. Long walks that by the end burned and stretched her muscles and distracted her thoughts.
In the end, after five years staying in London, she decided to move. She highly doubted it would ever happen, but just in case someone remembered Vera Claythorne on the boat to Soldier Island, she would already have left the trail cold…
"How do you propose to kill me?" Vera asked, her voice tinged with quickly rising hysteria. "I've got the revolver."
"Yes," Wargrave hummed, inspecting the weapon. "That you have….but we must abide by the nursery rhyme, and the rhyme says nothing about two little soldier boys left. So here is what we are going to do, Miss Claythorne….
You will hand me the revolver, and I will kill myself. Following that, you will commit suicide, and there will be no other soldiers left on Soldier Island." His wicked mouth split with glee. "And then there were none…that's the last line, see. I've worked so hard, ever so hard, Miss Claythorne, to match this little vacation as closely to my favorite nursery rhyme as I can, and it just wouldn't do to have two of us left, no?"
Now that she was Ursula Natalie Owen (she kept the U.N. Owen, always, no matter how many times she changed her identity) and she lived in Cornwall, Vera couldn't help but feel safer. She never went to the beach, if she could help it, too many memories of Cyril swimming out to the rock and of her and Philip Lombard waiting, paralyzed with fear, until morning…
She still obsessively followed the ongoing Soldier Island case, even though it had been six years and the police were still as clueless as ever. And they always will be, she would think as she opened her top drawer where, hidden under some of her dresses, was the trusty old revolver that she had always kept with her.
There was a click as the revolver loaded in Vera's hand.
"That's right, girl," said Wargrave, his voice suddenly going as cold as the ocean outside. "Hand it over. I always knew you were the smart one of the bunch."
Vera hesitantly raised up her hand.
"More intelligent than all the others…of course, save for me," Wargrave spoke aloud, laughing to himself. "Still, I thought you'd be the last one…always did…"
Vera held the revolver out in front of her, her finger still splayed on the trigger.
"Good girl, Miss Claythorne. Now why don't you give me the revolver, so we can finish out this rhyme as it was always supposed to end…"
BANG!
A lead on the Soldier Island case?
A lead?
A lead?
The trail hadn't gone cold, even after seven years? Vera crammed the last of her toast in her mouth and hoped the other people in the coffee shop didn't notice her fingers whitening dangerously on the edges of the newspaper.
Could the trap be closing in at last?
"Horrible business, isn't it?" A nearby middle-aged woman murmured, stealing a glance at the headline of her newspaper. "Ten people dead, and they still don't know who did it…"
Vera forced a strained smile on her face, which she feared was completely bloodless. Hopefully the woman would take it for revulsion at the topic of the article. "Well, hopefully they'll find the murderer soon," she said in a clipped tone, then dropped her newspaper and left.
Maybe it was time for Ursula Natalie Owen to disappear too…
Wargrave was dead.
The expression on his face was a triumphant jeer that smirked up at her as Vera pocketed the revolver and, very calmly, walked out the door.
At last! Truly alone. Really, the island was quite peaceful and serene once you got to know it. Vera lounged on the hot white sand, fingering her revolver and staring pensively up at the seagulls repeatedly swirling in circles above the island, cawing urgently to each other.
During those few sweet hours spent alone on the beach, the cogs and gears in Vera Claythorne's mind churned continuously as she produced ideas as to how she was going to escape the island, and by the time she saw the tiny speck that was an oncoming boat in the distance, she was ready. She knew how she was going to get off the island and not leave a trace of Vera Elizabeth Claythorne behind.
Reaching for her revolver, Vera called an easy smile to her face and stepped forward to intercept Fred Narracott.
Ursha Norah Owen now lived in Dublin, Ireland. It was a cool, lovely green city peppered with quaint little towns and rivers, and Vera rather liked it there…even though she lived in fear that one day the name 'Vera Claythorne' would surface on the topic of the Soldier Island mystery, and she always kept one hand on the revolver that had served her faithfully for the last eight years and one eye on the newspaper.
She could never risk her secret getting out…
Else she would become the eleventh little soldier boy.
One little soldier boy left all alone…
"…Mr. Narracott!" She said brightly, calling a warm, welcoming smile to her face. "It's lovely to see you!"
The seaman eyed Vera with a testy, uncertain eye. He kept one weathered hand on the tiller of his boat, as if considering driving away, and drank in Vera's innocent-looking figure.
"Hmmm," Narracott murmured. His fingers tapped restlessly on the tiller. He was smoking a cigarette.
"Did you come up here for a certain reason?" Vera decided to ask, cutting to the chase. The faster she got off this island and disappeared, the better for her and the worse for the puzzled cops who were bound to set foot on Soldier Island before long.
Narracott's mouth twitched, as if he could somehow smell the gun underneath her dress. "Damned funny business," he muttered into his mustache, "going on up here in Soldier Island."
Vera fixed her face into what she hoped was a politely confused look. "Really now?"
Narracott removed his cigarette from between his whiskery lips. "Aye," he said. "Been askin' around about a fellow named Owen, and no one in town's heard hide nor hair of him."
Vera pursed her lips. "Well, that's funny. Mr. Owen and his wife are right inside…"
Narracott's eyebrows lifted in surprise. "Owen? Inside? Are you sure, young miss? I tell you, nobody in town's heard of a single person named Owen—"
"Of course he is!" Vera said, beaming up at Narracott. "Come right on inside, I'll introduce you to him. We were just about to eat lunch. Are you hungry, Mr. Narracott?"
Narracott gazed at her thoughtfully, scratching the back of his neck. "As a matter of fact…I didn't have any breakfast this morning. Mind if I intrude?"
"Not at all. I'm sure the Owens won't mind a bit either."
And the moment Narracott stepped off the boat, Vera whipped the revolver out and, as if it were second nature, squeezed the trigger.
…A good friend of a governess who went missing a couple years back, Vera Claythorne, has testified that Miss Claythorne did indeed mention something in passing about vacationing at Soldier Island for the week…
Miss Hamilton.
Damn that Miss Hamilton!
This was her revenge, wasn't it? Vera had mentioned to Miss Hamilton vaguely about going to Soldier Island for the week. Was this her revenge? For murdering her son?
Vera crumpled the newspaper into an angry, jagged ball and then tossed it in the fire. Black snakes of ash began to weave their way across the uneven paper as Vera clutched her head in her hands.
Oh, how the tables had turned indeed.
Ten little soldier boys, Vera thought dreamily as she dragged Fred Narracott's dead body across the island and into her own bedroom. Yes, it all fit. In order for Vera Claythorne to disappear, the murders still had to tally up with the rhyme. Ten little soldier boys.
The police were onto her. She knew it. They had tracked down the false identity of Una Nancy Owen, living in London, and had connected it with the infamous Owen they had heard so much about from the residents of the town close to Soldier Island. Soon, Vera thought, fretfully pacing her bedroom, they would be onto Ursula Natalie Owen, then Ursha Norah Owen….and then they would be onto Vera Claythorne.
Fred Narracott, shot with the revolver just like Lombard and Wargrave (the bastard). Narracott could be the tenth little soldier boy, standing in for Vera Claythorne as she took his boat and sailed off into the sunset. Only a few things to take care of, to engineer her disappearance…
When Vera left her tenth soldier in her bedroom, she took her diary off her desk and put it into her bag, beginning to repack. Once she had packed, Vera set about the task of going around her fellow guests' rooms…yes, Emily Brent had kept a diary. Vera stole the diary and put that in her bag too. No doubt Brent had written about Vera in it and she couldn't have that…
The trap had closed.
The police had found Ursula Natalie Owen in Cornwall, and it was only a matter of time before Ursha Norah Owen was found in Dublin.
There was no way out except the obvious way, the way that Wargrave had left for her…
How ironic, Vera thought, gazing at the noose she had fashioned above her, that it should end this way.
After making off with all the diaries that incriminated her like a thief in the night, Vera Claythorne ventured across Soldier Island and onto Narracott's boat, where she stored her bag and clothes.
And was off.
The Dublin Prophet News:
The mystery of Soldier Island, which has spanned a long ten years, has finally come to a close. The murderess in question was tracked down to be in hiding in Dublin, Ireland under the pseudonym Ursha Norah Owen (it is noted that follow the same initials as 'Una Nancy Owen' and 'Ursula Natalie Owen'. The murderess is believed to have been Vera Claythorne, a woman who was already guilty of the possible murder of Cyril Ogilvie Hamilton from over eleven years ago. Today we celebrate the catch of this certain psychopath and avenge the deaths of the ten people that Soldier Island took for its own.
The next morning, when it was reported that Narracott had not returned to town, the police would come to Soldier Island. And there they would find ten dead bodies and an unsolved problem on Soldier Island.
Wow.
I don't even know what that was. It was supposed to be a little oneshot but it somehow turned into this…wow.
Well, anyway, for those of you still on this site, I hoped you read and liked (and understood) it! Thanks for reading!