Anthony Marston's poisoning

Anthony Marston's poisoning is the first murder on Indian Island, occurring during the tense aftermath of the gramophone accusation. The young, reckless heir dies instantly from potassium cyanide slipped into his whiskey, an event that transforms the gathering from a bizarre practical joke into a nightmare of systematic killing.

Circumstances and Immediate Aftermath

Dinner had drawn to a close, and the party was in better spirits, mellowed by excellent wine. Anthony Marston, a young man of twenty-three with a tanned face, crisp hair, and intensely blue eyes, had been listening to Mr. Justice Wargrave's caustic anecdotes. When the conversation turned to the china figures on the table, Marston remarked on their quaintness, and Vera Claythorne noted that the nursery rhyme was framed in every bedroom. The mood was relaxed, satisfied. Then, without warning, a high, clear voice filled the drawing-room, accusing each guest by name of a specific murder. The Voice named Anthony James Marston, charging him with the murder of John and Lucy Combes on the 14th of November last. The room erupted in shock; Rogers dropped the coffee tray, and Mrs. Rogers fainted. In the confusion that followed, Marston's glass was left unattended on a small table near the open window. Later, when the group had recovered somewhat and the judge had proposed that they all leave the island the next morning, Marston disagreed, calling the situation "thrilling" and declaring himself "all for crime." He picked up his drink and drank it off at a gulp. Too quickly, perhaps, he choked—his face contorted, turned purple, and he slid off his chair, the glass falling from his hand.

Cause of Death and Investigation

Dr. Armstrong, the first to reach the crumpled figure, knelt beside him and, after a moment, raised his head with bewildered eyes. "My God! he's dead," he whispered. The others could not take it in; a young Norse God in the prime of health and strength could not be struck down so suddenly. Armstrong peered into the dead man's face, sniffed at the blue twisted lips, and then picked up the glass. He dipped a finger into the dregs and touched it with the tip of his tongue. His expression altered. "No, a man doesn't die of a mere choking fit," he said brusquely. "Marston's death wasn't what we call a natural death." When Vera Claythorne asked if there was something in the whiskey, Armstrong nodded. "Everything points to one of the Cyanides. No distinctive smell of Prussic Acid, probably Potassium Cyanide. It acts pretty well instantaneously." The doctor then tested the whiskey and soda bottles and found them both untainted. The poison, therefore, must have been in the glass itself, placed there either by Marston himself or by someone else during the period of distraction. The group was left with the puzzle of why a man so full of life, who had arrived in a fantastically powerful car and seemed like a being who was immortal, would commit suicide—or how a murderer could have acted unseen.

Connection to the Nursery Rhyme and the Pattern

The death immediately echoed the framed nursery rhyme in every bedroom: "Ten little Indian boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine." The next morning, Rogers discovered that one of the ten china figures on the dining-table had disappeared, confirming that the killing was not random but part of a deliberate, patterned design. The poison itself—potassium cyanide, a substance not ordinarily carried by a young man on a social visit—pointed to premeditation by an external agent. As the days passed and more deaths followed, Marston's poisoning became the first link in a chain that would claim all ten guests, each death corresponding to a verse of the nursery rhyme. The method—swift, theatrical, and leaving no trace on the shared bottles—established the murderer's signature: a fanatic who used the law's own tools (a judge's summing-up, a doctor's syringe, a policeman's evidence) to execute those whom the law could not touch.

Thematic Significance

Marston's death serves as the catalyst that shatters the illusion of a normal house party. His callousness—he had earlier dismissed the deaths of John and Lucy Combes as "beastly bad luck" and a "pure accident"—marks him as a type the murderer considered unfit to live. The poisoning also introduces the central irony of the novel: the victims are themselves guilty of crimes that escaped legal punishment, and the murderer, Lawrence John Wargrave, is a retired judge who has spent his life administering the very justice he now perverts. Marston's death, the first of ten, is the moment when the game becomes real, and the guests realize that they are trapped on an island with a homicidal lunatic who has planned their executions with meticulous care.