Death of Emily Brent

Emily Brent, the rigidly moral and self-righteous spinster, becomes the sixth victim on Indian Island, her death a calculated injection of cyanide that the murderer stages to mirror the nursery rhyme's line about a bumblebee sting, a killing that exposes the brittleness of her unyielding virtue and the murderer's theatrical adherence to the rhyme's pattern.

Identity and Background

Emily Brent is a sixty-five-year-old spinster who carries herself with an upright, unbending posture, a habit instilled by her father, a Colonel of the old school who was particular about deportment. She travels in a crowded third-class carriage, triumphing over its discomfort and heat, and disapproves of the modern generation's laxity in carriage and in every other way. She believes people make too much fuss over things, wanting injections before teeth are pulled, taking drugs to sleep, and lounging in easy chairs, while girls allow their figures to slop about and lie half-naked on beaches. Her mind is filled with a desire to make an example of certain people. She is lured to Indian Island by a letter purportedly from a woman she met at the Bellhaven Guest House, a signature she misreads as either Ogden or Oliver, offering a free summer holiday. The letter appeals to her desire for a guest house with good plain cooking and a nice old-fashioned type of person, free from nudity and gramophones. With her income reduced and dividends unpaid, the free holiday is a significant consideration. She brings her Bible and reads it before dinner, her lips moving as she follows the words: "The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken. The Lord is known by the judgment which he executeth: the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. The wicked shall be turned into hell." She then pins a cairngorm brooch at her neck and goes down to dinner.

Life and Plot Trajectory

Upon arrival, Emily Brent is the first to enter the taxi with Mr. Justice Wargrave, and she sits very upright as is her custom. During the gramophone accusation, she is one of the few who remain comparatively unmoved, sitting upright with her head held high and a spot of hard colour in each cheek. When the others rush to investigate the source of the voice, she remains alone in the drawing-room, sitting erect in her chair. When asked to respond to the accusation that she was responsible for the death of Beatrice Taylor, she refuses to say anything, stating, "I have always acted in accordance with the dictates of my conscience. I have nothing with which to reproach myself." Later, she reveals to Vera Claythorne that Beatrice Taylor was a servant who became pregnant, and that she dismissed her immediately, refusing to condone immorality. She states that the girl then took her own life by throwing herself into the river, and she feels no self-reproach, believing the girl's own sin drove her to it. Vera, listening, finds that Emily Brent, encased in her own armour of virtue, is no longer slightly ridiculous but suddenly terrible. After the death of General Macarthur, she is the one who suggests that Mrs. Rogers' death was an Act of God, a sinner struck down by the wrath of God, a view that shocks the others. She spends the morning of August 10th sitting in a chair around the corner of the house, out of the wind, knitting. She later goes for a walk in her mackintosh, returning to report that the sea is as high as ever and that no boat could put out.

Key Actions and Objectives

Emily Brent's primary objective is to maintain her own moral superiority and to see the world through the lens of her rigid, unforgiving principles. She is the only one who does not offer an explanation after the gramophone record, reserving her defence. She writes in a small black notebook, recording her thoughts on the murders and concluding that the murderer is one of them, and that she alone knows who it is. In a moment of mental drift, she writes "THE MURDERER'S NAME is BEATRICE TAYLOR," but then, with an angry exclamation, scores through the sentence, saying to herself, "Did I write that? Did I? I must be going mad." During breakfast on the day of her death, she feels giddy and refuses any help from Dr. Armstrong, the word "No!" bursting from her lips like an exploding shell, revealing her deep suspicion of him. She insists on sitting quietly until the giddiness passes.

Relationships and Conflict

Emily Brent is isolated from the other guests by her own righteousness. She is suspicious of Dr. Armstrong, refusing his offer of medication. She is the object of suspicion for the others, particularly Ex-Inspector Blore, who believes she is the murderer, citing her religious mania, her lack of an explanation after the gramophone record, and her calm demeanor after Rogers' murder. He notes that she was out in her mackintosh, saying she had been down to look at the sea, and argues that an innocent person would be too scared to wander about by herself. Vera Claythorne finds her terrible, and the judge notes that she is the only one who would not be troubled by a sense of guilt or remorse for her attitude towards Beatrice Taylor. Her conflict is not with any single person but with the entire moral universe she believes she represents, a universe that is now being violently inverted.

Change and Ending

Emily Brent is left alone in the dining-room after breakfast. She feels drowsy and hears a buzzing in her ears, which she identifies as a bumblebee crawling up the window-pane. She thinks of honey and of Beatrice Taylor, the drowned girl, and feels a wet, dank smell in her nostrils. She feels a prick on the side of her neck, the bee sting. When the others return to the dining-room, they find her sitting in her chair, her face suffused with blood, her lips blue, and her eyes staring. Dr. Armstrong identifies a mark on the right side of her neck as that of a hypodermic syringe, and determines she died of cyanide poisoning, probably potassium cyanide, the same as Anthony Marston. The murderer, as revealed in the confession of Lawrence John Wargrave, had slipped a dose of chloral into her coffee at breakfast, and then, when she was nearly unconscious, injected a strong solution of cyanide into her. The bumblebee, he admits, was a childish touch, a way of adhering closely to the nursery rhyme: "Six little Indian boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five." Her death is the sixth, and it is the first to be explicitly staged as a direct, literal enactment of the rhyme's verse.

Narrative Role and Evaluation

Emily Brent's death serves as a crucial turning point in the novel's escalating horror. It is the first murder that is explicitly and theatrically staged to match the nursery rhyme, revealing the murderer's playful but deadly adherence to his pattern. Her character, a study in self-righteousness and moral rigidity, is the one most clearly marked by the hypocrisy the murderer seeks to punish. Her refusal to feel guilt for driving Beatrice Taylor to suicide makes her, in the murderer's eyes, a perfect target for his extra-legal justice. Her death, a quiet injection in a room where she sits alone with her Bible and her memories, is a stark contrast to the violent deaths of the men, and it underscores the murderer's cold, methodical approach. The discovery of her body, with the hypodermic syringe and the smashed china figure thrown out the window, confirms the group's worst fears: the murderer is among them, and he is following a script.