Emily Brent's injection

Emily Brent's injection is the fifth murder on Indian Island, the point at which the killer's method shifts from surreptitious poisoning to a direct, medicalized assault, and the moment that finally confirms the murderer is operating from within the group with cold, theatrical precision.

The Method and the Poison

After breakfast on the morning of August 10th, Emily Brent complained of feeling giddy. Dr. Edward George Armstrong offered her a sedative, but she refused with a sharp, suspicious "No!" — the word burst from her lips like an exploding shell, and she made it clear she would not take anything from him. The others cleared the breakfast things and left her alone in the dining-room. While she sat there, drowsy from the giddiness that was passing, the killer acted. Lawrence John Wargrave had earlier slipped his last dose of chloral hydrate into her coffee when he refilled her cup at breakfast. Once she was nearly unconscious, he entered the dining-room alone and injected a strong solution of potassium cyanide into the side of her neck with a hypodermic syringe. The mark of the syringe was found on the right side of her neck. The poison, one of the cyanides, probably potassium cyanide, caused death almost immediately by asphyxiation, just as it had with Anthony James Marston.

The Staging and the Nursery Rhyme

The murder was staged to fit the nursery rhyme that governed the killings. The sixth verse of "Ten Little Indian Boys" reads: "Six little Indian boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five." As Vera Elizabeth Claythorne had hysterically asked that morning whether the island kept bees, a real bumblebee was found buzzing at the dining-room window after the body was discovered. Philip Lombard recognized the killer's "touch of local colour" — a playful adherence to the damnable nursery jingle. The killer had also smashed a fifth china Indian boy from the table and thrown it out the window along with the syringe, reducing the count from six to five.

Discovery and Immediate Aftermath

The others found Emily Brent still sitting in her chair in the dining-room when they returned to summon her for their meeting. From behind she seemed merely still seated, but when they saw her face it was suffused with blood, with blue lips and staring eyes. William Henry Blore exclaimed, "My God, she's dead!" Lawrence John Wargrave observed quietly, "One more of us acquitted — too late!" Dr. Armstrong bent over the body, sniffed the lips, peered into the eyelids, and then noticed the mark on the neck. Vera cried out at the sight of the bumblebee at the window, but Armstrong confirmed that a human hand had held the syringe. When asked who had brought a hypodermic syringe to the house, Armstrong admitted he had, but his own syringe was later found to be missing from his suitcase. The syringe was discovered outside the dining-room window, wiped clean of prints, with the broken fifth china figure beside it.

Significance and Narrative Role

Emily Brent's injection marks a turning point in the island's sequence of murders. It is the first killing that requires the murderer to have direct, physical access to the victim with a medical instrument, narrowing the field of suspects to someone who could plausibly possess and use a hypodermic syringe. It also exposes the killer's willingness to frame Dr. Armstrong, whose missing syringe becomes a piece of circumstantial evidence against him. The murder confirms that the killer is not merely poisoning from a distance but is willing to approach and inject a victim face-to-face, and that the nursery rhyme is not a loose inspiration but a rigid script to which every death must conform.