Thomas Rogers
Thomas Rogers, the butler on Indian Island, arrives with his wife Ethel a few days before the guests, having been engaged by letter through an agency. He is a tall, lank, grey-haired man of very respectable appearance, who waits at table with correct formality and carries out his duties with an impassive countenance even as terror mounts around him. Yet from the first evening, his composure is cracked by the gramophone accusation that he and his wife brought about the death of Jennifer Brady on 6 May 1929. Rogers drops the coffee tray at the sound of The Voice, and his subsequent denials are delivered with a dry, twitching mouth and frightened eyes that betray more than his words admit. The judge later notes that Rogers' story about the gramophone record—that he was merely obeying Mr. Owen's orders to put on a piece called "Swan Song"—is "a very remarkable story," and the butler's insistence that he and his wife were devoted to Miss Brady is met with Lombard's silent skepticism.
Role in the Household and the Crimes
Rogers is the only servant on the island besides his wife, and he manages the house, the cooking, and the service with professional efficiency. He locks the dining-room door each night to prevent tampering with the china figures, and he is the one who first notices that one of the ten little Indian boys has disappeared after Anthony Marston's death. His duties extend to chopping sticks for the kitchen fire, a task that proves fatal. When the motor boat fails to arrive on the morning of August 9th, Rogers is the first to express worry, and he later confirms that there is no boat on the island and that communication with the mainland depends entirely on Fred Narracott's daily visits. His reliability as a witness is undermined, however, by the fact that he has never seen his employer, Mr. Owen, and has received all instructions by letter from the Ritz Hotel.
The Murder of Rogers
On the morning of August 10th, Rogers is found dead in the wash-house across the yard, a small chopper still in his hand and a heavy chopper leaning against the door, its blade stained brown. He has been struck from behind while bending over to chop sticks, and the wound in the back of his head corresponds exactly to the weapon. The doctor confirms that a woman could have delivered the blow, and the ex-Inspector notes that the handle has been wiped clean of fingerprints. The discovery of his body triggers the first hysterical breakdown in Vera Claythorne, who recites the nursery rhyme and asks whether bees are kept on the island. The judge, who has by this time already killed Rogers, later explains in his confession that he chose his moment carefully, approaching the butler from behind while he was occupied with the firewood, and that the confusion surrounding the discovery allowed him to slip into Lombard's room and steal the revolver.
Guilt and Complicity
The evidence strongly suggests that Rogers and his wife were indeed responsible for the death of Jennifer Brady. The doctor speculates that they withheld amyl nitrite during a cardiac attack, allowing her to die while Rogers hurried through the night to fetch a doctor, creating an alibi of helplessness. The ex-Inspector argues that Rogers killed his own wife out of fear that she would break down and confess, and the judge's confession confirms that he selected the Rogerses as victims precisely because their crime was one the law could not touch. Rogers' own words—"Devoted to her, we were. Any one will tell you the same. There was never a word said against us. Not a word"—ring hollow in the context of his trembling hands and the legacy he admits they received. The judge, in his manuscript, notes that he had no doubt, after watching the faces of his guests during the gramophone indictment, that one and all were guilty, and Rogers' death, like the others, is a punishment for a murder that could never be proved in court.
Thematic Significance
Rogers embodies the class of criminal that the law cannot reach: those whose crime is one of omission rather than commission, whose victim is elderly and isolated, and whose motive is financial gain masked by faithful service. His death, by the chopper he was using to prepare the fire, mirrors the nursery rhyme's seventh verse—"Seven little Indian boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in halves and then there were six"—and demonstrates the judge's determination to adhere to the rhyme as closely as possible. Rogers' fate also illustrates the judge's principle that those whose guilt is lighter should die first, sparing them the prolonged mental strain that the more cold-blooded offenders suffer. In the end, Rogers is not a mastermind but a cog in a larger machine of justice, a man whose ordinary greed and ordinary fear make him both a perpetrator and a victim in the grand, theatrical design of Lawrence John Wargrave.
