14 November last

14 November last is the date on which Anthony James Marston, driving his powerful Dalmain car, struck and killed two children, John and Lucy Combes, near Cambridge. The event is first introduced to the reader not through Marston's own recollection but through the disembodied voice of the gramophone record, which, on the evening of August 8th, accuses him of being "guilty of the murder of John and Lucy Combes" on that specific date. The accusation is part of the broader indictment that the voice levels against all ten guests on Indian Island, and it is the only charge that Marston, a young man of sensation and action rather than introspection, initially seems to treat with a kind of puzzled, self-centered concern.

Marston's Recollection and Lack of Remorse

When the other guests begin to discuss the accusations, Marston speaks up in a slow, puzzled voice, saying he has "just been thinking" about John and Lucy Combes, whom he identifies as "a couple of kids I ran over near Cambridge." He immediately frames the event as "beastly bad luck," a phrase that prompts Mr. Justice Wargrave to ask acidly, "For them, or for you?" Marston's reply reveals his complete moral vacancy: he admits he was thinking of the bad luck for himself, though he concedes, "of course, you're right, Sir, it was damned bad luck on them." He insists it was "a pure accident," explaining that the children "rushed out of some cottage or other" and that his only punishment was having his licence endorsed for a year, which he calls a "beastly nuisance." When Dr. Armstrong rebukes him for being a danger to the community, Marston merely shrugs and complains that English roads are hopeless for getting up a decent pace. His entire response is devoid of any sense of responsibility or grief for the lives he has taken.

The Crime as a Type of Legal Untouchability

The killing of John and Lucy Combes on 14 November last is a central example of the kind of crime that the novel's mastermind, Lawrence Wargrave, seeks to punish. In his posthumous confession, Wargrave explains that he selected Anthony Marston from "a large group of people who had committed similar offences," and that Marston's "complete callousness and his inability to feel any responsibility for the lives he had taken made him, I considered, a type dangerous to the community and unfit to live." The police investigation after the massacre confirms that Marston "had his licence endorsed twice and he ought to have been prohibited from driving," but that "some friends of his gave evidence for him and he was let off with a fine." The law, in other words, had already failed to hold him accountable for the deaths of John and Lucy Combes, making him a perfect target for Wargrave's extra-legal justice.

Thematic Significance: The Unpunished Crime

The date 14 November last thus marks a specific, legally unpunished murder that the novel uses to illustrate the failure of the judicial system. Marston's crime is one of reckless endangerment that results in death, but because of his social standing and the lack of criminal intent, he faces only a minor administrative penalty. This gap between the gravity of the act and the lightness of the consequence is precisely the kind of injustice that U.N. Owen is designed to correct. Marston's own death, which occurs on the night of the accusation when he drinks a glass of whiskey laced with potassium cyanide, is the first in the series of executions that follow the nursery rhyme's pattern: "Ten little Indian boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine." His poisoning, which the other guests initially mistake for suicide, is in fact the first deliberate murder carried out by Wargrave, who had slipped the cyanide into Marston's almost empty glass during the tense period after the gramophone recital. The date of the original crime thus becomes the foundation for the first act of retribution on Indian Island.