February 1932

February 1932 is the date specified in the gramophone-record accusation that the voice of U. N. Owen levels against Philip Lombard during the dinner party on Indian Island. The recorded voice states that Lombard, "upon a date in February, 1932, you were guilty of the death of twenty-one men, members of an East African tribe." This charge is one of ten indictments delivered without warning to the assembled guests, each naming a specific person and a specific past act that the law could not punish. The accusation against Lombard is the only one that he does not deny; instead, he confirms it with a casual, almost amused admission.

Lombard's Admission and Justification

When the other guests demand explanations after the gramophone record finishes, Philip Lombard speaks without hesitation. He says, "Story's quite true! I left 'em! Matter of self-preservation." He explains that he and a couple of other men were lost in the bush and took what food there was, abandoning the rest of the party. General Macarthur, outraged, asks, "You abandoned your men—left them to starve?" Lombard replies, "Not quite the act of a pukka sahib, I'm afraid. But self-preservation's a man's first duty. And natives don't mind dying, you know. They don't feel about it as Europeans do." Vera Claythorne, horrified, asks directly, "You left them—to die?" and Lombard answers flatly, "I left them to die." His amused eyes meet her horrified ones, and he shows no sign of guilt or regret.

The Crime as a Type of Untouchable Offense

Lombard's action in February 1932 exemplifies the kind of crime that the novel's plot revolves around: a killing that cannot be prosecuted by the legal system. The confession of Lawrence John Wargrave, the mastermind behind the Indian Island murders, reveals that he selected Lombard as a victim after hearing a devastating account of his activities from a man who had recently returned from the Amazon. Wargrave considered Lombard a type dangerous to the community and unfit to live. The February 1932 incident is thus one of several cases—including the Rogerses' neglect of Jennifer Brady, Emily Brent's treatment of Beatrice Taylor, and Justice Wargrave's own judicial murder of Edward Seton—that the law could not touch but that U. N. Owen's private justice aims to punish.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

The February 1932 date functions as a fixed point in the novel's moral accounting. It is the only accusation that the accused does not attempt to refute, qualify, or explain away. Lombard's frankness about the deaths of the twenty-one tribesmen establishes him as a character who operates entirely outside conventional morality, a man who values his own survival above all else and who feels no obligation toward those he considers inferior. This unapologetic stance makes him both a credible suspect for the subsequent murders and, paradoxically, one of the more straightforward figures in the story. His admission also deepens the novel's exploration of moral relativism and colonial attitudes: Lombard's casual racism—"natives don't mind dying"—reveals the dehumanizing logic that allows him to dismiss the lives of twenty-one people. The February 1932 event, though never depicted directly, casts a long shadow over Lombard's character and over the novel's central question of what constitutes justice when the law fails.