Louisa Mary Clees
Louisa Mary Clees is a deceased patient whose name appears in the gramophone-record accusation that the ten guests hear on their first night at Indian Island. The voice charges Dr. Edward George Armstrong with having "upon the 14th day of March, 1925, cause[d] the death of Louisa Mary Clees." Her death is the only specific crime attributed to Armstrong, and it becomes a central piece of the mystery that U. N. Owen has assembled.
Identity and Background
Louisa Mary Clees is never a living presence in the novel; she exists only as a name on a record and as a memory in Armstrong's mind. The evidence about her comes entirely from Armstrong's private reflections and from the posthumous police investigation. Armstrong recalls that she was an elderly woman who underwent a "simple job" operation at Leithmore Hospital in 1925, when he was still a junior doctor attached to the hospital. He remembers that she died on the operating table, and he knows that the cause was his own intoxication: "Drunk—that's what it was—drunk. And I operated! Nerves all to pieces—hands shaking. I killed her, all right." The sister who assisted him knew the truth but held her tongue, and Armstrong credits "loyalty in our profession" for his escape from exposure. The police later confirm that Clees died of peritonitis during the operation, but they find no evidence of criminal intent and classify the death as a surgical failure rather than a crime.
Role in the Accusation and Armstrong's Guilt
The accusation naming Louisa Mary Clees is the only charge that Armstrong cannot dismiss with a plausible denial. When the voice first speaks, Armstrong pretends to be puzzled: "The name meant nothing to me when it was spoken. What was it—Clees? Close? I really can't remember having a patient of that name, or being connected with a death in any way." But his internal monologue immediately contradicts this performance. He thinks about the operation he performed while drunk, the elderly woman he killed, and the sister who covered for him. The accusation thus functions as a trigger for Armstrong's guilt, and it is the one charge that he knows to be true. Later, when the survivors discuss who among them might be the murderer, Vera Claythorne points to Armstrong precisely because "two of the deaths have been poison. That rather points to a doctor." The Clees case gives Armstrong a motive for being on the island—he is one of Owen's targets—and it also provides a psychological explanation for his subsequent behavior: he is a man who has already killed once and who knows that his secret has been discovered.
Thematic Significance
Louisa Mary Clees's death belongs to the category of crimes that the law cannot touch. Armstrong's intoxication and negligence caused her death, but no legal proceeding ever held him accountable. The police investigation after the island massacre confirms this: "Haven't been able to trace any record of an illegal operation or anything of that kind. It's true that there was a woman called Clees who was operated on by him way back in 1925 at Leithmore, when he was attached to the hospital there. Peritonitis and she died on the operating table. Maybe he wasn't very skilful over the op—after all he hadn't much experience—but after all clumsiness isn't a criminal offence." The novel thus uses Clees's death to illustrate the gap between moral guilt and legal guilt that U. N. Owen seeks to close. Armstrong's crime is real, but it is invisible to the justice system; only Owen's extra-legal judgment brings it to light. Clees herself remains a cipher—a name, a body on a table, a statistic of medical failure—but her death is one of the ten "untouchable" murders that Owen has assembled for his grand execution. In the confession that Lawrence Wargrave casts into the sea, he reveals that he learned of Armstrong's case from a teetotal nursing-home sister who recounted the story to him, and that he tracked down the doctor and the patient without difficulty. Louisa Mary Clees is thus a victim twice over: once of Armstrong's drunken incompetence, and once of Wargrave's need for a tenth victim to complete his nursery-rhyme scheme.
