scotland yard officials are puzzled at who could have killed the ten. they reconstruct the deaths from marston to wargrave with the help of the victims' diaries and a coroner's report, and systematically determine that none of the last four victims (armstrong, blore, lombard, or claythorne) can be the killer, since there was some form of cleanup following all their deaths except blore's (for example, the chair on which vera stood to hang herself had been set back upright), and a suicide by falling clock seems beyond the realm of probability. isaac morris, a sleazy lawyer and drug trafficker, purchased the island, arranged the invitations, ordered the production of the gramophone record, and told the inhabitants of nearby sticklehaven to ignore any signals for help, citing a bet about living on a "desert island" for a week. however, morris died of an overdose of barbiturates on the night of 8 august.