SOURCES FOR CHRISTIE'S NOVEL "AND THEN THERE WERE NONE" (1939) :
(previously "Ten little Indians")
1)- of course the Bible :
"The whole party had dined well.
They were satisfied with themselves and with life.
There was a silence - a comfortable replete silence.
Into that silence came The Voice.
Without warning, inhuman, penetrating...
Ladies and gentlemen, silence please.
You are charged with the following indictments : ..." (p.46)
This refers to the Last Supper.
Jesus and the apostles had eaten well,
suddenly Jesus said : "one of you will betray me".
"General Macarthur
(who had sent his love rival Richmond deliberately tot death)
had gone to church on Sundays.
But not the day that the lesson was read about David putting Uriah in the forefront of the battle...
(see 2, Samuel 11,15). (p.84)
2) -Judge Wargrave about the Seton-case :
"Crime and its punishment has always fascinated me.
I enjoy reading every kind of detective story and thriller. (...) ..
.The man had actually committed the crime with which he was charged,
the brutal murder of an elderly woman who trusted him". (p.286,287)
See FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (1866)
3)-EMILY BRONTË, WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1847) :
"The intense horror of nightmare came over me;
I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it,and a most melancholy voice, sobbed :
Let me in - let me in.
Who are you ? I asked struggling, meanwhile to disengage myself.
Catherine Linton, it replied, shiveringly
(Why did I think of Linton, I had read Earnshaw, twenty times of Linton).
I'm come home , I'd lost my way on the moor.
As it spoke, I discerned,obscurely, a child's face looking through the window- terror made me cruel, I pulled its wrist to the broken pane and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bed-clothes; still it wailed, Let me in...(...)
Be gone, I shouted, I will never let you in, not if you beg for twenty years..." (p.27, 28)
Compare with "And then there were none" :
"Last night Emily Brent had dreamed of Beatrice (=Catherine Linton),
dreamt that she was outside pressing her face against the window and moaning,
asking to be let in.
But Emily Brent had not wanted to let her in.
Because, if she did, something terrible would happen..." (p.194)