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Isaac Morris is a fraudster and drug dealer, and, secretly, the first of Justice Wargrave’s targets to die. His primary role in the novel is structural for both Christie and Wargrave’s purposes. He serves as the behind-the-scenes mechanism that sets the stage for the murders. He purchases the island on Justice Wargrave’s behalf, carefully hiding any clue to the true buyer, and actively recruits Philip Lombard. Because Morris is there to cook the books, Judge Wargrave is able to erase all traces of his guilt until his letter of confession, allowing him to craft the perfect, unsolvable murder. However, Wargrave doesn’t treat his death as a mere afterthought, but instead crafts it to have poetic justice. Wargrave chooses Morris because he sold drugs to a young woman who subsequently died of an overdose. Morris thus becomes a murderer because he doesn’t care about the potential consequences of the drugs he sells or the lives of his buyers. Similarly, Morris conducts business for Wargrave, apparently without caring about what he is complicit in. Not only does Morris ultimately die of an overdose of barbiturates, but Wargrave arranges these events so that Morris takes direct part in arranging the circumstances that lead up to his own murder.
