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Thomas Rogers, husband of Ethel Rogers, is one of the servants hired to cater the party on Soldier Island. He is also one of the intended victims. Although he at first appears to be a dutiful butler, his crime ironically stems from him shirking his responsibilities by withholding medicine from Jennifer Brady. Furthering this irony, it is his refusal to neglect his butler duties after the murders start that leads to his death. He separates from the group to chop wood, leaving him vulnerable to attack by Justice Wargrave. Unlike his wife, Mr. Rogers compartmentalizes his guilt, never admitting to or appearing haunted by Miss Brady’s murder in any way. He instead emphasizes how he went to find a doctor to help Miss Brady. By misdirecting from the lifesaving action he didn’t do to the one that he chose to do instead, Thomas Rogers crafts a plausible lie to himself and others that he had no actual hand in Miss Brady’s death.
As the butler, Mr. Rogers also plays an integral role in the novel’s examination of class. After Mrs. Rogers’s death, Mr. Rogers moves into one of the guest rooms so as not to share a room with a corpse. While a pragmatic and reasonable decision, symbolically this action represents the beginning of the decay of social order that overtakes the house as the murders continue. Now servant and guests all sleep on the same level, not stratified by class. After his death, the remaining guests rely on gender roles to figure out who will prepare their meals. However, without Mr. or Mrs. Rogers preparing the food, they begin to become suspicious of poison. Mr. Rogers’s handling of food preparation doesn’t frighten the other guests even though they are aware a murderer lurks among them, because him doing so perpetuates a semblance of civilization and order that is familiar and comforting to them. They at no point consider that he, like them, is also a murderer, and in fact committed murder in the course of his duties as a servant.
