How to Cheat Your Own Death
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Chapters 13-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, animal death, graphic violence, and emotional abuse.
Chapter 13 Summary
Crane calls Annie with new information: Her mother’s first series of paintings sold for a large sum immediately after she was “discovered,” which directly contradicts the story told by her father. Crane speculates that Sam lied either due to ego or because he’s a habitual liar who is careless about covering his tracks.
Annie tells Crane about items she found in Fliss’s guest room at Laura’s house: a compelling painting hidden in her wardrobe and a red handbag containing medical records. Annie has realized that the painting is one described in Frances’s diary, which was purchased by Ford Gravesdown in 1968 at an art auction in a Knightsbridge house. The diary reveals that the painting was done by Frances’s acquaintance Vera, who helped her brother, Max, use it to embarrass his ex-girlfriend Elaine.
Crane concludes that since Fliss was aware of Vera, it’s highly unlikely that their murders, which were committed in the same manner, are a coincidence. Before leaving to investigate the Knightsbridge address, Annie hides the medical records and diaries in a disused heating vent in her old room in Laura’s house.
Chapter 14 Summary: “October 23, 1968”
In 1968, after a university lecture, Vera impulsively invites Frances into her chauffeured car, leaving Max behind. In the car, Vera reveals that she married Alasdair primarily to anger her father. She describes Alasdair as controlling, admitting that he sometimes burns her artwork when he disapproves of it.
Vera also confesses to having affairs out of boredom. She tells Frances that because the powerful men in her life underestimate her, she’s in a perfect position to collect their secrets, which she sees as a source of power. Vera then invites Frances to join her for a night of dancing at a popular new club, Hatchetts Playground. Intrigued, Frances agrees to meet her there.
Chapter 15 Summary
In the present, Annie arrives at the Knightsbridge address listed in Frances’s diary and discovers that it’s now an art gallery: the Knightsbridge Nymph Art Gallery. Inside, she finds a portrait painted in a style identical to the one she found in Fliss’s room and instinctively knows that it was painted by Vera. A gallery employee named Marie forces Annie to delete a photo she takes of it, but she also says that the man in the portrait is Max Torrence, who now works at the gallery’s front desk. Annie is also surprised to find a temporary exhibition of sculptures by Fliss.
Annie approaches Max at the front desk. He’s charming, and she reflects that she can’t trust him, as Frances seemed convinced that he murdered Vera, even if she couldn’t prove it.
Chapter 16 Summary: “October 26, 1968”
In 1968, after a fun night of dancing at Hatchett’s Playground, Vera asks Frances to store some of her belongings, including a trunk and a bag, claiming that she fears Alasdair will destroy them.
The next day, Frances visits Ford, who tells her that Alasdair warned him that Vera has been diagnosed as a pathological liar by her own father, a psychologist. Their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Constable Folkestone. He’s looking for Vera, explaining that she had previously come to him with concerns for her safety. He also notes that Max called him to accuse Vera of stealing something of his. Worried that Vera has used her, Frances resolves to check her apartment to see if Vera’s items have been delivered.
Chapter 17 Summary
At her apartment, Frances and Ford discover that Vera’s trunk, a suitcase, and the red handbag that Max mentioned have been delivered. Inside the bag, they find proof that Elaine has been writing Max’s university essays for him. The bag also contains other blackmail material that Vera has collected, including medical records from her husband’s patients and letters exposing her father’s affair with a student.
While searching the suitcase, they find a valuable diamond tiara, which Ford speculates may be the object that Max reported as stolen. Worried that Vera might be setting Frances up for a theft charge, Ford offers to store all the items at his home in Chelsea. They then open the large trunk and find that it’s filled with Vera’s paintings, including the portrait of Max. Ford takes everything with him.
Chapter 18 Summary
In the present, Annie talks to Max, who lies about the portrait, claiming that a student artist painted it and that he merely sat as the model. He soon recognizes Annie’s resemblance to her mother and angrily reveals that Laura is banned from the gallery before telling Annie to leave.
Just then, Crane calls and tells Annie that he has discovered that in 1992, Laura made an anonymous £7.2-million donation to the gallery. Combining this information with Frances’s diary, Annie begins to form a theory that the valuable thing that Sam found and sold was Vera’s diamond tiara.
Annie and Crane theorize that Fliss was murdered because she uncovered evidence that Max, not his brother-in-law, was Vera’s real killer. To investigate, Crane has obtained the original police file on Vera’s 1968 murder, as well as Fliss’s recent phone records at the request of the detective on Fliss’s case, who asked for his help tracing numbers back to the Castle Knoll area. They plan to review the old case file, believing it contains the key to solving both murders.
Chapter 19 Summary: “October 31, 1968”
In 1968, Frances is still unable to locate Vera, so she gives the red handbag containing the blackmail material to Elaine, asking her to take it to Vera. Believing that Vera’s evidence will help her get revenge on Max for his cruelty, Elaine agrees.
A few days later, Ford takes Frances to Ronnie Scott’s jazz club, where they unexpectedly encounter a panicked Vera. She confesses that she’s in serious danger and fears that “he” will kill her. In an attempt to empower her, Frances asks what would happen if Vera got to him first, an idea that seems to galvanize Vera.
As they leave the club, Frances and Ford see Vera speaking urgently with Constable Folkestone outside a nearby pub. Unsettled, Frances accepts Ford’s offer to stay at his house.
Chapter 20 Summary
In the present, Annie calls Laura, who says that she’s with Sam. Laura sounds distracted and asks Annie to meet her at the Chelsea house in an hour. When Annie and Crane arrive, the house is empty. Annie retrieves the hidden medical records and Frances’s diaries from the vent in her room. As she does, she notices a small painting by her mother in the room.
Suddenly, she has a flash of insight. Using her photo of the portrait of Max from the gallery, she compares the artist’s signature—“VFH”—to her mother’s signature on the canvas, “LFA.” She realizes that the initials have been altered. With sickening certainty, Annie concludes that her mother’s celebrated first collection of paintings was actually the work of Vera and that the valuable thing Sam found and sold was not a tiara; it was Vera’s art.
Chapter 21 Summary: “November 6, 1968”
In 1968, Vera resumes her normal routine, making Frances wonder if Alasdair’s claim that she’s a pathological liar might be true. Seeking clarity, Frances visits her professor, who specializes in the psychology of killers, to ask about the signs of compulsive lying. The professor reveals that Max submitted a paper on polygraphs and lie detection and that Elaine’s paper was on the Asch experiments. This leads Frances to wonder whether Max changed his mind about submitting Elaine’s ghost-written work after all, unsettling her certainty about the evidence. When she returns to her apartment, she finds that Elaine has been absent from class all week and is not in her room.
Chapter 22 Summary
Frances stays at Ford’s house, and the next morning, they’re woken by the housekeeper with urgent news: A television bulletin announces that Vera has been found murdered in a Soho alleyway, her heart surgically removed from her body. The report states that her husband has willingly come in for questioning and that her brother formally identified the body.
Horrified, Frances processes the loss of her complicated friend. Ford reassures her that he will support her, as they both realize that it’s inevitable she will be brought in for questioning. Frances fears that she’s now a target, as she is a loose end who knows some of Vera’s dangerous secrets.
Chapter 23 Summary
In the present, Annie explains her realization to Crane: Sam found Vera’s paintings in the attic years ago and passed them off as Laura’s work, launching her mother’s career on a foundation of fraud. As Crane comforts a distraught Annie, he asks to look at the medical records from Vera’s handbag. He reads the patient names aloud, and Annie recognizes the surname “Folkestone” from Frances’s diary—the same name as the constable from 1968. Crane examines the documents more closely and makes a grim discovery: Every patient on the list, including a woman named Susan Folkestone, was treated by Dr. Alasdair Huntington and subsequently died on his operating table.
Chapter 24 Summary
Laura arrives home, startling Annie and Crane. She says that there’s another severed animal part on the front doorstep. Annie immediately confronts her about Vera’s paintings. Laura confesses everything: Years ago, Sam discovered Vera’s canvases in the attic and, without Laura’s initial consent, sold them as her work. When the paintings became a sensation, Laura filed for divorce, and Frances supported her through this. Together, they planned to go to the press and reveal the truth. However, Laura began receiving anonymous, terrifying phone calls threatening to murder her and Annie by cutting out their hearts.
To protect her family, Laura agreed to the blackmailer’s demands to give up all the money from the sales. An emissary arranged the transfer as a large, anonymous “donation” to the Knightsbridge art gallery. The few remaining canvases were left in the attic. When Annie asks for the name of the emissary, Laura remembers his first name was something like Brian, and Crane supplies the surname: Folkestone. Laura confirms that the name was Brian Folkestone.
Chapters 13-24 Analysis
Although the novel’s two timelines are presented separately, they intersect frequently in the narrative. In this section, Annie’s arrival at the Knightsbridge address, a location she knows only from Frances’s 1968 diary, demonstrates the novel’s strategy of using physical spaces as temporal crossroads. Discovering that the former auction house is now an art gallery displaying sculptures by the recently murdered Fliss and employing Vera’s brother, Max, collapses the 50-year gap between the two storylines. This convergence is structural; the gallery becomes a nexus point where characters, motives, and important objects from both eras collide. Objects like Vera’s paintings—one of which Annie finds in Fliss’s room, another on the gallery wall—also function as tangible bridges between past and present. The physical presence of all three women’s art in a single location—Vera’s painting of Max, Fliss’s sculptures, and the legacy of Laura’s fraudulent debut—transforms the building into a representation of artistic lineage, both authentic and stolen. This narrative technique allows Frances’s historical investigation to directly inform Annie’s, showing how the secrets of the past remain embedded in the literal architecture of the present, waiting to be rediscovered.
Vera’s confession that she collects secrets to gain leverage over the powerful men in her life establishes that she’s looking for a way out of her life, introducing the theme of The Power and Risks of Forging a New Identity. For a woman in 1960s London stifled by a controlling husband who burns her art and a manipulative family that pathologizes her, amassing blackmail material is a radical act of self-creation. She tells Frances, “Information is power” (117), framing her secret collecting as a way to build an identity with agency. This pursuit, however, places her in mortal danger, illustrating the risks involved with operating outside of her current identity. These same risks are mirrored decades later by Laura’s situation, when her acclaimed artistic career is revealed to be an identity forged from a lie—the theft and fraudulent sale of Vera’s work by Sam. While this new identity brought Laura fame and fortune, it also trapped her in a web of fear, making her vulnerable to blackmail and leaving her with decades of guilt. This contrast highlights the different paths to agency that the women in the novel take: Vera actively seeks power through confrontation, while Laura accepts a powerful but false identity that ultimately renders her powerless. Both women’s fates illustrate the deep risks involved in stepping outside prescribed social roles.
The appearance of Vera’s vintage red handbag in both timelines in these chapters continues to develop it as a symbol of secrets and risk. In 1968, the bag holds the evidence of the Torrence and Huntington families’ corruption: plagiarized university essays, incriminating medical records, and letters exposing an affair. When Vera entrusts Frances with her belongings, and Frances in turn passes the bag to Elaine, the object’s journey becomes a metaphor for the passing of dangerous knowledge from one woman to another. Each person who possesses the bag inherits both the power of its contents and the peril that comes with it. The bag’s reappearance in Fliss’s room in the present day transforms it further into an artifact connecting the two murders, implying that Fliss was killed for unearthing the same truths that the bag has guarded for over 50 years. The handbag is a Pandora’s box, containing the potential to destroy the powerful men Vera targeted and also the capacity to unleash destruction upon anyone who dares to open it.
When an animal part is again left on Laura’s doorstep, its appearance solidifies the recurring symbol of animal hearts, a harbinger of violence. Initially, such an act might be dismissed as a random cruelty, but its repetition confirms a deliberate pattern of intimidation. This threat is given further context when Laura confesses that the anonymous blackmailer who targeted her decades ago threatened to “come and cut [her] heart out” (180). This specific language directly links the symbolic violence represented by the animal hearts to the literal method of Vera’s murder. The symbol thus bridges the past and present through a shared, visceral iconography of terror. It suggests that the original killer, or someone connected to them, is still active and employing the same methods of psychological warfare. The animal hearts are a signature, a gruesome promise that the fate that befell Vera and Fliss could be visited upon Laura and Annie.
Crane’s discovery that the medical records document a series of patient deaths on Dr. Alasdair Huntington’s operating table brings the theme of Exploitation of Vulnerable Populations to the forefront in these chapters. A man of status and authority, Dr. Huntington appears to have used his privilege to turn his surgical theater into a site of abuse. His public rant against the “plague of vagrants in the city” after Vera’s death reveals entitlement and contempt for the marginalized (164), suggesting that his victims were chosen precisely because he believed that society wouldn’t miss them. This abuse of power, concealed by professional prestige, exposes the dark underbelly of high-society glamor. The revelation that Susan Folkestone’s name is among the victims recasts Constable Folkestone’s involvement in the case, suggesting that his actions are driven by a personal vendetta. This potential motive complicates the novel’s portrayal of The Ethics of Vigilante Justice, as it becomes unclear whether characters like Vera and Folkestone are seeking to expose a corrupt system or enacting personal revenge.
The narrative deliberately uses the psychological concepts that Frances is studying to create ambiguity and heighten suspense, particularly during her investigation. When her professor discusses the symptoms of compulsive lying, Frances tries to apply this framework to Vera, whose husband has branded her a “pathological liar.” However, the later revelation that Max submitted his own academic work on lie detection—while Elaine’s paper matched the one she ghost-wrote—destabilizes Frances’s certainty and redirects suspicion. In addition, the mention of real-world psychological studies like the Asch experiments on conformity provides a narrative framework for interpreting Elaine’s initial submission to the manipulative Max. This psychological framing forces Frances to constantly question who is deceiving whom, blurring the lines between victim, accomplice, and perpetrator. Perrin uses the intellectual tools of psychology to add another layer to the mystery, demonstrating her contention that understanding the complexities of human behavior is as important to solving the crime as finding physical clues.
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By Kristen Perrin
