How to Cheat Your Own Death

In the present, Annie confronts Laura for allowing Sam back into her life. Laura explains that years of isolation and guilt over her lies about Vera’s paintings made her vulnerable when Sam reappeared. He had contacted her after seeing Annie’s inheritance in the news. Annie is skeptical, as Sam never tried to contact her before. 

Crane theorizes that Sam might have killed Fliss to protect Laura’s secret and then fled, which would explain the abandoned paintings. However, this doesn’t account for the continued threats. They decide that their next step is to investigate the Knightsbridge gallery. As they prepare to leave, Annie examines Fliss’s phone records and is shocked to discover nine calls between her and Crane in the weeks before her death, which shatters Annie’s trust in him.

On their way to the gallery, Crane arranges a detour to University College Hospital, where a pathologist friend named Kabir reviews Vera’s cold case file. Kabir finds an overlooked detail in the autopsy: a sign of heavy-metal poisoning that should have warranted further testing. He posits that Vera might have been dead before her heart was removed, a finding that could overturn her husband’s conviction. Crane says that he’ll seek an exhumation order, and Kabir agrees to write it up. As Annie photographs the other medical records from Vera’s handbag, she makes an important discovery: Every one of the deceased patients was listed as having “no fixed abode” (200), revealing that they were all unhoused.

In 1968, Frances is taken to the police station. While she waits, she sees Elaine, who is unsurprised by the arrest and cryptically mentions that someone was practicing surgical skills on “pieces of meat” (222). She warns Frances that powerful people will kill to protect Vera’s secrets. Elaine admits that her attempt to set Max up for academic misconduct was clumsy. She then tries to discredit Vera, claiming that she had a “personality disorder” and considered dying by suicide, recounting a story about an attempt involving sleeping pills and a cellar. 

As Frances is called for her interrogation, she kneels to help Elaine collect books that have spilled from her satchel. Among them is a copy of The Bell Jar, and Frances, remembering the book, realizes that Elaine’s story about Vera’s attempt to die by suicide was plagiarized directly from the novel.

In the present, Annie asks Crane about his calls on Fliss’s phone records. He apologizes for his lack of transparency, explaining that the calls were not romantic; Fliss was connected to a traumatic event from his past, and he hadn’t been ready to discuss it. 

An anonymous woman then calls Crane, claiming to be a police administrator and requesting the return of Vera’s file. Crane and Annie suspect that the caller is an imposter—the lead detective on Fliss’s case is female, and whoever is calling doesn’t seem to know this—and Crane plays along casually. They agree to meet her at a pub, where they instead find Brian Folkestone, a retired police officer. He reveals that he’s behind the phone call and says that they will want to hear what he has to say.

Brian denies killing Vera but admits that his hands are not entirely clean. He explains that his sister, Susan, was unhoused and died on Dr. Alasdair Huntington’s operating table. Brian overheard the surgeon speaking callously about his unhoused patients, and he later learned from Vera that her husband was using them to test unapproved, high-risk surgical techniques, believing that society wouldn’t miss them. Vera and Brian planned to expose him, but she was murdered first. 

After Dr. Huntington was imprisoned for Vera’s murder, Brian was hired to kill him. Brian confesses that he went to the prison and gave the doctor a small bottle of whiskey laced with arsenic, telling him that it was a gift from Max Torrence with the message, “This is for Vera” (221).

In 1968, during her interrogation, detectives show Frances photos of steaks with complex sutures that were found in her unlocked apartment. They accuse her of practicing to imitate Dr. Huntington’s surgical methods. Frances points out how absurd the evidence is and suggests that they investigate Max Torrence instead. The police reveal that Elaine told them to search the apartment. 

Frances’s lawyer successfully argues that the evidence is inadmissible, and she is released. Before she leaves, a detective mentions that Dr. Huntington confirmed that the stitches on Vera’s body were a perfect copy of his own. However, Dr. Huntington never actually saw the body; it was formally identified by Max, after which it was buried.

In the present,, Crane reasons that if Max had Dr. Huntington killed, he must have believed that the doctor murdered Vera—or feared that the doctor was getting close to uncovering who really killed her and might appeal his conviction. Crane gets a lead on Dr. Huntington’s nurse Marie Cavanaugh, whom Brian mentioned, and discovers that she now works at the Knightsbridge Nymph Art Gallery. 

Annie insists on accompanying Crane to the gallery, arguing that her knowledge of Frances’s diary is essential. There, they find that all of Fliss’s sculptures have been removed. They question Marie, who is evasive about her past with Dr. Huntington but becomes visibly alarmed when Annie identifies herself as Laura Adams’s daughter. As they leave, Annie sees Marie in the shadows outside, glaring at them.

In 1968, after being released, Frances tells Ford that they must find Max. Suspecting a cover-up related to Max identifying Vera’s body, Frances goes to a university lecture she knows he will attend. During the class, a newspaper is passed through the aisles, causing a commotion. Max grabs it and reads the front page. Frances sees that his family’s corruption has been publicly exposed and understands that Max’s downfall is now inevitable.

In the present, an elderly woman arrives at Laura’s home in Chelsea to see Annie. She introduces herself as Elaine Torrence, Max’s ex-wife. She admits to reading Frances’s diary years ago and claims that she was threatened by Dr. Huntington’s associates into planting the sutured steaks in Frances’s apartment, but she also says that she did a clumsy job on purpose so that Frances would be exonerated. Elaine shares a disturbing detail about Vera: Beginning in childhood, she developed a recurring habit of removing the hearts from animals that her cat killed and leaving them for Max to find. 

Just then, Crane arrives with news that Vera’s body is being exhumed. While he and Annie are talking, Elaine disappears. She has left behind two old photographs—one of Dr. Huntington with Marie Cavanaugh and another of Vera with Marie. Annie also discovers that Vera’s last painting, titled Bleeding Heart, has been stolen from the counter.

Annie realizes that the stolen painting must be “the heart kept in darkness” from her fortune (251). Crane notes that Elaine couldn’t have known about the animal heart left on their doorstep, as that information wasn’t public, and wonders who Laura could have told—with suspicion pointing toward Sam. Annie finds Laura in her studio, where she explains that her new collection is called the “Black Heart series” (254)—a tribute to Vera. Annie forgives her mother for her years of deception. Meanwhile, Crane texts Annie to report that both Max and Elaine have been arrested for attempting to stop the exhumation of Vera’s body.