How to Cheat Your Own Death

The novel opens with a 1968 prologue in Soho, London. Vera Huntington, a young socialite and Frances's London acquaintance, finds Frances Adams—Annie Adams's great-aunt—at Ronnie Scott's jazz club and tells Frances she is in danger, whispering of her brother, "He'll kill me" (4). Frances asks what would happen if Vera got to him first, a question that visibly ignites something in Vera's mind.

In the present day, Annie Adams, a 25-year-old aspiring writer who inherited the Gravesdown estate after solving her Great Aunt Frances's murder, searches Frances's "murder room" at Gravesdown Hall, where Frances cataloged secrets and crimes in Castle Knoll for decades after a fortune-teller named Peony Lane predicted Frances would be murdered. Annie carries her own Peony Lane fortune, which warns: "Without its beating heart, your family will fall one by one. Beware the heart kept in darkness" (22). In a locked file drawer, Annie finds a small canvas depicting a human heart in her mother's unmistakable style.

Annie's mother, Laura Adams, a once-celebrated painter now creating a new series depicting the human heart, mentions she has taken on an apprentice named Felicity "Fliss" Rowe. Archie Foyle, Frances's former gardener, reveals that Felicity is the ex-girlfriend of Detective Rowan Crane, Annie's investigative partner. Shortly after, Laura reports that something bloody has been left on the doorstep of their Chelsea townhouse. Annie rushes to London, where Laura dismisses the incident and deflects questions. When Annie takes out the rubbish, she discovers Felicity's body in the skip behind the house. Felicity's chest has a gaping wound, her heart apparently missing. Beneath the body lies a stack of canvases in Laura's style.

Interspersed with the present-day investigation are chapters from Frances's 1968 diary. Frances arrived at University College London to study psychology, where she clashed with Max Torrence, a wealthy and vindictive fellow student, and befriended his ex-girlfriend, Elaine Cook. Frances also befriended Max's sister, Vera Huntington, married to a controlling heart surgeon named Dr. Alasdair Huntington, who destroyed Vera's paintings and treated her as a possession. Vera confided in Frances about collecting information on powerful men as leverage and asked Frances to store belongings including paintings, a diamond tiara, and a red handbag full of compromising documents. Frances reconnected romantically with Ford Gravesdown, the lord of the Gravesdown estate. The diary culminates with Vera's murder: She was found in a Soho alley with her heart surgically removed, and Dr. Huntington was convicted.

Back in the present, Crane arrives, revealing Felicity left him messages before her death saying, "I made a terrible mistake" (49), but he never returned her calls. Seeking information about Laura and Felicity, Annie meets her estranged father, Sam Arlington, for the first time. Sam claims Laura's fortune came not from her paintings but from items he sold from the Chelsea house. Crane later proves this is a lie.

In Felicity's room, Annie finds a vintage red handbag containing 1960s medical records signed by Dr. Huntington and a large painting in Vera's style. She traces the Knightsbridge address from Frances's diary to an art gallery where Max now volunteers and where Felicity displayed sculptures, making the gallery the intersection of both cases. Crane discovers Laura anonymously donated £7.2 million to this gallery in 1992.

Annie compares the signature on the heart canvas from Frances's file drawer with signatures on the gallery's portraits and realizes Laura's initials, LFA, are an alteration of Vera Huntington's initials, VFH. Annie confronts Laura, who confesses that Sam found Vera's canvases in the attic, altered the signatures, and sold them as Laura's work without her knowledge. When threatening phone calls demanded Laura surrender all profits, she transferred millions to the gallery through Brian Folkestone, a former police constable who also appeared in Frances's diary.

Annie and Crane bring the medical records and Vera's cold-case file to Dr. Kabir Banerjee, a pathologist. Kabir flags that the dental records do not match autopsy findings of heavy metal poisoning and recommends exhumation. The records reveal every listed patient died on Dr. Huntington's operating table, all recorded as having no fixed address: The doctor had used homeless patients for unapproved experimental techniques.

Brian Folkestone meets Annie and Crane and confesses. His sister was one of Dr. Huntington's victims, and Vera had independently discovered her husband's crimes. Brian admits to killing Dr. Huntington in prison by poisoning him with arsenic and to independently extorting Laura out of obsessive devotion to Vera's legacy.

Rereading Frances's diary, Annie focuses on Vera's repeated phrase, "I forgot who I was for a moment there" (148), and on Frances's suggestion that Vera could strike first. Annie theorizes that Vera did not confront her enemies but disappeared. With Brian's help, Vera killed Marie Cavanaugh, a nurse complicit in Dr. Huntington's crimes who resembled Vera, then dressed the body as herself and sewed up the chest using her husband's distinctive surgical technique, learned from his demonstrations at social gatherings. Dr. Huntington was convicted on the surgical evidence, and Vera left the country under Marie's identity. The volunteer named Marie now working at the Knightsbridge gallery is Vera herself.

At the cemetery during the exhumation, Annie kisses Crane. He reciprocates briefly but pulls away, saying he needs to explain at another time. Brian Folkestone then lures Annie to the Barbican Centre by claiming someone will sabotage Laura's exhibition. In the darkened gallery, Folkestone attacks Annie with a knife. Sam Arlington, secretly following Annie at Laura's request, emerges and stabs Folkestone during the struggle. Sam reveals that Brian killed Felicity when she brought Vera's remaining canvases to him, seeking a higher price for her silence about the art fraud. Sam also reveals he has spent much of Annie's life in prison, explaining his long absence. He flees before police arrive, and Annie claims self-defense.

Vera arrives at the scene and confirms Brian left the animal hearts on the doorstep. She faces criminal charges for identity theft, fraud, and concealing Marie's murder. Laura and Vera reach a legal agreement in which Vera declines to expose Laura, viewing the paintings as relics of a past she has abandoned. Annie stays in London for months, creating an exhibit honoring Dr. Huntington's forgotten victims.

Frances's diary closes in April 1969 with her marriage to Ford. She discovers a note from Vera in the tiara box, instructing her to wear it at the wedding. Frances reflects that her studies have transformed her from a collector of secrets into a genuine student of the human mind.

In the final scene, Crane tells Annie the reason he cannot be with her: An unknown person connected to an unsolved case from his childhood has been sending him threatening messages, targeting people close to him. At the opening of her exhibit, Annie discovers a Peony Lane fortune envelope bearing the name "Rowan Crane." Annie resolves to return to Castle Knoll, recognizing that Crane's name is the one thing that can always call her home.