The Golden Gate: A Novel

Returning from the Nevada trip, Sullivan learns that Jane Chao’s killer has been arrested. The murderer is identified as a man named Ping, and he killed Jane for political reasons under Madame Chiang’s orders. 

Isabella visits Sullivan’s home to thank him for his help with Yuko and her Japanese companions and confirms that Miriam’s full scholarship to Sacred Heart Academy has been secured. She invites both Sullivan and Miriam to dinner at the Claremont the following evening.

Sullivan visits the five-and-dime store that Miriam works at to confront Mickey about Miriam’s debt, but he discovers that the establishment is now owned by mobster Tony Lima. An employee threatens them, saying that Miriam must either return to work or pay off her debt in full. At home, Sullivan finds Miriam struggling with her homework and tells her about the boarding-school opportunity. She resists until Sullivan angrily compares her to her mother, which prompts her to reluctantly agree to take the entrance examination.

Sullivan and Miriam meet Isabella for dinner at the Claremont’s Prime Rib Room, but Isabella appears troubled. While Sullivan and Isabella converse, Miriam explores the hotel. During their conversation, Isabella begins feeling faint and excuses herself. Madame Chiang approaches Sullivan’s table and shows him a threatening letter that appears to be from Isabella and addressed to the murdered Wilkinson. She proposes exchanging the letter for Ping’s release from custody.

Panicked, Sullivan cannot locate Isabella anywhere in the hotel and rushes to search the Tower section. He discovers Isabella with Miriam on the eighth floor, where Miriam’s head is dangerously close to the opening of the same laundry chute that Iris fell into. Sullivan quickly pulls Miriam to safety and observes Isabella’s clearly disoriented and confused mental state. Recognizing the severity of the situation, Sullivan makes the decision to arrest Isabella for Wilkinson’s murder.

Two weeks later, Sullivan forfeits his deposit on a dream house to purchase a modest home in West Berkeley. He formally adopts Miriam, knowing that her mother will never be a capable parent, and he pays off her debts. During a jail visit, Isabella tells Sullivan that she is leaving Miriam an inheritance. She describes the state of confusion she experienced when she was with Miriam in the Claremont’s Tower, and she wonders if she might have murdered Wilkinson while in a similar psychological state. Then, she recalls seeing a hooded figure near Iris on the day she died. Sullivan asks her who it was, and Isabella tells him (the novel later reveals that the hooded figure she saw was her grandmother). 

Sullivan then visits Mrs. Bainbridge and lies to her, claiming that a graphologist has confirmed that Isabella wrote the threatening letter to Wilkinson. Distraught by this news and believing that Isabella’s conviction is inevitable, Mrs. Bainbridge excuses herself and ingests poisonous oleander leaves. As she dies, she directs Sullivan to her written confession, which she has prepared. 

The testimonial reveals her own secret affair with Wilkinson years earlier, soon after her husband, Lionel, died. She was deeply infatuated by him, but Wilkinson abandoned her and began an affair with Sadie, who was just 17 at the time. When Mrs. Bainbridge found out, she was both jealous and enraged. She met with Wilkinson and threatened to have him arrested for rape since Sadie was under 18; to avoid charges, he promised to leave and never return. However, he left Sadie pregnant.

Nine years later, Mrs. Bainbridge was shocked when she spotted Wilkinson at the Claremont with Sadie. She had a cassock with her that the monks at St. Andrew’s had gifted her, and she wore this hooded garment and entered the hotel to investigate. She observed Sadie and Wilkinson arguing and, like them, paid no attention to Iris, who climbed into the laundry chute and fell to her death. Rushing to the chute to see if she could pull Iris out, Mrs. Bainbridge saw her silver necklace caught on the chute and took it.

Years later, she once again saw Wilkinson at Madame Chiang’s party. She noticed that he couldn’t keep his eyes off Isabella and deduced that he would attempt to seduce her next. When she found the note from Wilkinson asking Isabella to meet him in his hotel room at midnight, Mrs. Bainbridge was furious. She wrote him an angry letter in Isabella’s handwriting, asking him to stay away. However, on the day of the proposed liaison, she called the hotel and discovered that he was still a guest there. So, she went to the hotel with a gun and waited for him in his room. When he showed up before midnight, she shot him, believing that she was protecting Isabella by doing so. She put the jade seal she stole from Madame Chiang’s house into his mouth—among other detritus—to implicate Madame Chiang in the murder. Then, in case that failed, she went to the Stafford house and hid the gun there, believing that if the police thought Sadie was the murderer, they wouldn’t be able to convict her since she is mentally unwell.

Sullivan and Miriam celebrate her completed adoption at an ice cream parlor. He reflects on his lie to Mrs. Bainbridge, privately acknowledging that the real graphology report concluded that the threatening letter was a forgery, not Isabella’s genuine handwriting. Miriam explains that her encounter with Isabella at the laundry chute was not malicious; instead, Isabella was experiencing a dissociative, sleepwalking-like state that she had sometimes experienced since childhood.

This altered mental state had triggered Isabella’s suppressed memory of seeing her grandmother wearing a hood on the day Iris died. The remaining mysteries resolve: Ping has confessed to killing Jane Chao for political reasons, and Isabella is cleared of all charges. Jane was the one who fired the first warning shot at Wilkinson at the Claremont, delivering a message from Mao that he expected Wilkinson’s support. Further, the Dy-Dee doll in Wilkinson’s closet had belonged to Iris. Wilkinson took it from Sadie’s tennis bag on the day Iris died, and he brought it with him to show it to Isabella as proof of his paternity. All these years, Mrs. Bainbridge had no idea that Wilkinson was Isabella’s father.