The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

In order to ensure events, unfold correctly, Aiden has to attack the butler. He is very reluctant to do so, but he summons the will to savagely beat the butler. This act spurs events to continue, with Rashton coming up behind Aiden and knocking him unconscious.

Aiden wakes up back in the body of the butler. He assumed the Footman killed the butler, but apparently the Footman only severely injured him. Nearby, Anna is tied up and has clearly been beaten. The Footman and the thug who works for Daniel come into the room. They have kept Aiden alive in order to torture him for information about where to find Donald Davies. However, revealing this information will be what sets off the events leading to the discovery of Silver Tear and all the details about Blackheath: “Daniel believes I’m betraying Davies to his death, but without their confrontation in the graveyard, I’ll never find out Silver Tear is in Blackheath, or fight Daniel by the lake, allowing Anna to finally finish him off” (403).

Aiden tells them that Davies will be at the stables, and the thug takes off after him. The Footman plans to continue torturing Aiden, but Anna is able to break loose, and the two of them fight the Footman together. Anna is able to get her hands on the shotgun, and she shoots and kills the Footman. Exhausted, Aiden loses consciousness.

Aiden is back in the body of Gold. He and Anna have just over an hour to prepare their case for the Plague Doctor. They go to the lake, where Daniel is drowning Donald Davies (Aiden has experienced this moment before while in the body of Davies), and Anna sneaks up to kill Daniel. While she does so, Aiden goes to the boathouse, where he finds the body of Lady Helena Hardcastle. Anna joins him. Lady Helena has been killed with the same knife used to kill her son years earlier: “Here, finally, is what this is all about. Every other death was an echo of this one. A murder nobody heard” (411).

Anna is confused as she sees someone approaching. Aiden explains that he has lured out the murderer and needs Anna to be the one to put the final pieces together. The approaching individual appears, armed with a shotgun: Madeline Aubert. Aiden gently prompts her, and Anna realizes that Madeline is actually Evelyn Hardcastle.

Aiden runs through what he has figured out about Thomas Hardcastle’s murder. Under the guise of going out riding, Evelyn set up a secret meeting with her younger brother at the boathouse, where she killed him using a knife she had stolen from the stablemaster. Then, she planned to change out of her bloody clothes and sneak back, expecting the blame to fall on the stablemaster. Evelyn explains that Carver and Lady Helena happened upon the crime scene; in their horror, they quickly believed her story that somehow Thomas’s death had been an accident. Carver and Lady Helena were particularly easy to persuade because, as Cunningham has uncovered and told Aiden, all of the Hardcastle children were actually fathered by Carver (this is the meaning of the “all of them” note).

Determined to save his daughter, Carver went back to the house to get clean clothes for Evelyn (this explains the bag he was seen carrying); while Carver was gone, Stanwin came upon Lady Helena with the body, leading him to assume that she was the killer. Carver took the blame for the murder, and Stanwin blackmailed Lady Helena. Neither Carver nor Lady Helena had evidence of Evelyn having planned the murder until last year, when Lady Helena found the fresh clothes Evelyn had hidden in preparation for changing into them. At this moment, Lady Helena realized that the murder had been planned, hence the beginning of her strange and erratic behavior over the past year.

Aiden also suggests the reason for why Thomas had to die: He had witnessed Evelyn killing the stableboy, either accidentally or intentionally, a week earlier. This explains why Thomas acted strangely for about a week before his death. Evelyn concurs that all of this is correct. She explains that she and the stableboy had been playing in some caves when he fell into a deep hole. She was going to get help, but she decided not to, and left him to die. By the amount of information she is revealing, it is clear that Evelyn intends to kill Anna and Aiden. She begins leading them at gunpoint somewhere more discreet. Aiden is panicking because “it will all be for nothing if the Plague Doctor doesn’t know where to find us” (418).

Anna asks why Lady Helena didn’t simply reveal Evelyn’s crime when she found the clothes a year ago, and Evelyn explains that her parents wanted the money from her marriage, and that her mother was using knowledge of the crime to blackmail her into going through with the wedding. Evelyn has been hiding in the identity of Madeline ever since she came back from France while the woman posing as Evelyn is actually a hired criminal named Felicity Maddox. Evelyn admits that she killed both of her parents over the course of the day. She also killed Millicent Derby when Millicent recognized her as Evelyn.

By now, Evelyn has gotten Aiden and Anna to the gatehouse, where she prepares to shoot them. Before she can, Aiden asks her why she killed Michael, which Evelyn denies doing. Aiden explains that when Evelyn poisoned Felicity to ensure she didn’t wake up, Michael accidentally drank the poison as well. The Plague Doctor still hasn’t arrived, and Aiden and Anna have a horrifying realization: “We haven’t solved it…We still don’t know who kills Evelyn Hardcastle, the real Evelyn Hardcastle. And our suspect pool is down to two” (423). Aiden is enraged that the Plague Doctor has toyed with them, but before he can decide what to do, Anna leaps at Evelyn, attempting to sacrifice herself. A gunshot rings out, and Aiden looks up to see Felicity Maddox in the door. Felicity fires repeatedly into Evelyn’s lifeless body. 

A few moments later, the Plague Doctor arrives, and Felicity stumbles away. The Plague Doctor admits that when he saw the true Evelyn arrive, he went back to the house and told Felicity what was happening. Felicity, avenging the death that Evelyn had planned for her, came to kill her.

The Plague Doctor believes they have now both earned their freedom: Aiden for solving the murders of Michael, Peter, and Helena Hardcastle, and the attempted murder of Felicity Maddox. If Anna will formally answer the question of who murdered Evelyn Hardcastle, then she will be free as well. Aiden and Anna can choose whether they want their memories from before Blackheath back; Aiden realizes anxiously that Anna doesn’t remember her atrocious and violent past. The Plague Doctor warns Aiden that people will come after them once they are free. However, for the moment, they have triumphed and can lead lives in normal linear time: “Whatever she’s done, whatever’s waiting, we’ll overcome it together. Here and now, that’s all that matters to me” (428). Together, Aiden and Anna begin to walk away from Blackheath.