The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

Aiden slips out of the room and talks with Anna. Anna becomes frustrated with Aiden focusing on protecting Evelyn, rather than accepting her inevitable murder and focusing on solving it. Aiden insists that he doesn’t trust the Plague Doctor’s claim that Evelyn can’t be saved, arguing that the Plague Doctor has also claimed that Anna is going to betray him.

Anna is insistent that she would never do such a thing. As Aiden struggles to explain why he feels so strongly about saving Evelyn, he comes close to remembering something about his true past and has the sense that he has once before failed to save a woman in some way: “It’s as though a curtain’s been pulled back, the man I used to be almost visible through the gap. Guilt and grief, they’re the keys, I’m certain of it” (241). Anna also shares a plan to trap the Footman: She is going to leave a note for Bell to meet her in the graveyard while also planning to have other hosts there. The Footman will presumably come to the graveyard in pursuit of her, and they can try to attack him there.