Aiden Bishop wakes up in the body of Sebastian Bell with memory of the name “Anna” (without knowing who Anna even is). Aiden later finds out from the Plague Doctor that he has 8 days to solve Evelyn’s murder (which was purposefully staged to look like a suicide, not a murder). Each day, he will repeat the day of the murder from the perspective of a different host to find out more clues.
-
If Aiden finds out who the murderer is, he must meet up with the Plague Doctor at the lake at 11pm to announce his answer.
-
If Aiden fails to find out who the murderer is, he will have his memories wiped and return to the body of Sebastian Bell, beginning the whole process all over again.
It’s later revealed that Aiden isn’t the only one trying to escape by solving the murder case. He’s competing against Anna, the footman, and Daniel. Only the first person to give the Plague Doctor the answer will be guaranteed of escaping. Aiden seems to have a large advantage because while Aiden gets to live the day through multiple hosts and have his memories of the week carry over from one host to the next, the other three competitors only have the one day as themselves. Aiden and Anna team up, and the footman and Daniel team up against them.
-
Aiden and Anna display signs of trust and sacrifice in helping one another, although Anna seems more fearless, even at one point “joking” that they should just kill Evelyn themselves so that they can tell the Plague Doctors that they are the murderers.
-
The footman and Daniel try to do whatever it takes to win, including killing off Aiden’s hosts and torturing people for answers.
Aiden eventually figures out that Evelyn’s murderer is her brother, Michael. The Plague Doctor is ecstatic that Aiden finally solved the case and announces that he will be free the next time he wakes up. However, Aiden stubbornly says that he doesn’t want to leave Anna behind, and if he’s freed, he will still look for a way to return so that he can save Anna. This frustrates the Plague Doctor because Aiden wasn’t even supposed to be here in the first place and had taken so long to return to the man he needed to be to escape, and the Plague Doctor had already bent so many rules to help him, explaining the following:
-
Back in the “real world”, Anna lived as the ruthless leader Annabelle. Annabelle ordered her soldiers to kill AIden’s sister and her husband in revenge for persecution. Aiden was so heartbroken over the loss of his sister that he dwelled on getting revenge on Annabelle. He was distraught that Annabelle didn’t die until 30 years later, when she was put to rest painlessly with forgiveness. Annabelle was placed into Blackheath to solve the case of a murdered sister for eternity for “rehabilitation”. Aiden willingly entered Blackheath to get revenge.
-
Because Aiden wasn’t even supposed to be sentenced to be there, the Plague Doctor tried to help him, including experimenting with which hosts would be most useful for providing clues, and which order would make the most sense.
-
While everyone made the same decisions each loop, Aiden was the only person who showed signs of becoming more selfless and pure. Each loop, Aiden also saw Anna less as an enemy and more as just a girl at the mercy of her own monsters.
Aiden convinces the Plague Doctor that there’s more to Evelyn’s murder than meets the eye, and he asks for the chance for Anna to solve the missing pieces and prove herself as changed. The Plague Doctor grants this request, but promises for nothing more than to have an open mind.
Here is what Aiden and Anna discover:
-
Years ago, Lord Peter Hardcastle and Lady Helena Hardcastle married for social status. (Peter had the name, Helena had the money.) They were occasionally intimate, but they didn’t love each other. Instead, Helena loved the gardener (Charlie Carver), and she secretly had relations with him. Helena became pregnant, and she tried to convince Peter that he was the father. She then pretended to have a miscarriage, and only once she was sure that the child didn’t look too much like Charlie, did she arrange to have him anonymously dropped off at the house. Helena convinced Peter to take in the poor thing, and they named the kid Charles Cunningham, who became a servant. Helena and Charlie continued to have three more children (Thomas, Michael, and Evelyn), who Helena all passed off as Peter’s.
-
When Peter found out the truth about Charles Cunningham’s origin, he became furious at being lied to and being second to a mere gardener in Helena’s eyes, so he fired Charles.
-
The day that Charles was collecting his things to leave was the day that he discovered Evelyn trying to drown Thomas. She didn’t hit Thomas hard enough on the head and he began screaming, so she was improvising by stabbing him instead. Charles covered for Evelyn (who he knew was his daughter), and ended up getting blamed for Thomas’s death as a result.
-
Evelyn ran off to Paris to escape her old life and family (who she wasn’t close with, except for Michael).
-
When Peter and Helena began running out of money (due to some bad investments), they arranged to have Evelyn married off to Ravencourt in exchange for money. Evelyn at first doesn’t agree to this, but then Helena threatens to cut her out of the will (which she didn’t care about), then threatened to cut Michael out of the will (which she cared about) plus expose her for being responsible for Thomas’s death.
-
Evelyn came back from Paris, but she got Felicity Maddox to serve her place instead while Evelyn posed as a maid. She also got to have a painter update some family portraits with Felicity’s face.
-
The maid named Millicent Derby recognized the real Evelyn right away. Evelyn explained that this switch was just “a prank for the masquerade party”, which Millicent bought, then killed Millicent later.
-
Evelyn wanted to stage “her” death so that she would be free once and for all, so she got it to look like Felicity was about to kill herself by the water at the party out of distress for being married to a man she didn’t love, then in the commotion, Michael would finish the job by killing her with a fatal shot from an identical gun. Aiden interrupted this plan on the eighth day by giving Evelyn a different gun. Evelyn poisoned Felicity’s chalice in case Plan A failed, but then Michael ended up drinking some of this as well. So while Aiden was getting some answers from Michael and Felicity, they began foaming at the mouth. Aiden only had enough anecdote on hand to save one of them, so he saved Felicity (who he thought at the time was Evelyn).
-
The real Evelyn later confronts Aiden and Anna, and while she’s answering their questions, Felicity comes and kills Evelyn herself.
-
The Plague Doctor arrives, asks Anna who killed the real Evelyn, and she answers “Felicity Maddox”, and she (and Aiden) are both granted freedom. (The Plague Doctor suspects that his supervisors are going to be furious at all the rules he bent for allowing both of them to leave, but he’ll deal with that later.)