Before She Died

The argument ended badly with him pulling a carving knife from the kitchen drawer and stabbing his wife in the stomach, as she had attempted to reach for the telephone to call for help

Written by Jonathan Townend, author.

Original text taken from 'A Night Of Fear,' first published four years ago in the Fiction Community, and repurposed for the 'Steal From Yourself' challenge.

Evie and Marcus devised the fake-death scheme together, all the way to the end... or so they thought. She was the five-foot, white-blonde billionaire heiress with long, curly hair. He was the charming six-foot husband with dark ginger hair, and everyone had already assumed that after falling madly in love in college, they would soon marry for love alone.

In principle, the plan was simple:'sound as a pound even.' They both convinced themselves all the way to the bank: 'Evie would be declared dead at the scene, Marcus would then stand to inherit every last bank vault-load of money, and weeks later she would quietly reappear overseas under a carefully prepared new identity.'

What bound them together was not love, but a mutual taste for financial greed.

Although, unbeknownst to either of them, during the planning stages, each secretly prepared insurance papers against the other... just in case. Evie kept copies of incriminating correspondence sent between them. Marcus hid evidence proving she willingly participated, and both believed they were being frightfully clever. Neither of them noticed this was the first crack in their devious plan.

Marcus managed to evade the on-site ambulance and police teams that arrived within ten minutes of the tape-recorded, muffled emergency call he'd quickly placed, and literally made it by bus to the local airport unscathed and unruffled, reaching Australia within the first thirty-one hours following a short layover in Kuala Lumpur.

At first, communication was fairly regular, although Evie had been transferred for psychiatric evaluation for a couple of weeks, under her own free will. Although that was the second crack in their plan, they never thought it would happen this way, with Evie being admitted to the city's hospital, while the police decided what course of action the Crown Prosecution Service wanted to proceed with; what they simply couldn't work out was why Evie, in the first place, had hidden two plastic bags of fake blood in her bra, and let her husband pretend to stab her with a plastic retractable imitation knife? It baffled the attending emergency crews on scene, and later the attending psychiatrist, who assessed her initially on admission.

But as Marcus lay sunning on his balcony with 'cocktails on tap' in a swanky Melbourne hotel, overlooking Port Phillip Bay and the emerald-colored Indian Ocean, their messages grew shorter day by day. Then, as days passed, they became even less frequent.

Then, as Evie was quite unexpectedly assessed in the hospital as requiring detention under the Mental Health Act back in Britain (for a full mental health assessment) for an extra twenty-eight days due to her unstable mental state, excuses had turned increasingly implausible and much less frequent. Communication between them dwindled even further. Marcus tried a few times without any response for a couple of weeks, until a short, hand-scribbled airmail letter arrived at Marcus's hotel in Melbourne:

"The lawyers are asking questions."

"The hospital staff are snooping more, as the days pass."

"The transfer of funds is taking longer than expected."

"I need another few weeks."

"I'm still held in the damn psych hospital, I can't do anything without staff hawking me."

Airmail letter from Evie (as she panicked)

Meanwhile, Marcus finally began to discover what it felt like to control billions alone, and for the first time, he realized that he didn't need Evie. He could pull this off on his own. Then dread dawned on him, like lightning striking a tree and setting it alight; Evie was now more of a threat to his freedom than ever.

A dead woman returning from the grave would certainly attract attention. However, on the other hand... a dead woman who never returns solves every problem...

Marcus began to 'manufacture' delays while quietly moving assets into trust funds and offshore accounts. Evie, still sat on a ward that wouldn't let her go (just yet), began to realize something had gone badly wrong.

A private investigator she'd hired long ago, before they dreamed up the scheme, started reporting oddities to her when she was finally allowed visitors. Properties were being sold. Private accounts emptied. "The money wasn't waiting for both of them," the investigator told her, "It's being positioned solely under Marcus's control."

When Evie finally got him on the phone, she wasted no time confronting him with what she'd found. Feeling safe in his position, Marcus delivered the cruel truth from across the world.

"You wanted to disappear, remember?"

"You got exactly what you wanted."

Overseas burnphone conversation from Marcus (evily laughing at her)

Then he blocked every channel of communication between them.

The world believed she was dead. Evie couldn't just walk into a police station without exposing herself as a criminal conspirator, especially as the hospital had her locked away. Marcus had used her fake death to make her genuinely vanish... the psych hospital was just an added bonus to him.

But Evie had anticipated betrayal. Before her 'death,' she'd prepared a sealed package. Its instructions said, 'to open only if Marcus tries to claim the inheritance.'

Inside it was devastating evidence:

'Financial records, audio recordings, proof the death was staged, proof Marcus was the architect.' The package didn't go to the police... it went straight to the estate trustees, including a letter from Evie.

The moment Marcus began spending the fortune, investigations quietly began. Now both conspirators were trapped. If Marcus exposed Evie, he would destroy himself. If Evie exposed Marcus, she'd destroy herself. Each knew the other's secret.

The most satisfying ending, though, wasn't that one would beat the other. It's that greed would destroy them both. As investigators closed in, Marcus discovered something horrifying. A clause hidden deep within the will. If investigators uncovered evidence of fraud, the inheritance would be forfeited and diverted to a charitable foundation.

Evie's parents established this decades earlier.

Neither conspirator would receive a penny. The billions they were willing to fake a death for, betray each other over, and sacrifice their lives for ultimately went to neither of them.

They had successfully executed the perfect fraud.

What they failed to survive was each other.

But Evie had been far cleverer. Her handwritten letter to the estate trustees. Not because handwriting was reliable evidence, but because it felt personal. And it read:

"If you are reading this package, it means my husband has either betrayed me, attempted to steal my inheritance, or allowed harm to come to me after the implementation of our agreed plan."

Hand-written letter sent by Evie, to her parents estate trustees

The letter then detailed the conspiracy in broader terms. Not enough to incriminate Evie beyond a doubt. But more than enough to make investigators curious. Exorbitantly priced criminal barristers cleverly devised every last word months before the fraud, including Evie's secretly recorded conversations. Not discussions about fake blood or staged wounds. Those details were never spoken aloud. Instead, the recordings capture something more useful: Marcus's greed, his impatience, his resentment, and one recording struck a chord with him, saying:

"It should have been my inheritance from the beginning."

"Your damn parents never trusted me."

"Once the estate is transferred none of those people will matter anymore."

Conversation from Marcus (recorded several months ago, approval stamped by the estate trustees) to digital records

To the investigators, such statements established motive and character. To the trustees reviewing the inheritance, they were assiduously troubling.

Now Marcus began panicking. He knew something had gone seriously wrong. No contact had come in from Evie for a long time now; whispers circulated around the hotel like evil spiders waiting for the kill. Evie had quietly archived years of financial evidence. Not criminal evidence. But context. Records that showed Marcus's escalating spending.

Secret debts. Failed investments. Loans he'd concealed from friends and family. The picture that emerged was of a man increasingly desperate for money. A man whose lifestyle vastly exceeded his legitimate means. When viewed alongside her sudden 'death,' suspicion became inevitable.

Months before Evie's disappearance, she had created a new trust structure. Deep within hundreds of pages of legal documentation, a trigger clause was camouflaged. 'If any beneficiary is found to have acted dishonestly in relation to inheritance proceedings, their entitlement vanishes. Everything is redirected elsewhere. A children's medical charity.' Her late mother's preferred beneficiary. Marcus never even noticed the clause. He signed documents without ever reading them. His arrogance blinded him; it was to be his downfall.

The next piece was the masterpiece. The most dangerous item in the package. It was a professionally recorded video. Evie appeared calm within it. Alive, healthy, and undeniably not deceased. She never explained how she survived. Instead, she looked directly into the camera and stated:

"If Marcus Harcourt is claiming I died unexpectedly, he is lying."

"If Marcus Harcourt claims I disappeared of my own accord, he is lying."

"If Marcus Harcourt tells you he loved me, he is almost certainly lying."

Video recording by Evie, embedded in personal files to her parents estate trustees

Then, at the end, she smiled. Not warmly, but coldly. It was the smile of someone who had spent years preparing for betrayal.

What Marcus never discovered was that the package itself was incomplete. There was a missing envelope. A fourth safeguard. Unknown even to Evie's lawyers. Inside was a simple photograph taken shortly before the conspiracy began. The image showed Marcus meeting privately with another woman. A woman who had already opened bank accounts under a false identity, a woman whose passport application predated Evie's supposed death by nearly a year.

The implication was chilling.

Marcus may have started planning Evie's betrayal before the conspiracy even began. When investigators finally uncovered the photograph, the entire narrative changed. The question was no longer:

"Did Marcus betray Evie?"

It became more a question of:

"Was Evie ever his partner at all, or merely the first victim?"

Evie's evidence package shifted from a blackmail tool to the first breadcrumb trail toward a much larger deception. The senior partner at Ashcombe & Wren had spent thirty-two years administering estates. He had dealt with jealous siblings, hidden children, and umpteen forged signatures. Yet nothing in those three decades prepared him for the package that arrived on that rain-soaked Thursday morning.

The courier carried no company markings. No return address. Simply a cream-coloured envelope bearing a reference number he immediately recognized.

HARCOURT SUCCESSION MATTER - FILE 47A

The file had been dormant for almost six weeks. Ever since the 'alleged' death of Evie (who was still detained in a hospital in England)

The partner frowned. The envelope had not come through the post. One of the firm's own secure custodians had hand-delivered it from a private vault facility outside London. Which meant only one thing: someone had triggered a protected instruction. Something Evie had arranged before her 'death.'

He broke the seal, and inside lay a single note. The handwriting was elegant, precise. His pulse quickened. "If this package has been opened, Marcus has betrayed me." The room seemed suddenly quieter.

Outside his office, telephones rang, and assistants moved about their day. Inside, the words hung in the air. Marcus Harcourt had become one of the most discussed men in the country. The grieving widower, the last person to see Evie alive, and the man who had fled to Australia only hours after her apparent murder.

Police publicly maintained they lacked sufficient evidence to charge him. The tabloids, however, had already convicted him. Yet this was something else entirely.

Slowly, he turned the page.

A second letter followed. Then another, along with a detailed inventory. Several references instructed him to request corresponding materials from separate custodians. The package had not come alone.

It was merely the key.

He reached for the telephone. "Get me Zurich," he said. "Immediately."

Three days later they assembled in the firm's private conference suite. Not journalists. No police presence. Only people with a legal interest in the estate. Trustees, financial advisers, and external counsel. The room carried the tense silence of people who knew something important was about to happen.

The senior partner placed three items on the polished oak table. A sealed evidence folder. A memory drive and a heavy cream envelope. "No copies exist in this office," he said. "What you are about to see remains privileged until instructed otherwise."

Nobody spoke as he inserted the drive. A video file appeared as the screen flickered. Then Evie Harcourt looked directly into the camera. Several people visibly recoiled. One woman gasped. Another crossed herself. The recording timestamp showed a date two months after her reported death. Evie was seated in a leather chair. Calm, composed, and very much alive.

"Good afternoon," she said. "If you are watching this, events have not developed as I hoped." The room remained motionless. She continued. "My husband and I entered into an arrangement some time ago."

The lawyers exchanged glances. The senior partner felt coldness spread through his chest. This was moving beyond simple estate administration — far beyond. "The details of that arrangement are explained elsewhere," Evie said. "However, if these materials have been released, I have reason to believe Marcus Harcourt has acted against me, against my family's wishes, or against the instructions we mutually agreed upon."

The video paused automatically. No one spoke for what felt like an uncomfortable lifetime, until one trustee finally broke the silence. "I don't understand." Yet neither did anyone else...

Financial records came next (thousands of pages): Wire transfers. Private loans. Investment losses. Margin calls. Hidden liabilities. A portrait emerged piece by piece. Marcus was not merely ambitious. He had been beyond desperate.

One forensic accountant looked up from the files. His expression had changed entirely. "Good God."

"What?" another trustee asked.

The accountant pushed a document across the table.

"Six months before her 'so-called' death, he was functionally insolvent."

The room fell silent again. The figures stared up from the page. A man married to a woman worth billions. A man quietly running out of money, with every reason to need an inheritance.

The final item remained unopened.

The cream envelope.

Evie had personally instructed that it be viewed last.

The senior partner carefully slid out a single photograph. At first nobody understood what they were seeing. Then the image circulated around the table; the reaction was immediate. A stunned silence.

The photo showed Marcus sitting at a café terrace in Sydney. The photograph's timestamp showed it had been taken nearly a year before Evie's 'faked demise.' Across from him on the same table sat an unfamiliar blonde woman. Between them lay documents. Passports. Bank papers. Identification forms. Neither looked remotely surprised to be together, and neither looked like strangers.

One trustee stared at the image. "Who is she?" Nobody answered. The question was worse than that. Not who. But when. The date preceded everything. The inheritance dispute. The apparent planned murder, the disappearance. All of it. The implication settled slowly over the room like poisonous smoke.

Marcus had been planning something long before Evie supposedly died. Perhaps long before the conspiracy itself. Maybe before she even realized there was a conspiracy.

The senior partner looked around the table. Every face reflected the same terrifying possibility: the package had been designed to expose a betrayal. But what if Evie had misunderstood the danger?

What if Marcus had never intended to share the fortune? What if the fake death had always been merely one step in a much larger plan? For the first time since the case began, nobody in the room was asking whether Marcus had betrayed Evie... They were asking something far darker.

Had Evelyn Harcourt ever actually been his true love partner... or only his first victim?

The photograph lay in the center of the table. Nobody spoke. The room had become impossibly still. Outside, rain tapped softly against the conference-room windows. Inside, only the projector's hum broke the silence.

The senior partner reached for the final document in the package. "I don't believe this was intended to be viewed yet," he said quietly.

A trustee looked up. "What is it?"

"A sealed instruction. He turned the envelope over. There was no address. No recipient. Only three handwritten words.

OPEN IF FOUND

A strange chill passed through him. The seal was cracked; inside was a single folded sheet. Nothing else. No explanation. No legal language. Not even a signature. Just a short paragraph written in Evie's unmistakable hand. He read it silently. Then stopped.

Color drained from his face. "David?" One of the trustees frowned. "What is it?"

The lawyer didn't answer. His eyes remained fixed on the page. A second later, he looked up, and for the first time since anyone in the room had known him, he appeared genuinely twitchy, almost intimidated.

"Read it," someone demanded. Slowly, he placed the letter on the table. The nearest trustee picked it up. The words filled barely half the page:

"If this package hasUnsigned, hand-written, anonymous letter. reached you, then I am almost certainly dead."

"Not legally dead. Actually dead. Marcus was never the person I feared. If you have found the photograph, you now know someone else was involved before my disappearance. You must not contact Marcus. You must not contact the police. Do not tell anyone about this package."

"I made that mistake once already. The woman in the photograph is not his accomplice. She is the reason my parents were killed."

Unsigned, hand-written, anonymous letter. Noes from Evie in legal files

The trustee stopped reading. The room stared at her. Somebody whispered, "What?" She looked back down; one final sentence remained. Just one. Her voice trembled as she read it aloud.

"If she knows this package has been opened, she's probably already inside this building."

Unsigned, hand-written, anonymous letter. Noes from Evie in legal files

At that precise moment, the conference-room door handle began to turn.

'Click.'

End of chapter one.