The Short Answer
This is the ending explained, with full spoilers, so stop here if you have not finished.
So, who killed Nancy? Nobody planned it. Nancy dies after a fight on a riverside path, and the push that sends her falling comes from Mary’s teenage son, Marcus. The blow that started the fight came from Nancy’s lover, Howard, who is Mary’s husband.
The Night She Died
Let’s rewind. Imperfect Women is split into three parts, one each for Eleanor, Nancy and Mary, three friends who met in their first week at Oxford.
Nancy is a translator, married to Robert, a human rights lawyer, with a grown daughter, Zara. She has spent about a year in an affair with a married man she knows as David. On the night she dies, she has dinner with Eleanor, says she has to meet him at ten, and walks out. Eleanor stays behind to pay.
Her body is found by the river near Hammersmith. She has a head wound, her purse is open and empty, and her phone is gone. The police first treat it as a crime of passion.
Nancy’s Own Part
Nancy’s section is the middle of the book, and it ends right before she dies. In it, the affair is nothing like the romance Eleanor imagined. Nancy is trying to end it. The man keeps phoning, tells her he knows she loves him, and does not take no for an answer.
She cannot go to the police, because everything would come out. Robert has already found a letter and knows about the affair, but she cannot tell Eleanor that, because Eleanor would push her harder to go to the police. She is worn out, hardly eating, and she tells Eleanor she is consumed by guilt.
At the very end of her part, she walks onto a dark path by the river to meet him one more time. Then she hears a crash behind her, and someone comes out of the dark. The chapter stops there. The book makes you wait for Mary to explain who it was.
The Wrong Suspects
For most of the book, the answer looks like it is somewhere else. The press and the police settle on Davide Boyette, a novelist whose books Nancy translated. Eleanor had told the police the lover was called David, and that was enough to put him in the frame.
When Eleanor drives to see him in Yorkshire, he tells her he was on a book tour that night, and that he barely knew Nancy. It is a quiet scene, and it leaves the sense that this man is simply unlucky.
Robert is the other suspect, at least in Eleanor’s mind. In his study she finds a card in which Nancy apologises, and with it a typed letter from her lover. That tells her Robert knew about the affair before Nancy died, even though he acted shocked when Eleanor told him. She starts to wonder why he kept it from the police.
The Letter in the Drawer
The real answer arrives in Mary’s part. Mary is looking for insurance papers in her husband’s study, because Howard has fallen ill after Nancy’s death and nobody can explain why. She finds a brown envelope stuck at the back of a drawer.
Inside are small keepsakes, a Polaroid of Nancy, and a letter. It begs the person it is addressed to, David, to leave her alone, and it is signed Louise. Mary suddenly sees it. Howard David Smithson. Nancy Louise Hennessy. David and Louise.
Her first conclusion is simple: Howard killed Nancy because she tried to end it. She keeps the secret from Eleanor, because telling would bring in Robert, the police and the newspapers, and she wants to shield her children above all.
What Marcus Tells Her
The twist comes a little later, in a late night conversation with Marcus. He tells her he had known about his father’s affair for a while, and that for a long time he was angry with his mother for putting up with it.
On the night Nancy died, he says, he tracked his dad and followed him to the river at Hammersmith. He watched Howard and Nancy arguing, with Howard grabbing at her, and then he walked over and confronted them.
Nancy started apologising to him and tried to hug him. He jumped, his hand shot out, and he hit her face. Howard lunged at Marcus, and Nancy stepped in front of him, so the punch hit her jaw instead.
Then there was a scuffle. Marcus pushed her off him, and she was so thin that she fell hard. He describes the sound she made, and the blood around her head. He ran.
So the death is a chain of accidents. Howard throws the punch. Marcus pushes. Nancy is the one who steps between them, to protect a boy who was only angry.
Why It Is Nobody’s Plan
It is worth pausing on how small the cause is. Nancy is slight, and Marcus says it felt like pushing a twig. There is no weapon and no plan. A teenager lashes out, a man throws a punch meant for his son, and a woman who spent a year hating herself steps into the way.
Mary does not blame Marcus. She tells him that none of it is his fault, and that Howard’s responsibility is the heavier one.
The Cover Up
This is where Mary’s inference comes in. The book does not show Howard take Nancy’s phone and money, so what we have is Mary’s guess: that he took them to make the death look like a mugging, and that he did it to protect Marcus.
That also explains how the police never got anywhere. As far as the book shows, nobody is ever charged.
It also explains Howard. He has barely spoken since. Mary thinks that when she looks at him, she sees a man whose mind has given way. He has to live with what happened, and with the fact that he loved Nancy more than he ever showed his wife.
What Mary Does
Mary decides that nothing will ever be said to the police. She promises Marcus it is not his fault, and she burns the envelope, the letter and the keepsakes at the kitchen sink.
Then she goes up to Howard’s room with a packet of painkillers. She hands him two, then more, and tells him what she knows. He takes them himself. He says it is okay, and she thanks him.
In the morning he is dead. She calls an ambulance and tells everyone she left his tablets by his bed. The paramedics and the police accept it as an easy mistake. Marcus seems to accept it too, although I think he suspects more.
Mary does not feel guilt. She feels, in her own words, a kind of liberation.
The Last Scene
Mary rings Eleanor, who rushes over. Eleanor has her own story. She slept with Robert after Nancy’s death, and then she ended things, partly because of what she thought of herself after losing her neighbour Irena, who left her a little wooden box carved with the words you are loved.
In the kitchen, Mary tells Eleanor that Robert did not kill Nancy. Eleanor answers yes, and neither says more.
Then Mary suggests putting all the sorrow and guilt into Irena’s box, and Eleanor agrees. She says, let’s be imperfect women together. That is where the title comes from.
Eleanor Never Learns
Notice what Eleanor does not get. She never hears about the Polaroid, the letter or Marcus. For most of the book she circles Robert, because the letter in his study makes him look like he is hiding something.
Mary’s quiet line, that Robert did not kill Nancy, is all the relief Eleanor gets. It may be enough, because Eleanor has spent months blaming herself for not being kind at that last dinner.
Clues You May Have Missed
Once you know the answer, the book has laid the trail. Howard falls ill at almost the same time Nancy dies, and nobody can find a cause. The doctors rule out a terminal illness, then start talking about a breakdown.
On the night of the death, Mary remembers Howard coming home late and being sick, and she remembers Marcus’s bed unslept in. Marcus had also become withdrawn, which Mary puts down to him being a teenager.
And there is the name. Eleanor tells the police the lover is called David, and Davide Boyette gets dragged into it, while the most obvious David sits in Mary’s own house. The names David and Louise were the middle names of a husband and a friend.
Does It Work
For me the ending is bold, and also quietly troubling. Nancy’s death is the mystery, but the book answers it as a human mess, not a plot twist. I like that. What I find harder is that Mary, the one who ends it, keeps the truth from her best friend and takes a life herself, and the book treats it as freedom.
That is my take, and you may feel differently. If you want my full verdict without spoilers, it is on the site.
The Series
One last note. The Apple TV series was reported to end differently. Reports say that on screen Howard is the one who kills Nancy, and that the setting moves to California. I cover the differences in my book versus series video, and the link is in the description.
That is the ending explained. If this helped, subscribe, and tell me in the comments who you blamed. Thanks for watching. See you in the next one.
