The Lodger 3 - The End (Pages 198 - end)

 RATING: GOOD

SPOILERS!!!

I enjoyed the book, but I found the main mystery interesting but a bit far-fetched.

Graces keeps investigating, and she not only finds out the truth about Elizabeth and about herself. 

The times she thinks she has seen Robert makes her believe that he is alive. It is Richard that sets her right. He says that Robert liked boys in the romantic sense, and he proposed to her because his parents would never have understood him. Richard claims that Robert felt terrible for using Grace. In the front he was in a relationship with another private, and when they were discovered, Robert feared that he would be judged by a military court and the truth would be revealed, and it would hurt not only Grace and his parents, but the man he was in love with. So he met his death willingly.

Shortly after Richard tells Grace the truth, he dares to tell her about his feelings. Grace knows that he is a good man and everybody tells her that he is the best option for her, so she agrees to marry him even though she is not in love with him.

As for Elizabeth, she discovers that it is true that she blackmailed rich men. Her sister, who refused to go to the funeral or talk to her about Elizabeth, comes to see her. She tells her about how her mother was a woman who enjoyed entertaining men who weren't her husband, one of whom was Sir Hugh, who was her lover. Sir Hugh visited the house frequently, and Elizabeth talked to him too. She felt grown-up when he talked to her. Then Sir Hugh said he wanted to take her to the theatre, but instead he took her to his house and abused her at the age of thirteen. That was something that broke her.

Grace learns that Elizabeth did kill Sir Hugh, and the reason was the hurt that he did to her when she was just a child. To be honest, I didn't understand the connection between Grace and Sir Ernest Whitehouse, who was a fraudulent thug.

Elizabeth also discovers that the other woman who killed herself in the river was Elizabeth's daughter. Elizabeth discovered that she was pregnant when she was imprisoned. The girl she had went to her sister-in-law, but the woman was not good to her. That is why Charlotte left the house and worked in a nightclub and started using drugs. Charlotte killed herself, and when Elizabeth discovered what had happened to her daughter, she decided to end her life.

At the end of the book Grace realises that she is not in love with Richard, and she breaks off their engagement. And then when Tom comes to see her, they finally confess how they feel for each other.