Edward Kills Asenath is the event Edward Pickman Derby describes in a warning letter to Daniel Upton: fearing that Asenath Waite would take his body permanently at Hallowmass, he killed her while he believed himself to be in his own body. The act does not end the conflict. Edward’s account says Asenath’s soul persisted after death and continued the struggle for possession of his body.

Cause and Circumstances

Edward writes that the killing happened when he and Asenath were alone and he was in what he regarded as his rightful body. He had feared that she would take him permanently at Hallowmass, when a sacrifice could make the exchange lasting. His letter presents the killing as a sudden attempt to prevent that outcome, rather than as the end of an established threat.

Concealment

Afterward, Edward buried Asenath in a storeroom at the far end of the cellar, placing old boxes over the body and cleaning away traces of what had happened. The servants suspected something the next morning, but, as Edward explains, their own secrets made them unwilling to go to the police. He sent them away, while fearing that they or other members of the cult might act against him. The concealment therefore left the death undisclosed without making Edward feel secure.

The Conflict After Death

Edward says he initially thought himself safe, then felt the mental tugging return. He understood this as evidence that Asenath’s soul, like Ephraim Waite’s, could remain active after death for as long as its body lasted. In his account, she was using that persistence to take his body and force him into the corpse hidden beneath the cellar boxes. The killing thus reverses its intended result: Asenath’s death does not release Edward from her influence, but becomes part of the means by which she continues it.

Revelation and Significance

The event is disclosed through Edward’s letter rather than narrated as a directly witnessed scene. Its account turns the apparent death of Asenath into a revelation about the limits of bodily death in the story: destroying a person’s living presence does not necessarily end the power of a soul capable of surviving its body. Edward’s concealment and his delayed recognition also make the cellar burial central to the reversal—what he hid as proof of an accomplished escape becomes the place from which he believes his own dispossession began.