The Death of Anne Simmons is the unresolved killing at the center of Derek Simmons’s account of his past and Roy Freeman’s confrontation with him. Derek says he found Anne in a pool of blood and denies murdering her, but his decision to call Joseph Wieder before calling emergency services makes the timing look incriminating. Roy believes Derek killed his wife; the novel nevertheless leaves the facts of her death uncertain, and its closing reflections place that uncertainty within a wider pattern of characters mistaking their suspicions for what they actually witnessed.

The Morning of Anne’s Death

Derek’s account begins with the discovery of Anne’s body. When Roy asks whether he killed her, Derek shakes his head and insists that he found her lying in a pool of blood. He adds that he knew she had been unfaithful, presenting that knowledge as part of the circumstances surrounding his response. The novel supplies no independent description of how Anne died, so Derek’s account establishes what he claims to have seen, not a verified reconstruction of the killing.

What Derek did next gives the morning its central contradiction. Rather than immediately calling for help, he telephoned Wieder, whom he believed to be Anne’s lover, and warned him that the police might make him a scapegoat. Derek said he would draw Wieder into the case by exposing their relationship. He also invoked his history of psychiatric hospitalization, suggesting Wieder could arrange for him to be found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a forensic hospital. Derek called 911 eight minutes after that conversation. Roy later emphasizes the interval: the person Derek describes as the love of his life was lying in a pool of blood, yet Derek first called the man he believed had been sleeping with her and asked for protection.

The Call and Its Investigative Trail

Derek says he had found Wieder’s home number while rummaging through Anne’s belongings. He called from his own house because he was afraid of being seen and needed to speak to Wieder quickly; he did not know whether the arriving patrol would arrest him on the spot. His explanation connects the call’s timing to his fear of immediate suspicion, but it also confirms that the call was deliberate and that he understood its potential significance.

The call record initially led nowhere. Wieder had only recently bought the house, and its telephone number had not yet been transferred into his name. The number remained associated with the former owner, Jesse E. Banks, who had died; the property had passed through an estate agency. Police checking the calls therefore reached a dead end and dropped the lead. Even if they had identified Wieder, Roy notes, his name had not seemed relevant to the case at that time. The administrative break in the trail helps explain why Derek’s call did not immediately expose the connection he claimed existed between Anne and the professor.

Derek’s Suspicions and Roy’s Challenge

Derek portrays his belief in an affair as grounded in circumstance rather than certainty. He says he did not know how Anne and Wieder had met, but speculates that they might have encountered one another at the coffee shop where she worked, a place frequented by professors and students. He describes Wieder as wealthy, powerful, and famous, and assumes that the professor would do everything possible to avoid a scandal. The account reveals Derek’s suspicion and his use of that suspicion as leverage; it does not establish that Anne and Wieder were lovers.

Roy challenges both Derek’s accusation against Anne and the reliability of his account. Referring to the detectives’ investigation, Roy says Anne had worked for about two years as a barmaid at Ruby’s Cafe in Atlantic City before she met Derek. People interviewed about her described her as decent, intelligent, and kind. Roy rejects Derek’s picture of her as promiscuous and mocked by other men, suggesting that the imagined enemies and humiliations may have belonged to Derek’s fears rather than Anne’s life. He also says he is unsure whether she had an affair with Wieder at all; she may instead have sought the professor’s help. In this reading, the alleged affair that Derek uses to explain his call and frame his grievance remains an open question.

Aftermath and Uncertainty

The consequences of the morning extend beyond the call. Derek was eventually arrested and accused of murdering Anne. He was declared legally insane and committed to Trenton Psychiatric Hospital. His claim that Wieder could use his psychiatric history to affect his legal fate thus sits alongside the actual outcome: institutional commitment after the accusation. Later, after Derek was attacked at the hospital and emerged from a coma with amnesia, he remembered Wieder as a caring doctor, unaware of the earlier threat and suspicion that had shaped their relationship. That later rupture helps explain why his account of the murder comes through a memory restored after a period of profound loss, rather than through an uninterrupted record of events.

Roy’s belief remains an accusation, not a confirmed solution. Derek denies killing Anne, while Roy tells him directly that he thinks he did. The ending widens the uncertainty rather than resolving it: the characters have repeatedly interpreted other people through obsessions and mistaken assumptions. The novel concludes that Derek may have been wrong about the affair, just as other characters were wrong about what they believed they had seen. Anne’s death therefore remains both a personal tragedy and a test of the difference between testimony, suspicion, and established fact.