Lula Landry's last will

Lula Landry’s last will is both a legal document and a turning point in the investigation into her death: its existence recasts the blue paper she carried before visiting Vashti as evidence of deliberate preparation, not a suicide note. Strike eventually finds the will hidden beneath the shaped base of a white handbag, where Lula had concealed it inside the bag’s removable lining. The document, witnessed by Rochelle Onifade, gives concrete form to Lula’s stated intention to leave her possessions to her brother and to the unexplained urgency of her final movements.

The Missing Blue Paper

Before discovering the will, Strike reasons from two details that do not fit the assumption that Lula had simply acted carelessly or impulsively. She had brought Rochelle, a friend who was penniless and homeless, across town to meet her; after they went into a cubicle together, Lula left fifteen minutes later without taking her home as she usually did. Strike sees the unusual meeting as evidence that Lula had a purpose for asking Rochelle to come.

The second detail is the blue paper Lula had before entering Vashti. Nobody in the investigation has accounted for what happened to it, and Strike connects its disappearance with evidence that Lula had been writing in the car before seeing Rochelle. Her writing, the unusual meeting, and the missing paper form a linked set of clues: if the paper was not incidental, the question becomes what Lula was preparing and why she needed Rochelle there.

Strike’s Reconstruction

Strike rejects the possibility that the paper was a suicide note. He points out that Lula had written on it hours before her death and had gone dancing afterward. Instead, he concludes that she was writing a will and took it to Vashti so that Rochelle could witness it. The point is not merely that Lula had been thinking about death; in Strike’s reconstruction, she had taken a practical step to establish who would inherit from her.

That interpretation fits Lula’s reported conversation with Ciara Porter: Lula had said she intended to leave everything to her brother. Strike treats this statement as corroboration that the will’s purpose was already on her mind. The will therefore links a previously reported intention to the blue paper and Rochelle’s presence, explaining why Lula’s visit was worth making even though she did not follow their usual routine afterward.

The Hidden Document

Strike finds the will later, while searching the wardrobe in Yvette Bristow’s bedroom. Among the costly clothes and accessories, he identifies several new handbags. He checks a blue bag bearing the GS logo, then turns to a white bag with an African-print lining. The lining comes out like a metal-edged scarf, revealing the rough inside of the leather; beneath the board that gives the bag’s base its shape, he finds folded pale-blue paper covered in untidy handwriting.

He puts the paper into a clear plastic bag without reading it in the bedroom, replaces the handbag, and continues searching. When movement outside interrupts him, he returns to the bedroom and gives the nurse a false explanation for having entered the wardrobe. In the small en-suite, with the door closed, he reads the last will and testament. It is written on Yvette’s writing paper and witnessed by Rochelle. These details confirm the chain Strike had inferred: the missing blue paper is a will, and Rochelle’s involvement was formal rather than incidental.

Significance to the Investigation

The will changes the meaning of the blue paper from an unaccounted-for object into a missing piece of evidence, and the concealment beneath the handbag’s base explains why it had not been found in an ordinary search. Its discovery also strengthens the connection between Lula’s visit to Vashti and her plans for her estate. The paper’s route—from writing in the car, to Rochelle’s witnessing, to concealment in the white bag—makes the sequence of Lula’s actions legible to Strike.

The will does not, by itself, explain why Lula suddenly made one or establish every circumstance of her death. Its importance is more precise: it undermines the assumption that her earlier writing was a suicide note, supports the reported intention to leave her estate to her brother, and confirms that she had enlisted Rochelle to witness a document. In the investigation, an overlooked scrap becomes a legally consequential record—and a clue to the purpose behind a meeting that had seemed inexplicable.