I just finished reading Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris, and while I liked most of the book, the ending is so infuriating to me. Spoilers for the ending below, of course.
So at the end, Esther is helping Grace create her alibi to tell the police. They do a pretty good job at covering all angles, but there’s one part that makes no sense to me. They come up with the cover story that the basement is Jack’s prep room before he goes to court. If you need a refresher (since I’m pretty late to the party reading it), the basement was the room Jack created with the intention of using it to hold Millie. So, it has a door that only locks from outside, and can’t be opened from within. When Grace is escaping, she locks Jack in the basement by shutting him in the room.
The explanation that Grace and Esther create for the room’s existence is that it acts as a second office for Jack, where he goes to review cases and looks upon the paintings of battered women to hype him up to represent them in court. (Also. Why would he have PAINTINGS of them? Prints I could excuse, but he’s got paintings? How do they explain him commissioning portraits of beaten women???)
My question is: how could they claim that the basement is commonly used by Jack if the door locks from the outside? They don’t try to explain this part at all, and you know the police would ask how he used the room if he couldn’t get out of it alone? But Grace had only been to it once? There’s no explanation for this and it’s driving me insane. I only saw one person point this out, too, but it’s an obscure forum post from 2017.
Did I miss something? Or did the author ever address this somewhere? I’m pulling teeth trying to justify having read the whole thing for such a hole in the ending.
by Booderdooder