Summary
Mlle. De Poitiers thinks about how strange it is that Sara left behind her oval frame. She recalls when Sara first received it. Sara said she was going to paint a picture of Miranda. Mlle. De Poitiers told her she should paint a picture of Miranda using the color yellow. Sara talked to her about Miranda's hair. On another day, Mlle. De Poitiers noticed that there was a strange bulge in Sara's pocket. She asked her about it and discovered it was the small, oval frame with the picture of Miranda. Sara asks her not to tell anyone, as Miranda told her she wouldn't be at the school much longer and that Sara would have to learn to love other people.
Mlle. De Poitiers suddenly becomes afraid for Sara. She thinks that Sara would never have left that frame behind and that perhaps there is something very wrong with her. She wonders if Mrs. Appleyard lied about where she actually went. The following day, all of the students leave campus. Mlle. De Poitiers feels the day drag on and eventually goes to bed, stressed and unsettled. Mrs. Appleyard makes her way to her bed, dressed in an unusually informal fashion, with a loose nightgown.
She goes into the room that used to belong to Sara and Miranda. She goes through their belongings and thinks about how she plans to dispose of their things. She notices, with irritation, the valentines in their drawers. She also sees the oval frame. She thinks to herself that she has learned nothing and found nothing. She remains no closer to figuring out what happened that afternoon and goes to bed in a bad mood.
The following day is very warm and people continue to carry out their domestic chores. Mlle. De Poitiers packs her bag. She looks at her wedding dress and thinks excitedly about her future husband. Mrs. Appleyard talks with the gardener, Mr. Whitehead, about whether or not to fly the flag, as the mayor is in town. For the sake of avoiding gossip, she tells him he should do so. Tom brings her a letter which is from Sara's guardian. He encloses a check for Sara's tuition and says he has been out of the country and, as a result, has been unable to be in touch with the school about administrative matters. This makes it clear she was not taken away and that Mrs. Appleyard was lying to Mlle. De Poitiers.
Mlle. De Poitiers writes to Constable Bumpher saying she fears for Sara Waybourne's life and thinks she has disappeared under bad circumstances. Bumpher likes Mlle. De Poitiers and thinks highly of her, so he is inclined to take her complaint seriously. He travels to the school and interviews several staff members. Later that afternoon, Mr. Whitehead walks through the garden and discovers Sara's dead body directly underneath the bell tower. He becomes violently ill, goes back to his chambers, and fixes himself a strong drink.
Later, Mr. Whitehead writes a statement for Constable Bumpher describing how he discovered Sara and subsequent events. This text of this testimony is included in the novel's penultimate chapter. He writes that he told Mrs. Appleyard the news and she was initially dumbstruck and then screamed very loudly. At her instruction, he then took her to a stable run by a man named Ben Hussey. Hussey gives his report to the police, writing that she arrived at the stable and insisted that she be taken to Hanging Rock. Frightened by her intensity, he reluctantly agreed. Their accounts end. Mrs. Appleyard arrives at Hanging Rock and begins to wander around in a daze. She stands at the precipice of a cliff and is struck by a vision of Sara's rotting corpse. She runs off the cliff and her head is smashed on the rocks.
The last chapter is an excerpt from a Melbourne newspaper. It describes how the case of the disappearances was never solved and no physical evidence was ever located. Following the deaths of Mrs. Appleyard and Sara Waybourne, no one was interested in following up. The school burned down two years after the incident and Edith Horton died without ever granting additional testimony. Irma was periodically interviewed about the events at Hanging Rock but always ended up saying she recalled almost nothing. The paper says that the case of Appleyard College will likely remain forever unresolved.
Analysis
The supernatural is a key theme in the book's conclusion. Both Sara and Mrs. Appleyard meet terrible ends. Sara is found with her head smashed in in the garden and Mrs. Appleyard, following Sara's death, throws herself off a cliff at Hanging Rock. Sara's death is never fully explained, as the circumstances of her disappearance are never made clear. It is never made explicit whether she is in despair over the loss of her beloved Miranda, or has suffered from the effects of some curse afflicting the school. The actual facts of Mrs. Appleyard's death are clear, as they are reported to the reader, but her motivations seem complex. While she has completely lost control of the school, she also seems to feel the same strange force that the girls experienced on Valentine's Day. In both cases, Lindsay suggests that the influence of something inhuman is likely, as the reach of these mystical forces goes beyond just the day of the disappearance.
The supernatural also appears as a theme in the book's final chapter. A newspaper account details the aftermath of the Appleyard case. It describes how the school burned down two years after Mrs. Appleyard's death and remained untouched. This casts suspicion on the Lumleys' deaths, as those two occurred as the result of a fire. The school's physical destruction is, like many of the other mysteries in the book, never fully explicated but implies the influence of something supernatural. This eerie postscript reminds the reader again that these events cannot be explained by either natural or supernatural forces. The school appears to be cursed in some way, but no resolution is reached. Lindsay highlights how these events go beyond human understanding.
Nature is also an important theme in these closing pages. As Mrs. Appleyard throws herself off a cliff, Lindsay describes an eagle soaring above her and a spider sitting on a rock, unaffected by her death. This choice of imagery makes her death seem small in comparison to the ongoing processes of the natural world. The indifference of these animals implies that the larger system of nature is indifferent to human activity. This scene signals that for all the human drama of the novel, its impact is barely felt against the backdrop of Australian wildlife, whose processes vastly predate human settlement and exist on a scale far beyond human comprehension. The closing lines of that penultimate chapter serve to remind the reader that nature remains unmoved by the events at Appleyard College.
Gossip appears as a theme in the novel's concluding chapter. The final chapter is written as a dispatch from a newspaper in Melbourne. It describes how the investigation was never resolved but people continued to request interviews with Irma about what happened at Hanging Rock. While the case reaches no conclusion, people demonstrate a fascination with the bizarre and grisly events at Hanging Rock. The newspaper article itself is a physical testament to this fact, as the story continues to be covered even as the trail goes completely cold. Lindsay once again shows the persistent interest of the public in the spectacle of mystery and tragedy.
The novel ends on a note of unresolved tension. The mystery is unsolved, Miranda, Marion, and Miss McCraw remain missing, Sara and Mrs. Appleyard die, and the school burns down. Breaking away from the tradition of the detective or procedural drama, the story never even offers an explanation to the reader of what actually happened. By excising any indication of what actually occurred, Lindsay succeeds in driving home a central thesis: the natural world is too complex and ancient to be understood by humans, and what happened at Hanging Rock is a sign that they often fail when they try.
