A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is primarily about the death of Andie Bell, a wayward teenager with a particular knack for getting everyone around her into a great deal of trouble. That includes her boyfriend, Salil Singh, who is not only blamed for her murder after she disappears but subsequently kills himself — presumably out of guilt.
But in the chaotic ending of the series, the exact nature of Andie and Sal’s deaths is revealed. And let’s just say it’s complicated.
Luckily, I’m on hand to break down the who, what, and why, with a particular focus on poor old Sal.
What happened to Sal?
We only see Sal in flashbacks, since A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder picks up five years after his death. He was Andie Bell’s boyfriend and seemed pretty well-liked. There is some tokenistic acknowledgment of a sense of “otherness” about him given he’s an Indian in a majority-white little English town, but the series doesn’t make a big deal of this.
When Andie disappeared and was presumed dead, Sal was blamed. He even confessed via a text message. For reasons that’ll become clear, this was through no fault of his own. Soon after, Sal himself was found dead, apparently by suicide. His death was written off as a guilty conscience and the town, for the most part, moved on.
Sal Was Murdered — But By Who? And Why?
Sal (Rahul Pattni) in A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder | Image via Netflix
Pip is one of the few people who can’t move past Andie’s disappearance, in part because she feels a degree of responsibility for it. During her investigation, she uncovers that Sal’s death was not suicide but murder, though he was not killed by the same person as Andie.
Sal was killed by Elliot, Naomi’s father. Elliot had been involved in a deeply unethical affair with Andie which she broke off when she became romantically involved with Sal. However, she subsequently tried to blackmail Elliot for money, threatening to expose what had happened between them if he didn’t pay up. When he refused to, they fought, and in the struggle, she smashed her head on his kitchen countertop.
This didn’t kill Andie; she was able to leave afterward. However, Elliot assumed that her wounds would be fatal and that at some point she would be found dead and he would be implicated. So, Elliot decided to frame Sal for the murder, which he could only pull off by getting Sal out of the way — permanently.
Elliot drugged and smothered Sal to stage his suicide, also sending the confession text and blackmailing Naomi and Sam into lying about Sal’s whereabouts on the night of Andie’s disappearance.
Who killed Andie Bell?
After surviving her encounter with Elliot, Andie went to see her sister, Becca, to tell her she was leaving. Becca became incensed by this news since they had always been a team against their father. Becca felt Andie was leaving her at his mercy.
Becca also feels betrayed by her sister because Andie sold Max Hastings the Rohypnol he used to drug and rape her. When the sisters argued, Becca pushed Andie against the wall. Her already injured head took another knock, and Andie collapsed, choking on her own vomit. Becca then hid her body and would have quite clearly gotten away with doing so if it wasn’t for Pip and Sal’s younger brother, Ravi.
