Cecilia gave a dismissive little laugh.

“You make me sound omnipotent.”

“No,” Vanessa said. “Just accustomed to frightened people.”

The financial investigation had already begun by then. Investigators traced foundation money into companies Cecilia controlled. They found the jeweler, old insurance records, payments connected to Daniel’s case.

But Eleanor’s death remained an elderly doctor’s signed certificate and a child’s uncorroborated memory.

“We needed to get the material from the room safely,” Vanessa said. “And we needed you here to open it.”

“You could have told me.”

“Yes.”

She said it without hesitation.

“I told myself you might confront her before the investigators were ready. That you might believe her. But the truth is, I was also afraid you would look at me the way you’re looking at me now.”

There was no plan clever enough to excuse that.

She seemed to understand.

“I thought if I brought you the whole truth at once, you might still want me afterward.”

Maxwell looked through the open doorway toward the ballroom below.

The flowers. The guests. The waiting officiant.

“Was any of this real?”

Vanessa’s face collapsed.

“The part that made it unforgivable was that I really wanted to marry you.”

Cecilia began clapping.

Slowly.

Three sharp sounds.

“What a moving performance.”

She looked at the investigators.

“You have old papers and a maid’s imagination. Eleanor had a documented heart condition. She was drinking. She took medication incorrectly. I warned everyone.”

Elena went pale.

Detective Hsu turned toward Cecilia.

“What medication?”

“My attorney will speak for me.”

Vanessa touched her diamond necklace.

“Mother, you told me once that her heart tablets were kept in a blue bottle.”

Cecilia stared at her.

“When I asked why you never drank tea, remember? I was fifteen. You’d had too much wine.”

“Be quiet.”

“You said some people made dying so inconvenient.”

“Vanessa.”

Maxwell moved closer to Elena.

Cecilia’s eyes darted toward the desk, toward the useless recorder.

Then she smiled.

“You’re trying to provoke me.”

“Yes,” Vanessa said.

The simple honesty seemed to unsettle her more than denial would have.

“And it isn’t working.”

“No.”

Vanessa reached behind her neck and unclasped the diamonds.

For one wild second, Maxwell thought a microphone would emerge from beneath the stones.

Nothing did.

She laid the necklace on the table.

“I’m finished wearing this.”

Cecilia looked down.

Her expression changed.

Detective Hsu noticed.

“Mrs. Caldwell?”

Vanessa touched the central stone.

“This is the necklace Daniel supposedly stole.”

Maxwell stared at it.

He had seen it at dinners. At galas. In engagement photographs.

“It was reset,” Vanessa said. “But the original jeweler kept detailed drawings. Mother gave it to me when we announced the engagement.”

Cecilia said nothing.

“She put the thing that sent Elena’s father to prison around my neck.”