‘Police officers will be arriving imminently,’ Vanessa said, putting her back against the door so Felicity couldn’t leave through it. She just needed to hope the other door didn’t lead outside. ‘It would look better if you gave yourself up.’
Felicity nodded, placing the gift bags down and smoothing her silver hair from her eyes. ‘Of course. I suppose it’s a relief in many ways.’
‘Your own daughter …’
Felicity flinched, squeezing her eyes shut. ‘Cordelia was never meant to come into contact with any of those items. Why would that awful agent of hers gift her such a thing? And why would Cordelia wear it? I did all this for my girl. It was never meant to happen like this.’
‘So you purposefully targeted a list of people with gifts, pretending they were from the company that supplied insect jewellery?’ Vanessa asked, trying to wrap her head around how the woman standing before her could be capable of something like that.
‘It started as a fantasy,’ Felicity said, placing her hand on one of the gift bags. ‘I was angry at them all, starting with that bastard, Maximilian Rossi. You know he raped my daughter?’
Vanessa squeezed her eyes shut. ‘My God,’ she whispered.
‘I pleaded with her to report it, but she refused. Said it was her fault because she’d agreed to stay behind after a photo shoot.’ Felicity let out an angry sob. ‘I even went to Heidi, that terrible woman, but she fobbed me off. So I took it to a newspaper journalist I know.’
‘Kendra Grey.’
‘That’s right. She said she’d look into it but then she just started avoiding my calls. Guess what? Turned out she was seeing her boss, Jerry Bowman. And he was friends with Maximilian Rossi! He must have convinced his little mistress to pull the article … All so incestuous and so rotten.’
Vanessa sighed. She could see the frustration etched on this mother’s face and she could understand it, too. ‘Then at the Golden Globes last year,’ Felicity continued, ‘I overheard Heidi discussing some dark web insect jewellery venture. I asked her about it, and she had a brochure sent to me.’
She caressed the top of the gift bag with her thumb, closer and closer to that perfume. ‘The items were as sickening as I imagined,’ Felicity continued. ‘Even worse, I began noticing more and more celebrities wearing them when I accompanied Cordelia to events.’ Her expression faltered. ‘That was around the time I noticed Cordelia’s mental health unravelling. This industry was picking her to pieces, bit by bit. What had happened to my mother, was happening to my daughter.’
‘Your mother?’
Felicity’s glassy eyes met Vanessa’s. ‘She was an actress, too. Not as successful as Cordelia. She got pregnant with me before she really had a chance to make it.’ She closed her eyes, black mascara tears squeezing from her lashes. ‘She took her life when I was fifteen, after she tried to return to the industry. This unforgiving celebrity world drove her to it. Cordelia knew that and yet still, she insisted it was what she wanted to do.’ Felicity opened her eyes and shook her head. ‘I couldn’t have her taking her life like my mother had. I started fantasising about ways to remove the threat factors in her life. It was the insect jewellery that pushed me to it. I saw so many of the people in her world – the ones who hurt her – wearing those awful things. It sickened me, these shallow, dreadful people using living creatures as accessories, even more so when I learned she was falling for Nils Thorsen, the very man whose family was behind such horrendous items.’ Felicity tilted her head, examining Vanessa’s face. ‘You probably think I’m a hypocrite, seeing as I’ve used living creatures for revenge.’
Vanessa didn’t say anything, so aware of how easily Felicity could grab a bottle of that perfume and spray it at her.
‘Do you have children, Dr Marwood?’
Vanessa shook her head.
‘Well, you won’t understand, then, the things you will do for your children, even if those things go against everything you believe in.’ She began to open the gift bag. Vanessa tried to listen for the sound of running feet, but there was nothing, just the revelry of the ball, and it was just her, alone, with a woman who’d killed five people already.
‘I began imagining targeting those who had wronged Cordelia,’ Felicity said. ‘I imagined injectors with poison and release pads with toxins.’ She tapped her head. ‘It was all up here to begin with, that’s all. Just something to tame my anger.’
‘What turned the fantasy into reality?’ Vanessa dared to ask.
‘When Cordelia got worse, I got angrier. Did you know she tried to take her life six months ago?’
‘No,’ Vanessa said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Felicity let out a bitter laugh. ‘No, no, of course you wouldn’t know. Heidi was very good at keeping it quiet. Couldn’t have her most lucrative client being tainted. But yes, that’s when my fantasies turned to reality.’
She smiled slightly, as though she’d enjoyed the process. Maybe it was because, in a helpless situation, she had felt she was doing something, even if that something was horrific …
‘I researched the dark web and how I might be able to source insects like the ones I saw in the brochure,’ Felicity continued. ‘Finding similar jewellery pieces was easy enough from places like Etsy and thrift stores. I even went so far as to order an item from the Thorsens’ brochure and track down where they had their gift boxes made. I could kill two birds with one stone and implicate Nils Thorsen in it all. I suppose,’ she said, brow creased, ‘that when I started designing the little mechanisms in my notepad, it became more serious. I have to admit, I enjoyed it. It took me back to my engineering days, sourcing equipment from old contacts.’ She was lost in thought for a moment, then straightened her back. ‘When I signed up for a lease on the warehouse, I knew the fantasy was becoming reality. Eight people, I told myself. Eight people to remove from my darling girl’s life and she’d be all better. Or I suppose it would be nine, if Nils Thorsen and his family’s sickening enterprise was tangled up in it all. Some of their addresses were easy to get hold of. An indiscreet celebrity photographer, or simply following them to see where they went. Eight stupid, shallow people. In the end, it would be up to them. If they were indeed stupid and shallow enough to wear such an item, then they would deserve to die.’
Vanessa couldn’t help herself. ‘But one of them wasn’t your intended target. Cordelia, your own daughter.’
Felicity’s face collapsed slightly. ‘I never dreamed of such a horrific outcome. You know, Dr Marwood,’ she said, taking the gift bag and hugging it to her chest as she took a step towards Vanessa, ‘I very nearly took my life the evening Cordelia was found. Luckily, my son found me, insisted on staying with me. Then I saw Maximilian had died. It made me realise I had a new purpose. I had to make her death worth it.’
‘Worth it? With more death?’ Vanessa asked, gesturing to the gift bags. ‘What have the guests here done to you? There are scores of them out there.’
‘I won’t hurt all of them, just some. They’re labelled, see,’ she said, gesturing to the bag in her hand to show a name written on the side: Ottilli Holmes, the feather-hatted woman from the funeral. ‘Thing is, Dr Marwood, more of these leeches came out of the woodwork after Cordelia died. People claiming to be her friends, like that awful Laife creature. I had to continue, for Cordelia.’
‘And take more children from their mothers?’ Vanessa said.
Felicity shook her head. ‘No, you’re looking at it the wrong way. If I don’t do this, more mothers will suffer grief. More children, too, as their parents take their lives.’ Her eyes flickered with memories, no doubt thinking of her own mother. ‘If I want to ensure Cordelia’s death wasn’t for nothing, I have to see this through.’ She straightened her shoulders. ‘And I’m sorry, Dr Marwood. As much as I admire you, I can’t let you get in my way.’
She quickly reached into the gift bag she was holding and pulled out a tiny green perfume bottle with insect patterns etched all over it. She held it up to Vanessa, her finger on the pump. ‘If you leave now,’ Felicity said calmly, ‘I won’t have to hurt you.’
Vanessa stared at the perfume bottle, imagining what the contents would do to her. Not now, she thought. Not now I’ve found my mother again. For a moment, she considered doing as Felicity ordered and just leaving. But then she thought of all those people Felicity had killed. Had hurt.
Vanessa shook her head. ‘I can’t let you hurt more people like you hurt my mother.’
Felicity frowned. ‘Mother?’
‘Yes. The actress you targeted, Ali Perkins? She sold her piece of jewellery to my mother.’
‘Your mother?’
Vanessa nodded. ‘She’s in hospital right now. She’s around your age, in fact.’
‘I – I had no idea.’
‘I’d like to say she was as devoted a mother as you are,’ Vanessa continued. ‘She was, at first … But then she left us. It did things to my brother and me, her leaving, here,’ she said, pressing her fist to her heart. ‘How do you think your mother would feel, to know what her death did to you? The number of subsequent deaths it caused? What it’s also doing now, to your remaining son. To your grandchildren?’
Felicity faltered, lowering the hand that was clutching her next weapon.
As she did, officers suddenly burst in through the door at the back. Felicity turned and, for a moment, Vanessa thought she might spray them with the substance. But instead, she just crumpled, falling to the ground and screaming her daughter’s name. All this time, she’d been holding her grief at bay, and redirecting it into her twisted plan.
But now, finally, it was all tumbling out.