Rebecca

'She used to have this fellow Favell down to the cottage,' said Maxim, 'she would tell the servants she was going to sail, and would not be back before the morning. Then she would spend the night down there with him. Once again I warned her. I said if I found him here, anywhere on the estate, I'd shoot him. He had a black, filthy record… The very thought of him walking about the woods in Manderley, in places like the Happy Valley, made me mad. I told her I would not stand for it. She shrugged her shoulders. She forgot to blaspheme. And I noticed she was looking paler than usual, nervy, rather haggard. I wondered then what the hell would happen to her when she began to look old, feel old. Things drifted on. Nothing very much happened. Then one day she went up to London, and came back again the same day, which she did not do as a rule. I did not expect her. I dined that night with Frank at his house, we had a lot of work on at the time.' He was speaking now in short, jerky sentences. I had his hands very tightly between my two hands.

'I came back after dinner, about half past ten, and I saw her scarf and gloves lying on a chair in the hall. I wondered what the devil she had come back for. I went into the morning-room, but she was not there. I guessed she had gone off there then, down to the cove. And I knew then I could not stand this life of lies and filth and deceit any longer. The thing had got to be settled, one way or the other. I thought I'd take a gun and frighten the fellow, frighten them both. I went down right away to the cottage. The servants never knew I had come back to the house at all. I slipped out into the garden and through the woods. I saw the light in the cottage window, and I went straight in. To my surprise Rebecca was alone. She was lying on the divan with an ashtray full of cigarette stubs beside her. She looked ill, queer.

'I began at once about Favell and she listened to me without a word. "We've lived this life of degradation long enough, you and I," I said. "This is the end, do you understand? What you do in London does not concern me. You can live with Favell there, or with anyone you like. But not here. Not at Manderley."
'She said nothing for a moment. She stared at me, and then she smiled. "Suppose it suits me better to live here, what then?" she said.

' "You know the conditions," I said. "I've kept my part of our dirty, damnable bargain, haven't I? But you've cheated. You think you can treat my house and my home like your own sink in London. I've stood enough, but my God, Rebecca, this is your last chance."
'I remember she squashed out her cigarette in the tub by the divan, and then she got up, and stretched herself, her arms above her head.
' "You're right, Max," she said. "It's time I turned over a new leaf."

'She looked very pale, very thin. She began walking up and down the room, her hands in the pockets of her trousers. She looked like a boy in her sailing kit, a boy with a face like a Botticelli angel.

' "Have you ever thought", she said, "how damned hard it would be for you to make a case against me? In a court of law, I mean. If you wanted to divorce me. Do you realise that you've never had one shred of proof against me, from the very first? All your friends, even the servants, believe our marriage to be a success."
' "What about Frank?" I said. "What about Beatrice?"

'She threw back her head and laughed. "What sort of a story could Frank tell against mine?" she said. "Don't you know me well enough for that? As for Beatrice, wouldn't it be the easiest thing in the world for her to stand in a witness-box as the ordinary jealous woman whose husband once lost his head and made a fool of himself? Oh, no, Max, you'd have a hell of a time trying to prove anything against me."

'She stood watching me, rocking on her heels, her hands in her pockets and a smile on her face. "Do you realise that I could get Danny, as my personal maid, to swear anything I asked her to swear, in a court of law? And that the rest of the servants, in blind ignorance, would follow her example and swear too? They think we live together at Manderley as husband and wife, don't they? And so does everyone, your friends, all our little world. Well, how are you going to prove that we don't?"

'She sat down on the edge of the table, swinging her legs, watching me.
' "Haven't we acted the parts of a loving husband and wife rather too well?'
' she said. I remember watching that foot of hers in its striped sandal swinging backwards and forwards, and my eyes and brain began to burn in a strange quick way.

' "We could make you look very foolish, Danny and I," she said softly. "We could make you look so foolish that no one would believe you, Max, nobody at all." Still that foot of hers, swinging to and fro, that damned foot in its blue and white striped sandal.
'Suddenly she slipped off the table and stood in front of me, smiling still, her hands in her pockets.

' "If I had a child, Max," she said, "neither you, nor anyone in the world, would ever prove that it was not yours. It would grow up here in Manderley, bearing your name. There would be nothing you could do. And when you died Manderley would be his. You could not prevent it. The property' s entailed. You would like an heir, wouldn't you, for your beloved Manderley? You would enjoy it, wouldn't you, seeing my son lying in his pram under the chestnut tree, playing leap-frog on the lawn, catching butterflies in the Happy Valley? It would give you the biggest thrill of your life, wouldn't it, Max, to watch my son grow bigger day by day, and to know that when you died, all this would be his?"

'She waited a minute, rocking on her heels, and then she lit a cigarette and went and stood by the window. She began to laugh. She went on laughing. I thought she would never stop. "God, how funny," she said, "how supremely, wonderfully funny! Well, you heard me say I was going to turn over a new leaf, didn't you? Now you know the reason. They'll be happy, won't they, all these smug locals, all your blasted tenants? 'It's what we've always hoped for, Mrs de Winter,* they will say. I'll be the perfect mother, Max, like I've been the perfect wife.

And none of them will ever guess, none of them will ever know."
'She turned round and faced me, smiling, one hand in her pocket, the other holding her cigarette. When I killed her she was smiling still. I fired at her heart. The bullet passed right through. She did not fall at once. She stood there, looking at me, that slow smile on her face, her eyes wide open…'

Maxim's voice had sunk low, so low that it was like a whisper. The hand that I held between my own was cold. I did not look at him. I watched Jasper's sleeping body on the carpet beside me, the little thump of his tail, now and then, upon the floor.
'I'd forgotten,' said Maxim, and his voice was slow now, tired, without expression, 'that when you shot a person there was so much blood.'

There was a hole there on the carpet beneath Jasper's tail. The burnt hole from a cigarette. I wondered how long it had been there. Some people said ash was good for the carpets.

'I had to get water from the cove,' said Maxim. 'I had to keep going backwards and forwards to the cove for water. Even by the fireplace, where she had not been, there was a stain. It was all round where she lay on the floor. It began to blow too. There was no catch on the window. The window kept banging backwards and forwards, while I knelt there on the floor with that dishcloth, and the bucket beside me.'

And the rain on the roof, I thought, he does not remember the rain on the roof. It pattered thin and light and very fast.

'I carried her out to the boat,' he said; 'it must have been half past eleven by then, nearly twelve. It was quite dark. There was no moon. The wind was squally, from the west. I carried her down to the cabin and left her there. Then I had to get under way, with the dinghy astern, and beat out of the little harbour against the tide. The wind was with me, but it came in puffs, and I was in the lee there, under cover of the headland. I remember I got the mainsail jammed half-way up the mast. I had not done it, you see, for a long time. I never went out with Rebecca.

'And I thought of the tide, how swift it ran and strong into the little cove. The wind blew down from the headland like a funnel. I got the boat out into the bay. I got her out there, beyond the beacon, and I tried to go about, to clear the ridge of rocks. The little jib fluttered. I could not sheet it in. A puff of wind came and the sheet tore out of my hands, went twisting round the mast. The sail thundered and shook. It cracked like a whip above my head. I could not remember what one had to do. I could not remember. I tried to reach that sheet and it blew above me in the air. Another blast of wind came straight ahead. We began to drift sideways, closer to the ridge. It was dark, so damned dark I couldn't see anything on the black, slippery deck. Somehow I blundered down into the cabin. I had a spike with me. If I didn't do it now it would be too late. We were getting so near to the ridge, and in six or seven minutes, drifting like this, we should be out of deep water. I opened the seacocks. The water began to come in. I drove the spike into the bottom boards. One of the planks split right across. I took the spike out and began to drive in another plank. The water came up over my feet. I left Rebecca lying on the floor. I fastened both the scuttles. I bolted the door. When I came up on deck I saw we were within twenty yards of the ridge. I threw some of the loose stuff on the deck into the water. There was a lifebuoy, a pair of sweeps, a coil of rope. I climbed into the din

Maxim waited. He stared in front of him still. Then he looked at me, sitting beside him on the floor.

'That's all,' he said, 'there's no more to tell. I left the dinghy on the buoy, as she would have done. I went back and looked at the cottage. The floor was wet with the salt water. She might have done it herself. I walked up the path through the woods. I went into the house. Up the stairs to the dressing-room. I remember undressing. It began to blow and rain very hard. I was sitting there, on the bed, when Mrs Danvers knocked on the door. I went and opened it, in my dressing-gown, and spoke to her. She was worried about Rebecca. I told her to go back to bed. I shut the door again. I went back and sat by the window in my dressing-gown, watching the rain, listening to the sea as it broke there, in the cove.'

We sat there together without saying anything. I went on holding his cold hands. I wondered why Robert did not come to clear the tea.
'She sank too close in,' said Maxim. 'I meant to take her right out in the bay. They would never have found her there. She was too close in.'
'It was the ship,' I said; 'it would not have happened but for the ship. No one would have known.'
'She was too close in,' said Maxim.
We were silent again. I began to feel very tired.

'I knew it would happen one day,' said Maxim, 'even when I went up to Edgecoombe and identified that body as hers. I knew it meant nothing, nothing at all. It was only a question of waiting, of marking time. Rebecca would win in the end. Finding you has not made any difference has it? Loving you does not alter things at all. Rebecca knew she would win in the end. I saw her smile, when she died.'

'Rebecca is dead,' I said. 'That's what we've got to remember. Rebecca is dead. She can't speak, she can't bear witness. She can't harm you any more.'
'There's her body,' he said, 'the diver has seen it. It's lying there, on the cabin floor.'
'We've got to explain it,' I said. 'We've got to think out a way to explain it. It's got to be the body of someone you don't know. Someone you've never seen before.'

'Her things will be there still,' he said. 'The rings on her fingers. Even if her clothes have rotted in the water there will be something there to tell them. It's not like a body lost at sea, battered against rocks. The cabin is untouched. She must be lying there on the floor as I left her. The boat has been there, all these months. No one has moved anything. There is the boat, lying on the sea-bed where she sank.'

'A body rots in water, doesn't it?' I whispered; 'even if it's lying there, undisturbed, the water rots it, doesn't it?'
'I don't know,' he said. 'I don't know.'
'How will you find out? how will you know?' I said.
'The diver is going down again at five-thirty tomorrow morning,' said Maxim. 'Searle has made all the arrangements. They are going to try to raise the boat. No one will be about. I'm going with them. He's sending his boat to pick me up in the cove. Five-thirty tomorrow morning.'

'And then?' I said, 'if they get it up, what then?'

'Searle's going to have his big lighter anchored there, just out in the deep water. If the boat's wood has not rotted, if it still holds together, his crane will be able to lift it on to the lighter. They'll go back to Kerrith then. Searle says he will moor the lighter at the head of that disused creek half-way up Kerrith harbour. It drives out very easily. It's mud there at low water and the trippers can't row up there. We shall have the place to ourselves. He says we'll have to let the water drain out of the boat, leaving the cabin bare. He's going to get hold of a doctor.'

"What will he do?' I said. 'What will the doctor do?'
'I don't know,' he said.
'If they find out it's Rebecca you must say the other body was a mistake,' I said. 'You must say that the body in the crypt was a mistake, a ghastly mistake. You must say that when you went to Edgecoombe you were ill, you did not know what you were doing. You were not sure, even then. You could not tell. It was a mistake, just a mistake. You will say that, won't you?'
'Yes,' he said. 'Yes.'

'They can't prove anything against you,' I said. 'Nobody saw you that night. You had gone to bed. They can't prove anything. No one knows but you and I. No one at all. Not even Frank. We are the only two people in the world to know, Maxim. You and I.'
'Yes,' he said. 'Yes.'

'They will think the boat capsized and sank when she was in the cabin,' I said; 'they will think she went below for a rope, for something, and while she was there the wind came from the headland, and the boat heeled over, and Rebecca was trapped. They'll think that, won't they?'
'I don't know,' he said. 'I don't know.'
Suddenly the telephone began ringing in the little room behind the library.
Chapter twenty-one

Maxim went into the little room and shut the door. Robert came in a few minutes afterwards to clear away the tea. I stood up, my back turned to him so that he should not see my face. I wondered when they would begin to know, on the estate, in the servants' hall, in Kerrith itself. I wondered how long it took for news to trickle through.

I could hear the murmur of Maxim's voice in the little room beyond. I had a sick expectant feeling at the pit of my stomach. The sound of the telephone ringing seemed to have woken every nerve in my body. I had sat there on the floor beside Maxim in a sort of dream, his hand in mine, my face against his shoulder. I had listened to his story, and part of me went with him like a shadow in his tracks. I too had killed Rebecca, I too had sunk the boat there in the bay. I had listened beside him to the wind and water. I had waited for Mrs Danvers' knocking on the door. All this I had suffered with him, all this and more beside. But the rest of me sat there on the carpet, unmoved and detached, thinking and caring for one thing only, repeating a phrase over and over again, 'He did not love Rebecca, he did not love Rebecca.' Now, at the ringing of the telephone, these two selves merged and became one again. I was the self that I had always been, I was not changed. But something new had come upon me that had not been before. My heart, for all its anxiety and doubt, was light and free. I knew then that I was no longer afraid of Rebecca. I did not hate her any more. Now that I knew her to have been evil and vicious and rotten I did not hate her any more. She could not hurt me. I could go to the morning-room and sit down at her desk and touch her pen and look at her writing on the pigeon-holes, and I should not mind. I could go to her room in the west wing, stand by the window even as I

I was free now to be with Maxim, to touch him, and hold him, and love him. I would never be a child again. It would not be I, I, I any longer; it would be we, it would be us. We would be together. We would face this trouble together, he and I. Captain Searle, and the diver, and Frank, and Mrs Danvers, and Beatrice, and the men and women of Kerrith reading their newspapers, could not break us now. Our happiness had not come too late. I was not young any more. I was not shy. I was not afraid. I would fight for Maxim. I would lie and perjure and swear, I would blaspheme and pray. Rebecca had not won. Rebecca had lost.

Robert had taken away the tea and Maxim came back into the room.
'It was Colonel Julyan,' he said; 'he's just been talking to Searle. He's coming out with us to the boat tomorrow. Searle has told him.'
'Why Colonel Julyan, why?' I said.
'He's the magistrate for Kerrith. He has to be present.'
'What did he say?'
'He asked me if I had any idea whose body it could be.'
'What did you say?'
'I said I did not know. I said we believed Rebecca to be alone. I said I did not know of any friend.'

'Did he say anything after that?'
'Yes.'
'What did he say?'
'He asked me if I thought it possible that I made a mistake when I went up to Edgecoombe?'
'He said that? He said that already?'
'Yes.'
'And you?'
'I said it might be possible. I did not know.'
'He'll be with you then tomorrow when you look at the boat? He, and Captain Searle, and a doctor.'
'Inspector Welch too.'
'Inspector Welch?'
'Yes.'
'Why? Why Inspector Welch?'
'It's the custom, when a body has been found.'

I did not say anything. We stared at one another. I felt the little pain come again at the pit of my stomach.
'They may not be able to raise the boat,' I said.
'No,' he said.
'They couldn't do anything then about the body, could they?' I said.
'I don't know,' he said.
He glanced out of the window. The sky was white and overcast as it had been when I came away from the cliffs. There was no wind though. It was still and quiet.

'I thought it might blow from the south-west about an hour ago but the wind has died away again,' he said.
'Yes,' I said.
'It will be a flat calm tomorrow for the diver,' he said.

The telephone began ringing again from the little room. There was something sickening about the shrill urgent summons of the bell. Maxim and I looked at one another. Then he went into the room to answer it, shutting the door behind him as he had done before. The queer nagging pain had not left me yet. It returned again in greater force with the ringing of the bell. The feel of it took me back across the years to my childhood. This was the pain I had known when I was very small and the maroons had sounded in the streets of London, and I had sat, shivering, not understanding, under a little cupboard beneath the stairs. It was the same feeling, the same pain.

Maxim came back into the library. 'It's begun,' he said slowly.
'What do you mean? What's happened?' I said, grown suddenly cold.
'It was a reporter,' he said, 'the fellow from the County Chronicle. Was it true, he said, that the boat belonging to the late Mrs de Winter had been found.'
'What did you say?'
'I said, Yes, a boat had been found, but that was all we know. It might not be her boat at all.'
'Was that all he said?'

'No. He asked if I could confirm the rumour that a body had been found in the cabin.'
'No!'
'Yes. Someone must have been talking. Not Searle, I know that. The diver, one of his friends. You can't stop these people. The whole story will be all over Kerrith by breakfast time tomorrow.'
'What did you say, about the body?'
'I said I did not know. I had no statement to make. And I should be obliged if he did not ring me up again.'
'You will irritate them. You will have them against you.'

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