Rebecca's Tale (20 page)

“I’m certain my father believed Maxim was guilty then. But he’s never discussed it with me. He won’t talk to anyone about what happened that night in the crypt—and he doesn’t like talking about what happened later the same night at Manderley, either. If he does, he’s always reticent, or nearly always. He leaves out key details—he’s good at that, as no doubt you’ve noticed….” She hesitated, and glanced at me. “I hope you forgive him for that. He loved Rebecca very dearly, you see. And he’s an old-fashioned man, so he’ll move heaven and earth to suppress any information he thinks reflects badly on her.”

I could hear the appeal, and I was touched. “There’s no question of forgiveness,” I began. “I understand that. I respect it. I won’t say it doesn’t infuriate me when he dodges my questions. But you have to admire the turn of speed—”

“I thought you might say that,” she said, interrupting me, her tone dry. “I can see you might admire the way he evades questions. You’re quite dexterous at that yourself. Maybe you’ve picked up some tips from him. More coffee?”

She had removed the dark glasses as she spoke; she smiled, and in a demure way, with no further comment, refilled my cup. Until she began speaking again, I had the unpleasant sensation that I’d given the wrong answer, or she suspected me of insincerity. Ellie could be disconcerting, as I was beginning to realize.

I think I must have said the right thing, however, for she then moved on to the whole issue of what had happened at Manderley on the night of Rebecca’s funeral—and she gave me some very interesting information, describing events that Colonel Julyan has resolutely avoided from day one.

Within an hour or so of the interment, no more, Colonel Julyan had been called back to Manderley. There—and I’d had no inkling of this—he’d been confronted by Maxim, the second Mrs. de Winter, the ubiquitous Frank Crawley, and a very drunken Jack Favell. Favell had several bombshells to drop. First, he produced a note from Rebecca that he had
not
offered as evidence at the inquest earlier that day, although he had attended it. This note had been hand delivered
to the porter at his block of flats by Rebecca, shortly before she left London for the last time. Second—and without the least sign of shame and embarrassment, apparently—he’d announced that not only had he and Rebecca been lovers, she had been about to leave her husband for him, and would have done so, had she not died. I stared at Ellie.

“You’re sure about this?”

“Absolutely sure. At one time, my father would never have discussed what happened that night. But he’s changed since his heart attack. Since you began asking your questions, too. He talks to me now much more openly.” She hesitated. “Maybe you haven’t realized quite how much it preys on his mind.”

“But, I don’t understand—why was your father there? Why did Maxim ask him to go over to Manderley? He can’t have wanted your father to witness a scene like that, surely?”

Ellie gave me a quick glance that might have been approval; I couldn’t tell, because she’d replaced the dark glasses. She gave a shrug. “Oh, I agree,” she replied. “But Maxim had a plausible reason. Favell had turned up at Manderley, none too sober, and tried to use Rebecca’s note as a way of extorting money, you see. Favell always was after money—you’ll discover just what a vile man he is when you meet him tomorrow. It is tomorrow you’re seeing him, isn’t it?” She paused. “Make sure you ask him about that note. It must have been the last thing she ever wrote, and—this is the intriguing part—in the note, Rebecca said she had something she urgently needed to tell Favell. She asked him to meet her at Manderley, at her boathouse that same night…. Which seems a rather strange request if you’re intending to drive back there, go out in your boat, and commit suicide.”

“It certainly does. Did Favell do as she asked?”

“No, apparently not. I don’t know why; you’ll have to ask him. But the point is, that note cast doubt on the suicide verdict—presumably that’s why Favell thought he could make money out of it. He assumed the last thing Maxim would want was that verdict’s being overturned, or any further investigations. And I suspect he was right about that. Even so, Maxim called his bluff. That’s when my father was asked over there—as magistrate rather than friend—and Favell was invited to put his evidence and his accusations to him.”

“He produced the note? Your father read it?”

“Oh, certainly. Then Favell blustered and boasted—made all the claims about himself and Rebecca. And accused Maxim of killing her. Claimed Maxim was insane with jealousy—gave him a motive, in other words.” She paused. “I gather it became very ugly. My father couldn’t believe that Maxim was allowing this man to say these things about Rebecca, in what had been her home, and within hours of that terrible funeral. It got worse, too. Mrs. Danvers was called in, to confirm that Rebecca had been unfaithful. Can you imagine my father’s reaction to that? A servant being cross-questioned about Rebecca’s loyalty as a wife? He was appalled. But he could see this had to be investigated. That’s why he suggested they look into Rebecca’s final movements. If they knew what she’d done that last day in London, he thought they might discover what she’d wanted to tell Favell so urgently. Mrs. Danvers produced Rebecca’s diary—”

“Mrs. Danvers?” I said sharply. “Why on earth would the housekeeper have Rebecca’s diary?”

“I don’t know—I’ve never thought about it.” Ellie frowned. “It wasn’t a journal kind of diary, I’m sure. Just an appointments book. Mrs. Danvers kept everything after Rebecca died—her room, her clothes, nothing was altered. I remember Maxim’s sister, Beatrice, telling my mother that. But then Mrs. Danvers worshipped Rebecca. I think she’d looked after her as a child at one point. Surely my father told you that?”

“Yes. He mentioned it. Even so, a diary, her personal papers—it seems odd—never mind. Go on, Ellie.”

“Well, they looked at the diary entries for the last day of her life. And that’s when they discovered the appointment with that consultant. My father insisted they go to see him…. You see, he was a woman’s specialist. A gynecologist.”

I stared at her dark glasses; a scene the Colonel had never described to me, a scene that I’d heard of only at third- or fourth-hand, disentangled itself from the veils of gossip, and began to take on a new shape. I’d been looking at these events with hindsight, I realized, from the wrong end of the telescope. Viewed in the sequence they actually happened, they took on new shape. Revelations of infidelity; an appointment with a gynecologist…

“Rebecca and Maxim had been married five years,” Ellie went on.
“There had been no children. There was no heir—and there had been speculation about that locally. So, when my father discovered she’d consulted a London doctor, not her local doctor; when he heard the man was a women’s specialist…you can imagine what he thought.”

“He thought Rebecca had been expecting a child?”

“Yes. He did. And, if that proved to be the case, then obviously everything was altered. The suicide verdict would inevitably be overturned. But Rebecca’s boat hadn’t sunk by accident. It was scuttled. So that left only one alternative. I think my father could see the hangman’s noose tightening around Maxim’s neck as they drove to London….” She paused. “But it wasn’t just that—do you understand? There were other implications, too, very serious ones.”

“I see. I see.” I stood up, and walked across to the edge of the terrace; I looked at the yachts swaying at anchor. Why had Colonel Julyan never told me this? It would have meant that, driving to London, he must have been considering the possibility that Maxim de Winter had killed not only his wife, but also her unborn child. If so, it raised a terrible question: Could Maxim have killed Rebecca believing her to be pregnant? I couldn’t begin to answer that, and neither, I suppose, could the Colonel, but the images it conjured up in my mind were dark and terrible ones. Where had it happened? On the shore—no, not on the shore, and not on her boat either. In the boathouse, in the place I’d been standing this morning. Of that I felt suddenly, and irrationally, certain.

The scene was very sharp in my mind, and I could feel my attitude to Maxim de Winter hardening. I’ve been trying to fight that inclination ever since—I was conjuring the scene out of the air, and I had no proof. But I still can’t dislodge it.

I listened to the few remaining details of Ellie’s story with less attention—they were already familiar to me. Had Rebecca suspected how ill she was, I wondered, or had the news come as a complete surprise to her?

“My father spent that night in London,” Ellie was saying, and I realized I’d scarcely heard her for the last few minutes. “He was terribly overwrought. He’d spent the whole day trying to conceal his thoughts. He went to stay with Rose, at her house in St. John’s Wood. I expect he wanted to talk it over with her…” She paused.
The dark glasses turned in my direction. “Rose had a house in London then. In fact, she still has. She’s there now. She’s working on a new book. She’s on sabbatical from Cambridge, did my father tell you?”

I dragged myself back to the present with some difficulty. “No,” I said. “No. He’s been steering me away from Rose. He likes to pretend she’s a recluse in the Fens. Of course, I did know that was misleading. In academic circles, your aunt is very well known. She—” I stopped myself.

“Ah, yes,” Ellie said, her tone dry. “You were an undergraduate at Cambridge, weren’t you? I’d forgotten that.”

I don’t think she
had
forgotten it—not at all. I changed the subject quickly. I was furious with myself for making that slip, and I didn’t want to get drawn on the issue of Cambridge, past or present. We talked for a little while longer, about her father, the predicament in which he’d then found himself, and his decision to draw a line under the whole affair.

“If that inquest had been held in Scotland,” I said, “there could have been a ‘not proven’ verdict. It’s a pity that option doesn’t exist in England.”

“Isn’t it?” Ellie replied. “Why
does
Scotland have a different legal system? I wish I knew Scotland better—I’ve never been there, and neither has my father. So we’re very ignorant. Unless I looked at a map, I wouldn’t know the difference between Perth and Peebles.”

Her tone was innocent. Was she fishing, or teasing me? I couldn’t tell then, and I still can’t. I looked at my watch, and discovered that punctual Terence Gray was about to be late for Sunday lunch with the Briggs sisters.

We began to walk back toward the house, and I suddenly found I was reluctant to leave. I wished I didn’t have that lunch with two elderly women, fond though I am of them; I’ve been spending so much time talking to people twice my own age that I’d almost forgotten how it felt to talk to someone of my own generation. I was realizing that I should have talked to Ellie about all this much earlier; I should have asked her about Rebecca. Ellie was observant, and with her I didn’t have to fight my way through interminable evasions and circumlocutions.

“How old were you when you first came back to The Pines?” I
asked as we rounded the house, making for the side gate that leads directly out to the lane.

“I was six.” Ellie plucked at a clump of herbs and began rubbing a leaf between her fingers. “I’d never lived in England. I’d grown up in the Far East—first Malaya, then Singapore.” She gave me a sidelong amused glance. “That won’t interest you, I know. So, as I’m sure you’re wondering, I was six when I first met Rebecca, and eleven when she died. I can’t claim to have known her—I was too young—but I used to see her all the time. She came here, and we went to Manderley often. All that endless entertaining! I went to some of the garden parties—and my mother used to describe the grown-up ones. Troops of people coming down from London all the time—everyone from ambassadors to artists. I think my mother found it intimidating; it made her feel shabby, a bit of a bumpkin—which wasn’t the case. Anyway, I met Rebecca frequently—”

“And?”

“And I was a very watchful little girl. I used to watch her all the time. She fascinated me.”

“Tell me why.”

“At first, because she was beautiful. People always say that, I know. They all talk about her beauty and her wit and her charm—and they’re such bankrupt words. They’re anodyne and approximate. They don’t give you the least idea what she was like. They make her sound empty-headed and frivolous. The society beauty. The society hostess—that’s another word I hate.” She gave an impatient gesture. “As if Rebecca thought about nothing but parties. That’s so misleading. If I remember her now, she’s where she was happiest—on her boat, or walking in the woods, or with her dogs. Alone, usually, which is odd. I remember her
alone
….” She hesitated. “But you can’t
not
mention how she looked. I’d never seen anyone that beautiful before—and I haven’t since. She had the most extraordinary eyes—unforgettable eyes. She was bewitching. She captivated you—that’s how it felt. And I was a little girl. Imagine what it was like for men. They’d stare and stare—and Rebecca would be talking away, and half the time, I don’t think they even heard her. That irritated her. And bored her.”

“She didn’t like to be admired? Most women do.”

“Do they?” The dark glasses tilted in my direction. “Well, then, she wasn’t like most women.”

It was a reprimand, lightly made, but sharp nonetheless: I colored. As I’ve said, Ellie can be disconcerting. “‘At first,’ you said.” I went on. “What did you mean by that?”

“I meant that her beauty blinded you—for a long time I simply couldn’t see beyond it. When I finally did, I was still fascinated.” She frowned. “Partly because I could see how much my father admired her, and I wanted to understand why. I didn’t
want
to like her, but I did. She had an unusual way of speaking—very direct. You know how there are things people think, but never say? Well, Rebecca said them, straight out. I don’t think it occurred to her how unconventional that was. But then she never cared tuppence for convention. She could be very funny, very quick—and very ruthless if people were pompous or pretentious. And I thought she was sad. Behind all that gaiety and wit—I thought she was sad. Not unhappy—sad. It’s not quite the same thing, is it?”