Rebecca's Tale (28 page)

He broke off abruptly. “So I had
plenty
in common with Max,” he went on, after a pause. “And I once made the mistake of telling him that. Shouldn’t have done, I suppose—family loyalty and all that. But Rebecca’s attitude was narking me, to be perfectly frank, and I’d had a few drinks too many probably, so I put it to him straight…. Wasn’t news to him, as it turned out; in fact, I was surprised how much he knew, because Rebecca was always secretive. Anyway, the long and short of it was, I got myself banned from Manderley. Thrown out on my ear, old boy. Still no point in dwelling on all that now. Any chance of another drink? I’m feeling a bit low. Been a bloody awful week for me, as a matter of fact. One thing after another—problems with my lease, blasted accountant on my back, thought I’d sold that Jag, then I hadn’t…. I could do with another scotch.”

I’d seen something in his face then, something in his eyes. There was an evasion. I would have liked to know just what information he had given de Winter, and whether it was true or false; I was absolutely certain he wouldn’t tell me.

I persuaded him to fill in a few details—the names of some of those more “bohemian” friends, for instance, and what he’d heard about the first meeting between Rebecca and Maxim. He was informative on the first, vague and nonspecific on the second. I suggested that rather than having another drink there, we go on to the restaurant in Soho. When I mentioned its name, he seemed to forget the proviso he had made on the telephone. “Good idea,” he said. “Might buck me up a bit. I could do with a night on the town. Spot of decent food. I don’t get out and about as much as I did. Little lady in my life cracking the whip—you know how that feels, I expect? You married, Gray?”

“No. I’m not.” I rose; with one last reluctant glance toward the bar, Favell pushed his chair back.

“Ever have been?” he continued, as we walked out to the lobby. “No? Me neither. Hang on to the liberty as long as one can, that’s what I say. But sooner or later, the ultimatums start—don’t you find that? Usually, I see the warning signals, I’m off, but this time it’s been a bit tricky. Never mix business and pleasure, eh? I should have thought of that sooner, but the lease on the showroom came up, and
I was a bit short, and my little Susie was flush at the time, so, there you are. In up to my neck,
not
so easy to extricate myself.”

“You mean your partner—Johnston—that’s a woman?” We came out into Park Lane and stood on the pavement, waiting for a taxi.

“Got it in one.” Favell winked. “Sleeping partner in more than one sense. All fine to begin with, but women change, don’t you find? I meet this girl, cute as a button, pretty little blonde, sweet as pie. Common as they come, but good natured—or so I thought—and with a
very
nice little nest egg. Just been left several thou’ by some sugar daddy. Looking for investment opportunities was how she put it, eager to help me out—and then what happens? Hard as nails, old boy. Wants the ring on the finger. Starts dictating terms. Well, I wasn’t having that.” His face clouded. “The hell with her—I’m well shot of her in any case.”

A taxi drew alongside and we climbed into it. I gave the driver directions; Favell slumped back in the seat beside me. His mood seemed to change again, and the man-to-man bravado deserted him. As we turned east, he stared out of the windows at the streets; dusk was falling.

I had numerous leads, but it seemed best to avoid pressing him before we reached the restaurant, so I kept silent. Favell surfaced from his brooding state once or twice to ask a few questions; he asked me about my “visits” to Kerrith, and whether I’d seen Manderley itself, and whether it “had fallen down yet,” but my brief answers scarcely seemed to penetrate. He seemed surprised to hear that Colonel Julyan was still alive.

“Thought he’d have kicked the bucket years ago. I cooked
his
goose good and proper,” he said, gazing at the passing cars. “Didn’t see why he should cover up for his friend and get off scot-free. Didn’t like his attitude, old boy. Bloody snob. So, I spread the word, I had the odd contact in Kerrith. I heard he’d resigned from the Bench—I knew my job was done then. Haven’t set foot in that part of the world since Rebecca’s inquest, of course. Couldn’t face it, frankly. Stayed in touch with a few people for a couple of years. Robert Lane, used to be a footman at Manderley—good sport, old Robert, liked a drink, liked redheads; have you come across him? But I lost touch, lost interest. Then there was the war—you know how it is, old boy.”

I did; more important, I believed him. I saw now what the Colonel
and Ellie had meant last night: I could not believe this man would have left that azalea garland at the boathouse; I was pretty certain he’d had nothing to do with the notebook, either. Favell, I judged, was motivated almost exclusively by self-interest: Where was the advantage to him in sending Colonel Julyan that anonymous offering? Nor could I see how Favell would have obtained it, in view of the information he’d given me. That left one other obvious candidate, the person who, as Ellie had told me, had been in possession of Rebecca’s appointments book after her death. I waited awhile, then raised the question of Mrs. Danvers.

Favell evinced little interest, and I had the impression his thoughts were elsewhere. “Danny? Haven’t laid eyes on her in…what? Eight years? Nine? Haven’t a clue where she is. Don’t care, to be honest with you. Rebecca could always handle her—but Danny’s a weird woman. Obsessional. Tightfisted, too. Never any help to me, only ever saw me because she wanted to talk about Rebecca all the time. Rebecca this. Rebecca bloody that. She never understood about Rebecca and me. I got sick of it in the end. I mean, why make the effort? Life’s too short. She was back in London last I heard. Could have died in the blitz. Could have died of old age. Could have died of bitterness—she was well on the way the last time I saw her. Look at that….”

We were approaching Piccadilly Circus by a side-street route; Favell was gesturing along a terrace of fine early-nineteenth-century houses, in the middle of which was a bomb site. It was boarded up, but you could see broken walls, sprouting weeds. A fireplace hung over air; the bricks still retained patches of plaster, and—extraordinarily, after all these years—thin obstinate strips of wallpaper.

“Why don’t they clear the place up? Why don’t they rebuild?” Favell glowered out of the window. “Six years—and you’d think the war ended yesterday. Look at it! There’s London for you, there’s England. You win a bloody war and, six years later, you can’t buy decent food, and you can’t get decent clothes, a bottle of scotch costs a fortune—and no one knows how to have fun any more. Look at it, like a bloody morgue. You see that place there, that bomb site? That used to be a restaurant. One of the best. French food. French wine. French waiters—I loved that place. La Pomme d’Or, it was called. It was the first London restaurant anyone ever took me to. I was
straight off the boat from Mombasa, and green as they come. Seventeen years old. Jack Devlin met me off the Southampton train and he brought me there, gave me anything I wanted—oysters, champagne, brandy; I was sick as a dog afterward. I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was: the white tablecloths, and the candles, and the silver glittering. That’s the first time I saw Rebecca. Sitting at that table. I can’t remember how old she was then—fourteen, maybe. She looked twelve, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She never said a word, not a single word, all evening. A black dress, I remember that. That’s it, a black dress, because she was in mourning for her mother. A black dress, and this white skin, and these huge dark eyes…. Christ. Tell that driver to get a move on, will you?”

The cab lurched forward across an intersection. Favell slumped back in his seat again. I tensed; I hardly dared speak in case he balked, or shied away from what he’d just told me. I waited until we were turning into Piccadilly Circus, with the Eros fountain ahead of us.

“Jack Devlin?” I said, watching him.

Favell gave me an irritable glance, as if I were being very slow. “Jack Devlin. My uncle. My mother named me after him—he was her favorite brother.”

I waited. I’d waited six months for this, so I felt I could wait a little more. We turned left. The restaurant was now in sight; the lights of Soho glittered, and Favell seemed to rouse himself. He gave me a sharp glance, then smiled.

“Oh, I
see
,” he said. “You mean you didn’t know? Jack Devlin was Rebecca’s father. At least, he was married to her mother at one time. So
maybe
he was her father—but it wouldn’t do to jump to conclusions, would it, old boy?”

No, indeed. We climbed out of the cab. I knew there was no danger of Favell’s wallet’s reappearing, so I paid off the driver.

S
EVENTEEN

I
HAD CHOSEN THE RESTAURANT WITH CARE
. I
COULDN’T
risk any of the places I used to frequent with Nicky and Julia, where I might be recognized; I wanted to avoid anywhere too noisy and fashionable, where Favell might be distracted. Chez Vincent, unchanged since I first went there before the war, seemed a good choice. It was a small, unpretentious place of the kind all too rare in London; it served excellent food, and had a good wine list. The tables, each plainly set with immaculate linen cloths, were divided from each other by high wooden banquettes, which created the perfect conditions for private conversations. On a Monday night, it was not crowded; we were shown to a quiet table; Favell’s first reaction, I could tell, was not favorable.

“Bit of a hole in the corner place, isn’t it, old boy?” he said. “Still, I hear the food’s good. Mind if I have an aperitif? Tell the boy I’ll have a
fine a l’eau
.”

I asked the waiter for this; Favell examined the menu. His brandy was brought swiftly; by the time he had ordered the most elaborate and expensive items on the list, and had lit another cigarette, he seemed to decide the place might suit him after all. Surfacing from his former preoccupied and gloomy state, he remarked that it wasn’t exactly the Savoy Grill, but sometimes these little places could be
surprisingly good. He turned his pale eyes toward me and gave me a long assessing stare.

“So where d’you want me to start, old boy?” he said. “Rebecca’s father? Her putative father? I can tell you a few stories about
him
. I think Jack Devlin had a few doubts about his paternity, to put it mildly. But he kept quiet about them. Didn’t want to hurt Rebecca, I expect. He adored her, you see. Never laid eyes on her till her mother died—but once he did…well, nothing was too good for her. She could wind him around her little finger.”

For the first time that evening, I felt a little uneasy. There was an odd, brooding quality to that stare of Favell’s. Perhaps he was now leading up to some suggestion of payment for information; if so, I’d deal with it when it came. Meanwhile, I’d already begun to see that Favell disliked interruptions, so I decided to let him tell this his way. I could always backtrack later. Favell took a deep swallow of brandy, and, with every sign of enjoyment, launched himself.

“Jack Devlin was quite a character—‘Black Jack’ Devlin, people called him. He was a buccaneer, always ready to chance his arm, a bit of a desperado. I take after him in that respect…I’ve always been a risk taker. Of course, he was luckier than I’ve been. He
really
had the luck of the Irish—and it made him a fortune. As for charm, Jack Devlin could charm the birds out of the trees. When I first met him, he was in his late thirties—and he was one of the handsomest men I’ve ever laid eyes on. Flamboyant. Wasn’t a gentleman, and didn’t pretend to be. Six feet tall, black hair, blue eyes. He was a one-off. Had a taste for the gee-gees, and what he didn’t know about horses wasn’t worth knowing.

“Jack Devlin could drink any man under the table,” he continued, lighting another cigarette. “He was a gambler—that’s how he got his nickname, apart from his looks—and it wasn’t too smart an idea to play cards with him, I can tell you. And if you were a woman—watch out. Not that they ever did, old boy. Jack was only too successful in
that
department. It wasn’t just his looks, he was polite to women, considerate. He was a hell-raiser, but there was this dreamy gentle side to him, and women liked that. And he never lost his brogue—he had this soft Cork accent, and when he told you a story you’d be spellbound. He could talk like an angel, Jack Devlin.”

I considered this Irishman, this Celtic charmer, this riverboat gam
bler with a taste for the gee-gees: I thought that, as the Colonel might have put it, a fistful of salt was in order—but then I hadn’t expected Favell to be the most accurate of witnesses. I tried steering Favell toward some
facts
, and, eased by the
fine a l’eau
, he began to give me some.

Jack Devlin, he said, was the youngest of a family of eight children, brought up in Cork. His father had built up a “nice little business.” Beginning with a small haberdashery store, he had ended up owning the largest and most fashionable ladies’ outfitters in the city, specializing in the import of the finest French silks and brocades. Both Devlin’s parents had considerable business acumen, were good Catholics, and deeply pious. Of the five children who survived into adulthood, three went into the family firm; the two youngest, the beauties of the family, struck out on their own. The daughter, Brigid, Favell’s mother, married up into the Anglo-Irish gentry, and the youngest child, Jack Devlin himself, left Ireland, made a disastrous marriage, and kicked over the traces.

Favell was clearly sensitive about this background, and, as I’d noticed before, unease made him belligerent. “So, the Devlin grandparents were in trade,” he said as the waiter brought our first courses: I was having fish, Favell a rich concoction involving cream, mushrooms, and pastry. “I don’t apologize for that—why should I? I don’t know about you, old boy, but I’ve no patience with all those old snobberies. People looking down their nose at you, just because your grandfather earned an honest wage. My father was like that. Max de Winter was like that. Bloody snobs, the pair of them. You’d think the war would have put paid to all that—but it hasn’t. Well, I’ve no time for it myself. I’ve got a soft spot for the underdog, always been a bit of a socialist in my own quiet way….”