Rebecca's Tale (36 page)

I could feel a familiar melancholy creeping up on me, as stealthily as the mist from the sea. I listened to the murmur of the waves on the shore and the rain on the roof. Then, under and behind the wind, I thought I heard something else, first the sound of footsteps on the shingle, then the rattling noise made when the front gate is unlatched. I turned out the lamp, waited until my eyes grew accustomed to the dark again, then moved quietly to the porch outside. The lights of a ship moved on the horizon; the sea sighed and shifted on the shingle.

I peered out into the darkness; the rain was falling heavily now, and I could see little. The gate swung too and fro in the wind; possibly it was the wind that had unlatched it, though that had never happened before. I walked quietly down the path and refastened it. I looked toward the shore; something pale moved against the rocks, and fear tightened around my heart like a fist. The thought flashed through my mind—
she’s come back for her ring
.

Then I regained control. Telling myself it was a trick of the light, I returned to the cottage.

T
WENTY

April 19—Wednesday

I
CALLED
E
LLIE THIS MORNING BEFORE SHE LEFT WITH HER
father for the hospital and I left for the county library. I was looking forward to speaking to her, but our conversation was brief, with none of the ease of yesterday. Ellie sounded anxious, but insisted there was no cause for concern; if she sounded odd, she said, it was just that she was rushing to get her father ready, he was being difficult (he hates hospitals, apparently), and she had slept badly.

I had slept badly, too, pursued by Manderley dreams for most of the night. I had no inkling then of the revelations that were to come today; my mood remained despondent. The rain was still pouring down, the sky was overcast, and the wind from the west had strengthened overnight. The sea, so calm for the past week, had an angry swollen look, crashing and booming against the rocks where I had glimpsed, or imagined, that pale shape yesterday.

Jeremy Bodinnick, the archivist with whom I’ve been working these past six months, picked me up in his small car as he usually does. He lives in a cottage close to the Briggs sisters, has worked at the county records office for forty years, and is a rotund, kindly, con
firmed bachelor. Usually, he’s the most cheerful of men, but this morning, he, too, was melancholy.

“A sad day, Terence,” he said, as I settled myself in the passenger seat. “A very sad day. I shall miss working with you. The library won’t feel the same without you. All that work cataloging the de Winter estate papers, your help with those exhibitions…invaluable! If only the council could see their way to funding a permanent position—but of course, they won’t. They’re philistines, you know, every last man jack of them. Don’t understand the importance of local records, no interest in history, cut my budgets to the bone, I told them…”

This was a familiar recitative. For years, Mr. Bodinnick has been fighting a heroic campaign against the funding misers at the county council; he likes to dwell on his cunning ploys to outwit them, his frequent defeats, and occasional victories. Hiring me counted as a victory, I think (he certainly viewed it as such), though the salary for an assistant was forthcoming only because the gift of the de Winter estate papers had been made conditional on their being cataloged.

I was hired on a six-month contract to help with this cataloging, and to assist Mr. Bodinnick with the exhibitions he planned for the archive, of which there have been two so far, on the traditional local industries of tin mining and china-clay production. Both exhibitions were well researched and well arranged, but since the library is a well-kept secret, they attracted at most a score of visitors. Mr. Bodinnick immediately began planning a third spectacular, this time on the equally traditional and ancient local industries of wrecking and smuggling—and I think believed that by such stealthy means he might be able to prolong my employment indefinitely.

The penny-pinchers at the council saw through this ruse. My employment was extended by two weeks, then terminated—and it has hit Mr. Bodinnick hard to be thwarted. His grievances against the council kept him going the whole way to Lanyon, but, once we were in the library, he confessed his more immediate worries. How was I now going to manage financially? He took off his spectacles, and began polishing them hard, always a sign of acute anxiety. Looking at me kindly and shortsightedly, he admitted that someone had told him I was thinking of buying the cottage I was currently renting.

I wondered who this informant was. Marjorie Lane? The Briggs sisters? Colonel Julyan? The butcher, the baker, the chemist, the milk
man? I stared gloomily out of the window at the rain-swept streets. The suspects included every member of the Kerrith local history society, all their cousins, aunts, grandmothers, and acquaintances. In other words, all those residents in a ten-mile radius possessed of those useful accoutrements—long noses, binoculars, and clairvoyance.

Not only was I about to become a permanent resident, it seems, I was also thinking of “settling down,” a process that means only one thing in these parts. This prospect made Mr. Bodinnick even more anxious, since “settling down” involved responsibilities. He was sure I’d manage to provide for myself, but providing for “dependants” was a more serious matter, he said, working up a great shine on the spectacles. When I refused to be drawn he gave a sigh. I think he felt that he was painting too pessimistic a portrait of the married state, because he at once began singing its praises.

He himself had never “settled down,” he said, but of course the condition had much to recommend it. Polishing hard, he dwelt on the domestic joys he himself had never experienced, the slippers by the fire, the dinner in the oven, the constant calming presence of a soul-mate…When Mr. Bodinnick diverted to the illustrious history of the Julyan family, I saw my bride’s face clear. I tried to hint that Ellie and I were just friends, but of course he didn’t believe me. I said nothing more; I lacked the energy and the inclination to disillusion him.

In the end, I managed to assure him I’d survive financially, by reminding him of that useful “Aunt May” legacy. This isn’t a complete lie, and seemed to set his mind at rest. I was then spared further questions. Mr. Bodinnick had begun opening his mail, and amongst it was a letter from the Canadian solicitors acting on behalf of the second Mrs. de Winter. This successfully distracted him. Mr. Bodinnick was very pleased to receive it; he felt the letter was gracious: “Oh, dear me, yes. Very gracious. A charming gesture, Terence,” he said, and handed it across to me:

Dear sir:

We understand the cataloging of the de Winter estate papers is now complete. Our client, Mrs. de Winter, asks us to express her appreciation for this work, and trusts that these records will form a useful addition to your archive.

Yours faithfully,

The letter was signed by one of the partners in the Toronto firm that had handled this transaction from start to finish. The tone did not strike me as especially gracious. I filed it away with the other letters from these solicitors, all of which were similarly meager.

At the very beginning of this search, I had written to Mrs. de Winter via this firm of legal guard dogs, to ask for her assistance. After a month’s delay I had received a two-line note from them: Mrs. de Winter, they informed me crisply, had nothing to communicate on this matter. They would be obliged if I did not write again. This reply hadn’t surprised me. I suspected that Maxim’s second wife might well know the truth about Rebecca’s death, but, since her late husband was almost certainly involved in that death, I hadn’t expected her to help me willingly. Perhaps I should have written again, I thought as I replaced the file. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to do so. The realization that I wasn’t unscrupulous enough for this kind of work depressed me further.

I finished packing up my few belongings, and at Mr. Bodinnick’s request looked through some of the photographs he was assembling for his next exhibition. I listened to his tales about current smuggling activities, though I was preoccupied, and paid little attention until, warming to his theme, he confided that the most successful local smugglers at present were rumored to be that ex-Manderley footman, Robert Lane, and his wife, the former Nancy Manack, whose family had been active in the trade for generations.

Had I noticed the Manack fishing boat? he asked. I couldn’t miss it; it was painted scarlet and turquoise, and its skipper was one of Nancy’s five brothers. People said that Customs and Excise was currently making life very hard for the Manacks. There had been a series of raids, and it was now difficult for them to find the deserted coves and storage places they needed…. Mr. Bodinnick gave a sigh. I think he regretted this interference with a time-honored local industry.

It had occurred to me before that the boathouse at Manderley, even the ruins of the house itself, might have their uses in this regard—though those wishing to store cases of poisonous sherry or other contraband were unlikely to leave azalea garlands outside their improvised warehouses. I stored this information away for future reference, and before I left asked Mr. Bodinnick’s assistance on another
matter. Could he help me discover the name of the present residents of a house in Marine Parade, Plymouth?

Mr. Bodinnick loves problems of this kind, and he roused himself immediately. He started ferreting away among maps, gazetteers, and street directories. In the end, it took him just one telephone call to a colleague and old friend at the Plymouth archives to get an answer: The street no longer existed. Like much of the city, Marine Parade and the St. Agnes boarding house with it had been bombed into the ground by the Luftwaffe.

I
’
D BEEN EXPECTING A NEGATIVE ANSWER OF SOME KIND
. There had been, I suppose, an outside chance that Mrs. Danvers had retired to live in her parents’ former home, just as there had been an outside chance that she might have gone into hiding in Tite Street. My outside chances were getting me nowhere.

It was still raining hard. I walked through the market square at Lanyon to the bus stop, cursing yet again my decision to leave my car in Cambridge. I consulted the timetable, an excellent work of fiction, in my experience. In theory, there was a bus to Kerrith due in twenty minutes time. This could well mean that it had already left twenty minutes earlier. The bus stop was opposite the coroner’s court where the inquest into Rebecca’s death had been held. I stood there with the rain dripping down my neck thinking my way through the reports I’d read of that inquest, in particular the part played in them by the second Mrs. de Winter.

The proceedings had been straightforward until James Tabb had insisted on giving the evidence that Rebecca’s boat,
Je Reviens
, had been tampered with. It was shortly after that, when Maxim de Winter had been recalled to the stand, and the questioning was taking a difficult turn from his point of view, that his second wife had caused a well-timed diversion: She had fainted. It was the timing of that faint, so convenient for her husband, that made me think the second Mrs. de Winter might be complicit in her husband’s guilt. Had she been an accessory after the fact, or the shy innocent described to me by most Kerrith residents?

Given the cold response from those Canadian solicitors, I was as unlikely to discover the truth about her as I was to discover the truth
about Rebecca, I told myself. I stared along the street in the direction the bus might come; it was some while before I noticed that an elderly woman was waving to me. It proved to be Jocelyn Briggs, who had been driven into Lanyon by a friend to buy a hat, she said, and who—to judge from the number of parcels and bags she was carrying—had succumbed to a number of other temptations. “Oh, Mr. Gray,” she cried, “you’re getting soaked! Are you all right? You look dreadfully down in the mouth! What a miserable day! I was just going to have a cup of coffee; won’t you join me? Then we can give you a lift back to Kerrith.”

I was about to refuse—then I discovered that the person providing the lift was James Tabb. I accepted immediately. Jocelyn led me along the street to a tea shop famous in the area, called the Blue Kettle. I think I was the first man to set foot in it for several decades, and my arrival with Jocelyn Briggs on my arm caused a great buzz among the other women, all of a similar age to Jocelyn, who, seeing their interest, became very pink and fluttery.

The front room was full, so we were shown to a quiet and secluded place in an annex at the back. We were seated at a table with a lace cloth, by a window with lace curtains; the china had pink rosebuds on it; in the background there was the constant lulling hum of quiet gossipy conversations. We were brought scones and homemade biscuits by an ancient waitress with a white cap and a white starched frilly apron—and it was in this unlikely setting, this temple of femininity, where I felt deeply foreign, an alien, that Jocelyn Briggs gave me the information that changed everything.

I had never encountered either of the Briggs sisters alone before. I discovered that Jocelyn was much more inclined to talk when her sterner sister was not there to curb her. Of the two, she perhaps has the softer heart; I had always found her warm and sympathetic. Today, I noticed another quality in her, or perhaps responded to it because my spirits were low: She was motherly. With deft movements she poured out coffee, and plied me with scones and questions. Her gentle and faded blue eyes rested on my face. “Now tell me, my dear,” she said, “what’s worrying you? You look so sad and preoccupied; are you anxious about the Colonel, perhaps? Or dear Ellie? I’m sure dear Arthur will be fine—such willpower, you know. And Ellie tells us these tests are quite routine….”

She hesitated, and I felt she was less than convinced by that explanation. “So sad,” she went on, in her vague gentle way. “Ellie has been a pillar of strength. She is spirited—she was quite a tearaway at one time, you know—but she is selfless. And her father can make things very hard for her—I expect you’ve seen that. He worries about her future, of course, and so do we. What will happen when dear Arthur dies? We have to be realistic; it will happen sooner or later, as it does for us all….”