Rebecca's Tale (63 page)

She gave a frown. “She can’t have been at all normal, can she, to behave as she did, or write as she did? I can see now why she made Maxim so miserable; he was a man of such high principles—and she had no principles at all. She was callous and cynical, and so terribly
restless
. Maxim would have hated that. He liked to live in an orderly way. He liked peace and security and companionship. Rebecca would never have understood that, or cared. She was stuffed full of all these selfish romantic notions. I told you: She was
childish
. Infantile. I was
quite disappointed in her. She wasn’t
nearly
as interesting as I’d imagined her to be.

“Shall I tell you what I decided?” She looked at me in a solemn way. “I decided she was really rather pathetic, writing to some fantasy child, when all the time she was barren. That sounds unkind, but it’s true. She was barren in many ways, I think—barren of normal affections. Not warmhearted. Not womanly. Once I realized that, I felt so much better, so much stronger, Miss Julyan. I knew it was true, you see: Maxim could never have loved her.”

I’d been feeling uneasy even before Mrs. de Winter launched herself on this speech; now I was angry. I didn’t believe Rebecca was pathetic, callous, cynical, or unprincipled. As for Maxim’s being honorable, he had almost certainly perjured himself at the inquest into Rebecca’s death; he had almost certainly killed his wife and escaped justice. The sweet-faced woman sitting beside me must know the truth about these events, if anyone did; if so, in legal terms, she was an accessory after the fact. Her prime concern might be whether or not Maxim had ever loved Rebecca; it wasn’t mine.

“Mrs. de Winter,” I said quietly. “I wish I knew the truth. Did your husband kill Rebecca?”

“Oh, yes.” To my surprise, she replied without hesitation. “I can say this now, because Maxim is dead, and there can be no possible repercussions. In any case, I don’t regard it as murder, and I never have—it was suicide, and Maxim was merely the instrument. He went down to that boathouse cottage of hers, the night she returned from London. He thought she might have taken a man there, one of the lovers, her cousin, Favell, probably. He took his service revolver with him—the gun Rebecca writes about—because he wanted to frighten them. He’d decided, he wouldn’t tolerate Rebecca’s behavior any longer. She was
shameless
, he told me. He didn’t care what she did in London, but he wouldn’t have her bringing men to Manderley….”

She paused. “He found Rebecca alone—and she taunted him, taunted him in the most wicked hurtful way, Miss Julyan. She told him she was expecting another man’s child, and she intended to pass it off as his. She said her bastard child would inherit Manderley, that all the tenants would rejoice, they’d been waiting for an heir so long. In the end, Maxim lost control. He aimed the gun at her heart and shot her. She died instantly. Then he had to clean up all the blood—
there was blood everywhere, he told me. He had to fetch seawater, and clean up the floor of the boathouse. Then he took her body out in her boat, meaning to sink it in deep water, but something went wrong, I’m not sure what went wrong. Poor Maxim must have been in turmoil, the wind was getting up, he hadn’t sailed for some years. Anyway, he was losing control of the boat, so he opened the sea-cocks, and drove holes in the bottom boards, and climbed into the tender.

“
Je Reviens
keeled over, and went down just clear of the reef, by the sandbank. It was too close in to shore—if only Maxim could have reached deep water he’d have been safe. The boat would never have been found then, and Maxim and I would have stayed at Manderley. We’d be living there now. We’d have children, and a future. I often think of that future we didn’t have. I can see it so clearly. I wanted two boys and two girls. I’d be sitting in the drawing room at Manderley now, and I’d hear their voices, calling to Maxim in the garden….”

She swung around sharply, as if she had just heard a voice calling behind us. She bent her head and soundlessly began crying. After a while, she reached in her pocket for a handkerchief, and dried her eyes. To my astonishment, she then seemed to regain her composure; when she turned to look at me, her sweet tired face bore that same expression of earnest and resolute brightness. That expression shocked me as much as anything she’d told me.

“I explained all this to your father today,” she said. “So, no doubt he’d have told you when you went home anyway. But I prefer you to hear it from me directly—as I told Colonel Julyan, it’s very important to understand the
details
of what happened. Rebecca was lying to Maxim that night. She knew she wasn’t expecting a child. She knew she was dying. She deliberately provoked Maxim into killing her, she just
used
him, Miss Julyan. She would have died within a few months anyway, that doctor told us, so, in a way, Maxim’s act was a merciful one. He saved her from months of suffering and agony.”

“Yes, but he wasn’t aware of that, Mrs. de Winter.”

“Oh, I know.” She ignored my tone, and waved my objection aside. “But that’s irrelevent. No jury would ever have found Maxim guilty of murder, not if they’d known what Rebecca was like, and the misery she’d inflicted on him. As it was, it never came to trial, thank God. And for that, we have your father to thank, in part anyway. Oh, I
know he didn’t have any evidence against Maxim, I know there was no proof—but Maxim and I always believed your father guessed what he’d done. Your father was merciful, Miss Julyan, and that was the real reason I came to see him today. I wanted to tell him how grateful I was. Maxim and I were married for over fifteen years, you know—if your father had pressed matters we might never have had those years of happiness. I wanted him to know that before I leave England, and before he—”

“Before he dies, Mrs. de Winter?”

“Well, yes. Of course. He has been ill, and he’s not a young man. I didn’t want to keep him in ignorance. I wouldn’t have wanted that on my conscience.”

Her conscience seemed oddly accommodating to me, so I wasn’t sure why it should balk at that, but I let it pass. Rising to her feet, she stood looking toward Manderley, then, as if coming to a decision, turned back toward the gates. We began to walk slowly along the drive. Mrs. de Winter walked beside me with every appearance of serenity. Occasionally she would tilt her head on one side, as if she were hearing sounds inaudible to me, and sometimes she would look through the trees, and smile, as if someone she recognized were coming toward her. I think she was still watching that future of hers that never happened, and I think it was utterly real to her.

I said nothing. I was thinking of the implausibilities in the story she had told me; it was hearsay, in any case, her version of Maxim de Winter’s version of events—and to me there were many weaknesses in it, not least the question of the weapon. Why would a man used to guns and aware of their dangers, take a loaded revolver to the boathouse, if his sole purpose was to surprise Rebecca with a lover, and threaten them? Maxim de Winter might have claimed that he “aimed at the heart,” but where, exactly, had the wound been inflicted? Did someone shot through the heart, someone who had “died instantly,” bleed copiously? Bleeding stopped, I knew, once the heart ceased beating. And what exactly
had
Rebecca said to Maxim that night that caused him to lose control? That reference of Mrs. de Winter’s to the Manderley tenants had reminded me of Maxim’s paramount need for an heir; it had planted a new idea in my head. Two marriages without issue: Could Rebecca that night at the boathouse have accused her husband of some sexual inadequacy?

I knew there was no point in raising these issues with the woman next to me; it would have been cruel to do so. I could sense that Mrs. de Winter was less serene than she seemed, and less convinced of what she had told me than she appeared. Her control was tenuous. I noticed that she began to quicken her pace as we approached the gates; she passed through them without a backward look, and, once we were in the car again, she reverted to the question of the notebooks.

“I know when my husband found those notebooks, Miss Julyan,” she said, as we continued down the road, the estate walls and the woods to the left of us. “It was after the fire at Manderley, the last night we were ever here, the night before we left for Europe. Maxim wanted to go for a walk on his own to say his last farewells to the place—and I know he went down to the bay. He was away hours. When he came back, I saw the sand on his shoes, and I knew where he’d been. He was so silent and white-faced—I knew something was terribly wrong, but I told myself it was because we were leaving Manderley. I see now, he must have gone into that boathouse, and found Rebecca’s notebooks. All her belongings were there—it was untouched, that boathouse cottage, just as Manderley was. I never understood that; it was as if Rebecca had just gone out for an hour or so, and would return at any minute. You’d have thought Maxim would have had that boathouse cleared—Rebecca had been dead for over a year, after all.”

She risked a sidelong glance at me; her hands had begun to twist nervously in her lap again. “Why do you think he kept those notebooks, Miss Julyan? Oh,
why
did he keep them? And that eternity ring of hers—it was on her finger when they brought up her body—did you know that? They found that ring and her wedding ring. It was the rings they identified her by. Why did Maxim keep the eternity ring, and not the one he’d given her?”

I hesitated. I thought of Rebecca’s comment that, from the first moment Maxim had seen Jack Devlin’s eternity ring on her finger, his ambition had been to replace it with his own. Presumably Rebecca’s wedding ring had been interred with her, so Maxim’s ambition had been achieved in the end. It seemed kinder not to say this to his widow. “I can’t answer that,” I replied. “Your husband was the only person who could. No one else can say what it meant to him.”

“It wouldn’t have meant
anything
,” she said, with sudden force.
“None of it could have mattered to Maxim. I told you, he never loved her, he
hated
Rebecca. Once he found out what she was really like, he could scarcely bear to be anywhere near her after that. If you’d known Maxim, you’d understand—he was very protective to women. He expected a woman to be…well, all the obvious things. Gentle. Pure. Innocent.” She reddened.

“There are different kinds of purity, perhaps,” I said, as mildly as I could. “I find Rebecca pure, judging from her notebooks. She is what she is—and it’s unadulterated.”

“I can’t think what you mean,” she replied in an obstinate tone. “I don’t believe half of what she writes there, anyway. I told you, I’ve decided: She’s to be pitied if anything—she can’t be blamed for her upbringing. But she had no sense of
proportion
. She writes in such a silly exaggerated way…. Saying she gave Maxim the gift of tumult—I was so upset when I read that. But I see now how absurd it was. Maxim hated that kind of unrest. He liked peace and quiet and regular routines…. If you’d turn left here, Miss Julyan, the hotel’s just along on the right.”

I turned where she indicated, and began negotiating a high-banked narrow lane that led us down toward the water. I could see its blue glint ahead of us; the hotel Mrs. de Winter had selected was set up above the sea; it was a small, modest, traditional place, much favored by elderly visitors.

“I’m staying here under my maiden name,” she said, as we drew into the car park. “I prefer to be anonymous. Maxim and I always kept ourselves to ourselves. There’s really no point in getting to know people, is there, if you’re going to be moving on shortly? And besides, people are so inquisitive.”

She hesitated. “I miss my husband so much, Miss Julyan. I only ever had one ambition in my life: to make Maxim happy, and I know I did that. I know it in my heart. Maxim and I were rarely apart, you know, he became utterly dependent on me—but, of course, I don’t have him to talk to anymore. So sometimes I feel lonely. That’s why I like small hotels like this one.”

She turned to me, her face brightening. “It reminds me of all the lovely little places we stayed in France. Sometimes, in the evening, I sit here on the terrace, and I imagine Maxim’s beside me. I tell him little stories about the other guests, and he pretends to be bored, and
gives me gruff answers just the way he used to do—but I know he’s there with me in spirit, and he’s not bored at all, he’s just teasing me. He’s happy, terribly happy, just as we always were.”

As she had done earlier, she swung around suddenly, as if she had heard a sound inaudible to me. She stared out to sea. “Did you hear that?” she said in a nervous way. “I thought someone called to me.”

I told her I’d heard nothing, but she looked unconvinced. “I expect it was gulls,” she said quickly. “Yes, I expect that’s what it was. Some seabird. They can sound quite eerie, can’t they? Well, I must be going. I have a long journey tomorrow, and, when I’m back in Canada, I’ve resolved: I’m going to put all this behind me once and for all. I’m going to make a new start, go out more, make an effort to meet people. I may even get a job—I don’t need to work, of course, Maxim saw to that, but I’d like to be useful. I thought, something with a charity perhaps. They always need helpers, don’t they?”

That relentless brightness had returned to her face, but her eyes had a lost look, and I could hear the panic in her voice. I pitied her then, and I think she saw that, for she colored, fumbled for her bag and gloves, and opened the car door, ready to escape. She gave me a shy glance.

“This was so kind of you.” She clasped my hand. “It was good of you to listen to me as you did. I was glad to see your father again. I hope I did the right thing…. I hope I didn’t tire him out…. Goodness, it’s past seven. How time flies! I must go. Thank you again. Good-bye, Miss Julyan.”

I watched her walk up to her hotel, an ordinary unremarkable middle-aged woman. She nodded to some of the other guests, elderly couples returning from walks; on the terrace, I saw her pause, her gray dress merging with the pearl of the evening sky; she was looking toward the sea. I turned to follow the direction of her gaze; when I looked back, she had vanished.