Mrs De Winter

by Susan Hill

  It was as the very last people were leaving that I saw the car come too fast, crazily down the drive, headlights glaring at us, so that the others had to swerve and brake to avoid a collision. Maxim started forward, but by then, they had driven away.

  I knew who it was even before I saw his face, before he got out of the awful, battered, foreign-looking car. So it was to be this then; I did not yet understand quite how, I simply saw that she – or the two of them together, had arranged it this way.

  ‘Bloody breakdown on the way,’ Jack Favell said, standing swaying slightly in front of us, ‘missed your party, blast you, Max, the whole idea was to queer your pitch at the party, plenty of people here, you see, plenty of witnesses. Bloody breakdown. Never mind, I’ve got the two of you, you’re the most important, aren’t you?’

  Maxim was a foot away from me. I reached out and touched his arm, but I could not look at him and he did not turn to me.

  From the house, I heard the sound of Dora’s voice, then the glasses being loaded on to a tray.

  ‘Get out of here,’ Maxim said. He had stepped forwards.

  Favell looked bloated and dirty, in the lights from the house, his eyes went from Maxim to me and back, but he stood his ground, and began to reach in his pockets for cigarettes.

  ‘You are not wanted here, we have nothing to say to one another. You are unwelcome. Get out.’

  ‘Oh no. No, I’m going to come in, Max, into your nice home, unless you want a scene in the drive that will bring out all the servants. Do you have servants? Run to those? I bet you do. You’ve feathered your nest all right, we always knew you would. I need a drink.’

  I heard footsteps along the side of the house, and when I glanced round, saw Dora hesitating, uncertain whether to speak to me. ‘It’s all right,’ I said to Maxim. ‘I’ll see to it. You’d better go in.’

  Somehow or other, I dealt with things in the kitchen, spoke to them in what seemed a surprisingly normal voice. They were doing the last of the clearing up, in the garden Ned was stacking the tables, Dora and Gwen were washing glasses. Dora glanced at me once or twice. They were subdued, not singing and joking as I knew they had been. It must show on my face then.

  ‘Leave it, Dora – do the rest in the morning.’

  ‘I’ll get things straight if it’s all the same to you, Mrs de Winter. I like to see it clear.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘I’ve left some soup and a plate of cold meats and there’s potatoes in the oven, and fruit. Ned wants to get the chairs in, I know, they say the weather will break tonight.’

  ‘Yes. Someone told me.’

  ‘You go and sit down – it’s taken it out of you, I can see that.’

  No, I thought. Oh no. It isn’t that. The party was happiness, the party didn’t make me tired. I loved the party. ‘Thank you, Dora. You’ve been such a help – you’ve all been a wonderful help.’ I found that when I said it, I was close to tears.

  Then I heard raised voices. Maxim’s. Favell’s. Dora glanced at me.

  ‘Thank you, Dora,’ I said. ‘I’d better go and see if Maxim needs me.’

  ‘Goodnight then, Mrs de Winter, we’ll slip out when we’re done and I’ll be here first thing in the morning.’

  I closed the kitchen door and the door from the hall into the passage. I didn’t want them to hear.

  They were standing in the drawing room. The windows were wide open on to the garden and I went across and closed them. A breeze had got up, and was blowing the curtains inwards.

  Maxim had given Favell a tumbler of whisky but he had nothing himself.

  ‘Maxim –’

  ‘She’ll tell you. Ask her, she won’t lie to you. Not a liar, are you?’ Favell leered at me. He looked worse than when I had seen him in the hotel, his collar was frayed and filthy, his hair greasy, flattened on to his head. The hand that held the whisky tumbler shook slightly. ‘I was telling Max about our nice tea in London.’

  Maxim did not look at me.

  ‘Why have you come here?’ I said. ‘I told you – we don’t have anything to say to you now – there is no reason why we should meet. I heard Maxim tell you to go. Please drink your whisky and do as he asks, please.’

  ‘He told me to get out the last time. I remember that. I bet you do too.’

  I did not answer. Neither of us did – we stood opposite Favell and yet we were not together, there were continents between us. I think Favell knew that.

  ‘I’ve come with these.’ I saw now that he had a thick envelope in his other hand. He waved it, flicked it insolently into my face. ‘Evidence.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean? What evidence? What about?’

  ‘Don’t give him a lead,’ Maxim said curtly. ‘Don’t ask him. That’s what he wants. He’s drunk and deranged.’

  Favell laughed, opening his mouth wide and showing broken, decayed teeth, a yellow furred tongue. It was the most unpleasant laugh I think I have ever heard, if I listen, I can hear it now. ‘Danny told me about the party. House warming, meet the neighbours. Bloody breakdown. Not a patch on old Manderley here, come down a bit in the world, haven’t you? But nice enough, nice enough. You couldn’t keep up a bloody palace like that now. Anyway, you needed Rebecca for that and she isn’t here, is she, or there; we all know where she is.’

  He flapped the envelope again. ‘I haven’t been idle. Nor has Danny, though she’s gone a bit –’ he screwed a forefinger to his head and laughed again. ‘Gone over the edge, I’d say. Can’t blame her, can you? It’s all she lived for – Rebecca. She never cared that much for anyone or anything in her life – except Manderley, and that was because of her, that was the only reason. Nothing to do with you, Max. She knows the truth. We all do. Plenty of us did. Well, of course we did, and you know we know it. But I’ve had to delve and burrow and ask questions, and get evidence very, very patiently these last few years. The war got in the way. But I knew I’d get there and I did and here I am.’

  ‘Maxim –’

  ‘He is bluffing and lying, he is drunk and crazy.’ Maxim spoke very quietly, very calmly. ‘He’s done all this before. You remember it perfectly well.’

  ‘You killed her.’

  ‘When he finishes his drink he will leave.’

  ‘You shot her, and I’m bloody going to see you hang for it. I’ve got evidence.’

  He flapped the envelope again. ‘You don’t know what I’ve got here.’

  ‘Maxim, take it from him, you don’t know what he might have, you –’

  ‘I have no intention of touching it or him.’

  ‘We’ve worked bloody hard at this, Danny and I. She’s on my side, you know.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘I’ll have some more of this.’

  Maxim took two paces forward, and held out his hand. Favell gave him the tumbler, leering again. I wondered if Maxim was going to hit him, as he had the last time – I remembered the sickening sound of his fist cracking against Jack Favell’s jaw. But he simply put the tumbler down on the tray and turned back. ‘Get out, Favell. Get out now and don’t dare to come back. If you do not go, I shall call the police and they will no doubt arrest you for being drunk in charge of a car. I suggest you park up somewhere for a few hours and sleep it off, or you’ll kill someone.’

  There was a single moment when everything was held still like a photograph. It was silent, too, except for a slight rattle of the windows in the rising wind.

  I thought that Favell might laugh, or hit Maxim, or take some dreadful paper that told the truth out of the envelope, or even, as I saw his swerving, wild, bloodshot eyes look in my direction, make a lurch for me. I did not know, I felt sick and faint, but I would not faint, that was all I was sure of, I was never allowed that way out.

  The photograph stayed, and we were frozen within it.

  Then, without a word, as if he had collapsed somehow within, Favell swayed, turned and walked out of the drawing room. I expected threats, sneers, more ravings about evidence, but there
were none.

  I realise now that he knew, even in his muddled, blundering, crude state, knew quite surely that he had done the harm he had come here to do, caused the damage, set the final careering downhill cart in motion. He and Mrs Danvers – they were together, though only Favell was here now. They had planned it, it had all been started long ago. This was only the end. It had been easy, too.

  We make our own destiny.

  No one said anything else. Maxim went to the door. I stayed, I waited in the drawing room. There was nothing I could do.

  I heard the starter grind. Grate. Go dead. Grind again, and then the wheels, the gravel, the slam of the gears. I hoped he would do what Maxim had said and park somewhere, to sleep. What happened to him did not matter but he must not harm anyone else. Anyone innocent. He had done enough harm to us.

  I sat down suddenly in the chair beside the empty grate. I was shivering, it was cold in the room. The curtains shifted slightly in the wind that came through the gaps around the doors. The end of summer, I thought. There ought to be a fire. I could have brought in paper and sticks, there were a few dry logs in the shed, but I was too tired. I just went on sitting, leaning on my knees, staring into the black hole of the hearth.

  I was frightened, I remember that, and now I realised that I had been frightened for a long time. I was weary of it, weary of everything. It seemed so long since I had had any rest that was without anxiety, untroubled by the whispering voices and the shadows.

  And then Maxim came back. I heard the door close gently. I thought, perhaps he will kill me, too, and it will be the best thing, what I deserve, perhaps that is the way out.

  I looked up at him then. He was very still, and the expression on his face was infinitely tired, infinitely tender, infinitely sad. I loved him in that moment in a way I think I had never done, not in the early, youthful days when love had made me hold my breath, nor in the desperate way when, during the last, worst days at Manderley, we had clung to one another in terror and relief. This love was whole and entire of itself, untainted, uncompromising, it was not a feeling, it was a state of being. I loved him absolutely and transcendentally, without dependence or even need.

  But I did not speak or make any gesture towards him, I only looked, and loved, and then looked away.

  He said, ‘When did they begin?’

  ‘They?’

  ‘The secrets.’

  I stumbled to find words and could not.

  ‘With this?’

  I saw that he had taken something from his pocket and was holding it out, to me.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. I’m not sure. Yes.’

  The card was pale but it seemed to be burning in his hand.

  ‘Where did it come from?’

  ‘It was on a wreath. She sent it. She didn’t say that she had, but I know. It was beautiful, perfect white flowers on dark green leaves, it was lying on the path beside Beatrice’s grave when I went there early in the morning.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I didn’t. I – I wanted to go to be there by myself quietly and I found it. She meant me to find it; or you. Either of us would have done.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I didn’t want you to be hurt, Maxim, you must believe that.’

  ‘Hiding it – secrets – they are much more hurtful, when they are found out.’

  ‘You might not have found out. I didn’t mean you to.’

  ‘You dropped it in the wardrobe,’ he said. He went to the tray and poured himself whisky, offering the bottle to me, but I shook my head.

  ‘All that time,’ he said quietly, ‘all those months.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I thought she was dead.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Favell?’

  ‘I suppose so. Yes.’

  ‘Was it true that you met him in London?’

  ‘By chance. Maxim, you don’t think I would have gone deliberately to see him.’

  ‘I don’t know. He might have been trying to get something out of you. Money – that’s his line.’

  ‘He did. But that was afterwards.’

  ‘I wondered, you see. You never go to London. You hate London.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Going to tea – in – in a hotel. It was so hot. He was – I think he is insane.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He was in a telephone kiosk with a suitcase. I don’t think he was making a call – he – he was raving down the receiver, but I don’t think anyone was there. And I went past and he saw me and followed me. And I had to ring a shop – I’d left a parcel behind and – I suppose he overheard me giving this address.’

  ‘But you never go to London. Why in heaven’s name did you suddenly decide to go there? It isn’t the way you behave.’

  ‘I went to see a doctor,’ I said miserably. And I heard the words and what they must mean to him, what they would remind him of and I could not look at him, only said, ‘No – not – there is nothing wrong. There never was – it –’

  ‘What doctor?’

  ‘I so wanted to have a child. When we came here it was all I wanted – I needed to find out –’

  ‘And did you?’ I scarcely heard him.

  ‘Yes – oh, yes – he said – we would – we could – he saw no reason why we would not.’

  ‘And you could not even tell me that?’

  ‘No – yes – Maxim, I was going to, of course I was – as soon as I got home. I was practising what I would say – but then I met him – Favell.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I couldn’t. It seemed to – spoil everything, and – I couldn’t talk to you.’

  ‘When did she come here?’

  ‘After that. A few weeks ago.’

  ‘A few weeks.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t want you to worry about what they might do.’

  ‘What could they do? She’s mad – they are both mad. Obsessed – crazy – jealous. Two sad, insane people. What possible harm can they do to us? Either of them?’

  ‘There are things I can’t tell you.’

  ‘More secrets.’

  ‘No, I won’t hurt you.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘She is evil, she hates you – us – she wants to hurt us. Both of us. It’s twisted and warped and mad, yes – but she means it. They use each other – he wants – oh, I don’t know – money, I suppose, or revenge of a different kind.’

  ‘Justice,’ Maxim said.

  I looked up in alarm. He had spoken so calmly. ‘What do you mean?’ I heard my own voice but it was not mine. I stared at him.

  ‘I thought the one certain thing,’ Maxim said now, ‘through everything that happened and all the years since – the one certain thing was that we were together, and that there were no secrets – nothing – nothing except love and trust between us. No deception, no anxiety, no fear – and so it was for me. I carried the knowledge that I was guilty of murder and had been reprieved – but you knew that.’

  ‘It didn’t matter – it has never mattered.’

  ‘Hasn’t it?’

  I could not reply. I owed him the truth now, I thought, he had had so little of it lately. I remembered the voice whispering. That man is a murderer, that man shot his wife. He killed Rebecca. I looked at his hands now and loved them.

  ‘It is all my fault,’ I said, ‘for wanting to come back. Beware of wanting anything too much, you may get it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But it’s all right.’ I stood up and went to stand in front of him. ‘Favell has gone – she has gone – they can’t hurt us. You said so. Maxim, it’s all right. It means nothing. They can do us no harm.’

  ‘They have.’

  ‘It won’t matter.’

  ‘Is there anything else?’

  ‘Else?’

  ‘Any other secrets?’

  I
thought of the newspaper cuttings and the photographs in the brown envelopes upstairs in my writing case. ‘No,’ I said. ‘No – no other secrets.’

  He looked into my face. ‘Why?’ he asked then. ‘Why? In God’s name, why?’

  I could not answer.

  ‘We should never have come back. You are right, of course, as we should not have gone back to Manderley. And yet I knew that we would – we had to. There is no point in running away. They want – justice.’

  ‘Revenge – wicked, pointless, cruel revenge. They are mad.’

  ‘Yes, but it will still be justice.’

  ‘Will be?’

  ‘If I say nothing – do nothing – if we try to stay here, it will be like this forever. We may never get away. You will not trust me. You will go on being afraid of them and of me.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of you.’

  ‘No?’

  I looked away.

  ‘Thank you for that,’ Maxim said.

  ‘I love you,’ I said. ‘I love you. I love you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Maxim, it will be all right, please, please.’ I took his hands then and held them, lifted them to my face. I saw him look at me, so full of gentleness and regret and pity and love.

  ‘Please. They won’t win, they can’t – you must not let them win.’

  ‘No,’ he said gently, ‘no, not them, they are incidental. It is her.’

  I felt horribly still and cold, cold.

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I must tell the truth.’

  ‘No.’

  He did not answer, only let me hold his hands to my face.

  The wind whipped suddenly hard against the window, rattling the panes, and I realised then that we had been hearing it for some time, getting stronger, whining in the dark empty chimney, blowing a thin draught at us under the door.

  ‘I’m tired,’ Maxim said. ‘I’m so tired.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You go up to bed. You were already worn out without all this.’

  ‘Was I?’

  ‘After the party.’

  The party. I had forgotten. I wanted to smile. The party – it was a thousand years ago.

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Stay up a bit. There are some letters.’

  ‘Maxim, are you very angry?’