Rebecca's Tale

by Sally Beauman

  “Elinor, they’re not correct. They couldn’t be more wrong. And I wish they’d stop. Can’t you make them stop? I’m fed up with it. We’re friends, that’s all. I don’t even want to get married. I’m perfectly happy staying single. What’s wrong with single, anyway? I’m used to it. It suits me.”

  “Of course it does, Ellie. We shall say no more about it. I shall make the situation known, have no fear. Still, I expect you’ll be looking forward to seeing Tom, and hearing his news from Brittany—Jocelyn and I certainly are. Did he tell you, dear—he showed us part of that notebook of Rebecca’s? Well, not the notebook itself, you understand, but he copied out the sections about her time at St. Winnow’s, and her comments on dear Mama and so on.”

  “I didn’t know that. You haven’t mentioned it, Elinor.”

  “I know—and there were reasons for that. We couldn’t decide quite what to make of it, my dear, to tell you the truth. Jocelyn was very upset—she doesn’t like to discuss it. In the Manderley days, we were both so fond of Rebecca, you see—and we’d never once suspected she had any connection with that strange girl who stayed with us—but then Jocelyn and I scarcely saw her, we’d forgotten all about her. I met her that one time when I took her to tea at The Pines, and Jocelyn was in a dream of love then, poor dear—writing all those letters, and her fiancé was killed, of course, the following year…. But the way Rebecca wrote, it was so hurtful and inaccurate, Ellie. That’s what I can’t understand.”

  “Inaccurate in what way, Elinor?”

  “Well, she says she was put in a ‘cold attic room,’” she cried, in a burst of indignation. “And that’s certainly not true. Mama wouldn’t have dreamed of doing such a thing. Put her up in the attics with the servants? What nonsense. She slept in the old nursery, Jocelyn’s almost certain, or in one of the guest bedrooms. And it wouldn’t have been cold. Mama would have made sure she had a fire there. She says she was forced to wear an old frock of Jocelyn’s that day she went to Manderley—when the truth was she arrived at St. Winnow’s with the shabbiest clothes, most of which she’d outgrown, and Mama took pity on her, and thought she’d like to wear something pretty…. At least, that’s what we think must have happened, though neither of us was there that day, obviously.”

  “Maybe she just confused the details, Elinor. She was under great strain when she was at St. Winnow’s. She was afraid her mother was dying—and she does mention how kind Evangeline was to her.”

  “And so I should think! Mama was the kindest woman imaginable. She went out of her way to make her welcome—obviously the situation was difficult, but she didn’t make it any easier, believe you me, dear! She was a very difficult child indeed, prickly and rude, with all these fanciful ideas, the strangest manners, and the most peculiar way of talking! She says we were ‘dying of anemia.’ We were very hurt by that. What can she possibly have meant, Ellie?”

  I knew exactly what she meant, but I couldn’t very well tell Elinor.

  “In short, Jocelyn and I are extremely glad that we read only that one section. We told Tom, that’s quite enough, we don’t wish to see any more! If she can be that misleading and unfair in just the course of a few pages, heaven only knows how inaccurate the rest of it is. Even Tom had doubts; he admitted it. He said he’d read her notebook very carefully, and it was filled with evasions and suggestions. Apparently there are several references to guns—is that true, Ellie?”

  “There are three or four at least, yes.”

  “Tom says she makes great play with the fact that she’d seen Maxim cleaning his service revolver shortly before her death—and, as Tom pointed out, that kind of detail is impossible to check, which is convenient for her! By placing it as she does, she plants the idea that Maxim might have been planning to kill her. And I can’t believe that. We’ve sometimes suspected he might have been involved in her death, but we always thought it must have been, well, a kind of crime passionnel, Ellie. What do you think, dear?”

  “I think it depends where Rebecca was killed, and how,” I replied carefully. “If she was killed at her boathouse, which seems likely, and if she was strangled, or attacked with a weapon that happened to be to hand, then it might be a crime passionnel. But if a gun was used, it would have had to be taken to the boathouse, which suggests premeditation.” I paused, frowning out toward the sea. I was hurt that Tom Galbraith had spelled out his doubts to the Briggs sisters in greater detail than he ever had to me.

  “We’ll never know, Elinor, in any case,” I continued, turning back to her. “If Rebecca’s body had been found quickly, then presumably the postmortem would have shown exactly how she died. As it is…”

  “Well, I don’t see how a gun could have been involved anyway,” said Elinor, on an argumentative note. “I may not know much about firearms, but I know a great deal about wounds. I was a nurse in the first war, remember. When I was sent to France, I nursed men with the most terrible injuries. I said to Tom, if she’s suggesting Maxim’s gun was the murder weapon, you want to look into it, my dear, because bullets smash bones, they leave traces. Tom must have been thinking along the same lines, because he’d consulted a pathologist in London on that very question—and he confirmed what I’d said: It would be very unusual for a bullet wound not to be identified at a postmortem, even allowing for decomposition. A bullet wound to the skull would be obvious, and even a chest wound would almost certainly show up—there’d be damage to the rib cage. If no bone damage was found, the man said, then almost the only way a fatal wound could have been inflicted was if the bullet hit soft tissue only, and passed straight through the body. If the gun was fired at the stomach, in other words.”

  “A stomach wound?” I stared at her. Elinor, who had not read all of Rebecca’s notebook, could not see the significance of that, but I could.

  “Exactly. Which, as Tom said to us, just goes to prove that the idea of Maxim’s gun being the murder weapon is extremely unlikely, whatever Rebecca may hint. Maxim fought in the war. He’d been used to guns since childhood. He’d have known that if you want to kill someone quickly and effectively, you aim at one of two areas. The heart or the head. You don’t fire at the stomach, which causes a slow, agonizing, bloody death. Tom feels that detail virtually proves Maxim’s innocence. And I must say, I’m coming around to his point of view.”

  “That’s the most jesuitical argument I’ve ever heard,” I said hotly, though I was angrier with Tom Galbraith, who knew the details of these events, than I was with Elinor, who didn’t. I had a sudden vision of Rebecca, lying bleeding on the floor of the boathouse. Had she died quickly? Had she been dead when she was taken out to her boat and Je Reviens was scuttled? “Elinor,” I said, “what’s happened to you? We’re talking about someone who was almost certainly murdered. You were always such a staunch defender of Rebecca.”

  “I know. But that was before I knew all this. It was before I read all those unkind remarks about Mama and St. Winnow’s. Quite apart from the inaccuracies, I didn’t like her tone. All those comments about dogs, and kennels, and red meat. I found it lacking in all taste, Ellie, to be frank with you. Strident and exaggerated—altogether unwomanly.” She paused, having become quite pink. “What does Arthur feel? I shouldn’t like to think of his being as upset by all this as we are.”

  “He’s not upset—he’s finished reading the notebook now. If anything, he seems calmer than he was. And Rebecca writes very kindly of him.”

  “Well, I’m glad she writes kindly of someone!” Elinor said with a sniff. I think she sensed my hostility and uneasiness, for she changed the subject. And it was then that she gave me information that would prove crucial, though I didn’t realize that immediately.

  “Ah, well, let it rest,” she went on. “And speaking of letting things rest, Ellie, have you heard the latest tales in Kerrith? We have a new ghost, my dear! James Tabb’s little grandson saw her at the Manderley graveyard just the other evening.”

  “A new ghost? No, I hadn’t heard that. I was there not so lo
ng ago, Tom and I were there, in fact, and we didn’t see any ghost.”

  I hadn’t been paying close attention; ghost stories in Kerrith are two a penny, and besides, I was still considering the significance of our earlier conversation. I was thinking about fatal wounds, and the images in my mind now were dark and disturbing ones. I was angry with Elinor, too, and had been about to leave; now I hesitated, thinking of that heap of shells on a dead girl’s grave.

  “The poor little boy imagined it, obviously, but he was very frightened indeed. He said this strange woman rose up from behind the gravestones, as he was passing by in the lane, and she beckoned to him. He ran home to his mother as fast as his legs would carry him. And didn’t sleep a wink that night, apparently.”

  “A strange woman? Strange in what way?”

  Elinor smiled. “No one seems too clear on that point, my dear. I was imagining some splendid ghoul, but apparently she was gray. A gray dress, gray hair—not a very memorable ghost! But there’s a rash of sightings already. The grocer’s wife is claiming she saw her by the Manderley gates, and Jennifer Lane—you remember her, dear? Robert Lane’s daughter, a redhead, like her mother; she works at St. Winnow’s, she’s old Frith’s favorite nurse, I hear—well, she claims she saw the woman yesterday, standing in the gardens there, looking down at the river. One minute she was visible, the next she’d disappeared. Isn’t it absurd? Oh, must you go, my dear? Before you leave, I must find those jars of chutney Jocelyn and I put up. I’ve been meaning to give them to you—I know how fond your father is of our chutney.”

  I left Elinor as quickly as I could; I’d suddenly remembered that unidentified visitor who’d called at The Pines. I hurried through Kerrith and stopped halfway up the steep hill to our house. With one kaleidoscopic twist, the pieces of this puzzle that had most perplexed me began to re-form into a new pattern.

  I thought of Elinor’s description of the “ghost”—and of the places she had chosen for her visitations. I thought of the azalea wreath, of the heap of shells on Lucy Carminowe’s grave; I thought of the notebooks and Rebecca’s diamond ring, the butterfly brooch, her personal effects—and I reconsidered the question that had puzzled Tom, my father, and me from the very beginning: Who could have had access to these objects? Mrs. Danvers, possibly—but, if she was ruled out, who else was a candidate, who, in fact, was the only possible candidate?

  Rebecca’s description of the revenant she’d seen at Manderley came eddying into my mind: Such a secretive, bloodless mouse squeak of a ghost…Until I read that, it had never occurred to me that anyone could be haunted by the future, yet Rebecca had been. I had recognized that ghost as soon as I read her description; I recognized her again now. I turned, and began to run up the hill. I burst into the kitchen, where Rose was preparing lunch.

  “Rose,” I said, “that visitor who came here the other day. The one who didn’t leave her name—describe her again for me.”

  “Heavens, I don’t know—just an ordinary woman. Pleasant enough, though she seemed nervous. Gray haired. In her early forties…”

  “Was she carrying anything?”

  “No. Well, a handbag, obviously.”

  “You’re certain of that? Nothing else? Not a book—or papers?”

  “No, just the handbag, I’m sure. A sensible bag—quite like mine, actually.”

  I looked at Rose’s handbag, which was propped against the table. It was large; since Rose never goes anywhere without a book, and a book will easily fit in this bag, she finds it invaluable. That decided me. I was certain I now knew who the anonymous sender of Rebecca’s notebooks was—and I knew why she had come to The Pines, too. She had come in person to make her final delivery.

  I bolted my lunch; after that, I was press-ganged by Rose into helping prepare the food for the next day, when Tom Galbraith and his friend Nicholas Osmond were expected. I whisked egg whites and melted gelatin for a mousse; I diced cucumber for the iced soup that is one of Rose’s specialties, and all the time I longed to escape; I wanted to go in search of our mysterious visitor. At three, when my father had been settled for his afternoon rest, I was finally able to leave. I pushed Barker into the car, and drove straight to Manderley.

  I waited within sight of the shore and the house itself for nearly two hours, but no gray lady of a ghost manifested herself. Disappointed and frustrated, I drove home via Manderley church, which was deserted, and St. Winnow’s. I saw Frith, seated in his wheelchair, keeping up his eternal vigil on the veranda where Rebecca had sorted tapestry silks and watched the windings of the river.

  I questioned the little red-haired nurse, Robert Lane’s daughter. In the space of a few hours, the story as related by Elinor had already developed new and macabre details, but I learned nothing that was useful. I returned to The Pines, put the car away in the garage, and went into the house by the back door. Rose was sitting at the kitchen table, a book propped up in front of her; she was reading while she hulled strawberries. As I entered, she looked up: “She’s here again,” she said. “That woman visitor—she turned up about an hour ago. Your father let her in, and she’s with Arthur now, in his study.”

  “He didn’t ask you to join them? He didn’t introduce her?”

  “Conspicuously not,” Rose replied, and returned to her reading.

  I edged out into the garden, Barker following me. I hesitated between the palm and the monkey puzzle. The French windows into my father’s study were open. I could hear the low murmur of a woman’s voice; my father was silent. I removed Rebecca’s butterfly brooch, which I’d been wearing ever since my return from London, and put it in my pocket. I walked up the steps and into the book-lined room beyond, my eyes taking a moment to adjust to its shadows.

  “Ah, here’s my daughter now,” my father said. I could hear relief in his voice. He struggled to rise to his feet, and I moved quickly to his side, laying my hand on his arm to prevent him.

  I turned to look at his visitor. She was seated opposite my father, a middle-aged woman in an unflattering summer dress patterned with twining gray vines and miniature flowers. Her fine, straight gray hair was parted on the side, and cut in a schoolgirl bob—a hairstyle that had often been described to me, which presumably she had never altered. She was seated on the edge of her chair, back straight and hands clasped in the manner of some applicant at a job interview. She was looking at me with the forced and bright attention that shy people often adopt to conceal their social nervousness.

  When she’d first come to Manderley, I knew, she’d been very young, a twenty-one-year-old with the demeanor of a schoolgirl, according to the Kerrith gossips. Nearly two decades after her brief sojourn here, they still spoke of her gauche manners, of her relentless questions about Rebecca, of the fact that she’d been half her husband’s age, young enough to be his daughter.

  This woman was no longer the slip of a girl described by the tittle-tattlers of Kerrith. With age had come a thickening of the waistline made more noticeable by her matronly dress. Her pale face was lined, but she had fine eyes, sweet eyes. Lying on the table next to her was a pair of summer gloves, and under them, a familiar black shape: I knew that it had to be the last of Rebecca’s notebooks.

  “Let me introduce you, my dear,” my father said. I could hear a note of warning in his voice. “Mrs. de Winter, this is my daughter Ellie. Ellie, you’ve heard me speak of Maxim’s wife: This is Mrs. de Winter.”

  AS SOON AS WE SHOOK HANDS, I SENSED THAT MAXIM’S widow was anxious to escape. Whatever the nature of the conversation she’d been having with my father, she was clearly reluctant to continue it in my presence. I could see she was looking for an excuse to extricate herself, but she seemed to lack this elementary social skill; instead, in a shy flustered way, she snatched at the first remark that came into her head. It was not a fortunate one.

  “Ellie. How do you do?” she said in a bright tone. “Of course. Of course. We never met—but I remember your father spoke of you. You play golf, don’t you? That was it, golf. You loved t
he game. You were awfully good at it.”

  “That was my elder sister, Mrs. de Winter,” I replied, with a glance at my father. Lily had never been any good at golf, and had taken it up out of boredom, in the hope of meeting men. I couldn’t think why Mrs. de Winter would suppose Lily had been expert. She seemed unaware that Lily was dead. She frowned, shook her head as if puzzled, then brightened again.

  “Oh, yes—that’s right, I remember now. There were two daughters. And a son. I remember your talking about him, Colonel Julyan. He wrote poetry, didn’t he? I think you were rather concerned about that.”

  “He wrote poetry for a while when he was a boy,” I said quickly. Seeing the expression on my father’s face, I knew I had to stop her before her remarks caused further damage. “He was killed in the war, Mrs. de Winter.”

  There was a silence. Mrs. de Winter gave me a most peculiar look, as if she doubted the truth of what I’d just told her. Then she blushed. “I’m so sorry. If I’d known I would never have said that—please forgive me.” She turned back to my father with a pleading childlike expression. “I forget sometimes how long I’ve been away, Colonel Julyan. I behave as if nothing’s changed—when, of course, everything’s changed. And I’d always imagined your daughter on the golf course, and your son, writing his poems—I could see it so clearly!”