Rebecca's Tale

by Sally Beauman

  “Perfectly understandable,” said my father in a tone that I knew meant the very opposite. He bent forward to fondle Barker, thus concealing his expression. “I don’t recall mentioning my children to you,” he added, in a gruff tone.

  “Oh, but you did!” Her color deepened. “It was the day you came to Manderley for lunch. We talked about the Far East, and your children.” She glanced at me. “It’s a dreadful habit of mine. I seize on a little fact someone tells me, and I go off into a dream, and before I know it, I’ve made up an entire life story. I even do it with complete strangers, sometimes. People in cafés, other guests at an hotel—I imagine their histories, and they’re probably all wrong, just silly fictions, but they feel so right at the time. Maxim used to tease me about it—”

  She came to an awkward abrupt halt, her hands twisting nervously in her lap. “What a dear sweet dog,” she went on, her tone so relentlessly bright I almost pitied her. “I miss having dogs. They’re such loyal companions, aren’t they? They never have moods, they never reproach you and they’re always glad to see you…. Goodness, is that the time? I really must leave. I’m returning to London tomorrow, then flying back to Canada, so I have to pack—and I’m afraid I’m a bit disorganized about packing. I mislay things. It used to infuriate Maxim….”

  She gave me a flustered sidelong glance, fumbled for her gloves and handbag, and rose to her feet. My father also rose; I could see his face was gray with strain and exhaustion. As Mrs. de Winter, in a flurry of nervousness, dropped her glove and bent to retrieve it, my father’s eyes met mine, and a silent message passed between us. “Mrs. de Winter came over here by bus,” he said in a firm way. “She’s staying at an hotel just along the coast—The Rose, Ellie, you know it. Ellie will be delighted to run you back, Mrs. de Winter.”

  As I moved toward the door Mrs. de Winter began on some polite protest, but I ignored that; I knew she’d have to consent to being driven by me, and to being alone with me—my father may have been ill, but, when necessary, his will remained formidable.

  ONCE WE WERE IN THE CAR, WITH THE WINDOWS DOWN, and the warm sweet evening air flooding in, we drove for some way in silence. I waited until we had left Kerrith behind before speaking. I was very aware that our route would take us past the Four Turnings entrance to Manderley.

  “Mrs. de Winter,” I said finally, as we crested the hill behind Kerrith, “I’ve read the notebooks of Rebecca that you sent to my father. I knew there must be a third. Have you left it with him?”

  “Yes. Yes, I have. Oh, I can imagine what you must think of me,” she replied, speaking with sudden rapidity. “Sending them anonymously like that—it seems so underhand, rather hateful, I realize that now. I did think of enclosing a letter, and then I couldn’t work out what to say. I wasn’t even sure if your father would remember me. People don’t. I’m afraid I always was a rather anonymous person—not like Rebecca!”

  She gave me a little sidelong glance, as if she expected me to demur; then frowned. “I didn’t want to keep the notebooks myself, you see, and Rebecca refers to your father as her only real friend, so I thought he would be pleased to receive them. Then I heard he’d had a stroke recently—someone was discussing his health in one of the Kerrith shops the other day—and I felt dreadfully guilty. I decided I must make amends. I don’t expect I have. All those stupid remarks about your brother. I’ve made things worse, probably.”

  I decided to accept this explanation, though I wasn’t at all sure I believed it. “I’m sure he understood—you weren’t to know,” I said, and accelerated; we were approaching the gates of Manderley. The “accident” in which Maxim had been killed occurred on this stretch of the road. I glanced at Mrs. de Winter; she was looking at the blue shadows of the woods, her face pale and set.

  “Are you in a great hurry, Miss Julyan?” she asked suddenly. “Would you mind if I walked in the woods for a short while? I shan’t come back here again, you see. I dream about this place so often. That’s how I’ve spent half my life, I think sometimes. Dreaming and daydreaming.”

  I stopped the car. I could hear the tears in her voice before I saw them in her eyes. Mrs. de Winter climbed out. She stood by the gates, her face averted, the breeze ruffling her straight gray hair. She was twisting her wedding ring—the only jewelry she was wearing—round and round on her finger.

  I waited for a few minutes; she had produced a key but seemed unwilling to open the gates. I went to help her. I was shocked by the desolation in her face as I reached her. She looked like a bewildered child—and the signs of age on her face made the childlike nature of her grief all the more poignant.

  “I must tell you about those notebooks,” she said, leaning against the gates, and looking through at the trees. “I meant to tell your father, but then we began talking of other things. Perhaps you would explain to him? I found them after Maxim died—that is, I found the metal deed box they were in. It was in a locked drawer in Maxim’s desk at the house we’d bought in England. Such a lovely house—as far from the sea as it’s possible to be in this country, and quite large—I hoped for children, you see….” She checked herself. “Did you know we moved back to England after the war, Miss Julyan?”

  “Yes, I did, Mrs. de Winter.”

  “I took that deed box with me to Canada,” she continued, as if I hadn’t spoken, her eyes fixed on the drive ahead of us. “I still hadn’t opened it—it was locked, and the key was lost. But I wanted to keep everything of Maxim’s, so I kept that, too, thinking the key would turn up eventually. Then one day, last year, I opened it. I had to break the lock with a screwdriver, and I cut my hand. I was missing Maxim so much—it comes in waves, you know, grief. Some days, I manage quite well, and other days…I wake up and I feel so dreadfully bereft.

  “I had no idea what I was going to find,” she continued. “I was sure it would be something that would remind me of my husband. Old photographs, records of his boyhood, perhaps. It never crossed my mind that I’d find anything connected with Rebecca. Maxim’s first marriage was deeply unhappy, you see—it came very close to destroying him. So the last thing I expected to find was any belongings of hers. It was a dreadful shock to me.”

  She pushed back the gate I’d unlocked for her, and walked through; I hesitated, then followed her. Ahead of us, the trees met in an arch creating a tunnel of shadow; I thought of my father’s dream, of that tiny coffin. Mrs. de Winter walked in silence along the drive, looking around her with a dazed expression. Coming to a fallen tree trunk, she sat down, and I went to sit beside her. We had reached the bend in the drive where my father always likes to pause, where the sea is audible in the distance. Mrs. de Winter appeared not to hear it. After a while, her pale tired face still averted, she began speaking again.

  “There were five things in the box,” she went on. “The three notebooks, a tiny diamond ring—far too small for any of my fingers—and a blue butterfly brooch. I didn’t understand the significance of the ring and the brooch, not until I’d read the second notebook. I’m afraid I read that notebook again and again. I could recite it by heart. I always wanted to know what Rebecca was really like, you see. Well, I know now.”

  “Mrs. de Winter, you don’t need to talk about this—not unless you want to. I can see this is painful for you.”

  “Oh, it was painful at first,” she said in an earnest way. “I was desperately upset to begin with. I couldn’t understand why Maxim would have kept her things. He hated to be reminded of Rebecca. So, why would he have kept them? I was bewildered and miserable. I was sleeping badly; I began to have hateful dreams about Rebecca, just as I did when I first came to Manderley. That’s when I decided to come back. I had to confront my past. That’s what Rebecca would have done, I decided. And if she could, I could. I didn’t want to be cowardly.”

  In a disingenuous way, still keeping her gaze fixed on the trees, she then told me about her visit to England. At first, she said, she’d been intent on finding out more about Rebecca—for all she knew then the e
ntire story Rebecca told could have been one long fiction. So she had visited libraries, found the McKendrick autobiography, and checked what details she could. But she began to realize: This was not curing her unhappiness, it was deepening it.

  She resolved to rid herself of the belongings of Rebecca’s that she’d been carrying around for weeks; she felt she couldn’t destroy them, so she decided to send them to appropriate recipients. The notebooks went to my father. The ring went to Jack Favell—who’d been easy to trace—because it was his uncle who’d brought it back from South Africa. The brooch went to Mrs. Danvers, who would remember Rebecca’s mother—but it had taken a long time to find her. She had seen her one day, she said, completely by accident, when she happened to be standing outside Rebecca’s flat in Tite Street, and Mrs. Danvers came out of the house. Though she was greatly aged, she had recognized her. “I found the address in one of Maxim’s old diaries. I would have known Mrs. Danvers anywhere,” she said. “I could never forget her. She made my life at Manderley a misery. I’m sure I’d have managed so much better if she hadn’t been there.”

  I thought this explanation concealed as much as it revealed and I wondered just how often Mrs. de Winter had revisited Tite Street, to stand outside Rebecca’s London apartment. I noted that the more obviously obsessional details of this search went unmentioned. Nothing was said of azalea wreaths…. Just as I thought that, as if she could read my mind, Mrs. de Winter raised that very subject. She had left a garland in remembrance of Rebecca at her boathouse cottage, she said, and later she’d left shells at the grave of the little girl Rebecca had seen. The reasons she gave for doing so surprised me.

  “I think they were alike in some ways, you see,” she said in a hesitant way, with a little glance at me. “Rebecca and Lucy Carminowe. Neither of them could grow, neither of them ever grew up. I pitied that child, and it was when I saw the similarities between them that I first began to sympathize with Rebecca. It’s very sad, to be as filled with certainty as she is, and to be so deluded—don’t you agree, Miss Julyan?”

  “Deluded, Mrs. de Winter?”

  “Oh, yes.” Her face brightened. “Rebecca sets such store by her willpower, she never stops boasting about it. But she couldn’t will Maxim to love her, could she? It was me Maxim loved, not Rebecca. She claims she made herself so memorable, but once Maxim and I left this place, he very rarely thought of her. I realized finally: That’s why Maxim kept those belongings of hers—he felt sorry for her in the end, just as I do. Her father’s ring, and her mother’s brooch: Rebecca was childish, that’s what I’ve decided. She may like to think she made herself tall, but she never really grew up, not emotionally. She even writes in a childish way, don’t you think?” She looked at me eagerly.

  “I wouldn’t say ‘childish,’” I replied. “She writes in an odd way, certainly.”

  “Oh, I think it’s very childish. It’s just like some silly fairy tale, with curses and ogres. I was surprised by that. I’d expected her to be sophisticated.”

  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 mi
sery 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?