فصل 19

Chapter nineteen

Colonel Julyan

Maxim went into the little room and closed the door. I sat there, listening to the sound of Maxim’s voice. I was no longer afraid of Rebecca; I did not hate her any more. Maxim and I were going to fight this together. Rebecca had not won, she had lost.

‘That was Colonel Julyan,’ said Maxim, as he came back into the room. He is the local magistrate. He has to be there when they get the boat up tomorrow. He asked me if I had made a mistake about the other body.’

The telephone began to ring again. Maxim answered it quickly and came back into the library.

‘It’s begun,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ asked.

‘That was a reporter. The whole thing will be in the papers tomorrow. There’s nothing we can do.’

After dinner, we went back into the library as usual. I sat at Maxim’s feet, my head against his knees. In a strange way, we were completely happy.

Rain fell in the night. When I woke up in the morning, Maxim had already gone out. I went down to breakfast as usual. There were a lot of letters thanking us for the Ball. How far away that seemed! I felt calmer, much older now. I took the letters into the morning-room. To my surprise, the room was dusty and untidy. The windows were tightly closed and some of the flowers were dead. I rang the bell for a maid and when she came, I spoke to her angrily. I wondered why I had been frightened of the servants before.

The menu for the day lay on the desk. It was the same food as the day before. I crossed everything out and rang for Robert.

‘Tell Mrs Danvers to order something different,’ I told him. Then I went out into the garden and cut some roses. Very soon Maxim will be back, I thought. I must be calm and quiet. I took the roses back into the morning-room. It was clean and tidy now.

As I began to arrange the flowers, there was a knock at the door.

It was Mrs Danvers, holding the menu in her hand. She looked pale and tired.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘I’m not used to having messages sent by Robert. When Mrs de Winter wanted any change in the menu, she spoke to me herself.’

‘I am Mrs de Winter now, Mrs Danvers,’ I said. ‘And I shall do things in my own way.’

Mrs Danvers stared at me.

‘Is it true,’ she asked slowly, ‘that Mrs de Winter’s boat has been found and that there was a body in the cabin?’

‘I am afraid I don’t know anything about that,’ I said.

‘Don’t you?’ Mrs Danvers said. She stood looking at me. I turned away.

‘I will give orders about the lunch,’ she said. She waited, but I did not say anything. She went out of the room.

Mrs Danvers did not frighten me any more. She was my enemy and I did not care. But if she learnt the truth about Rebecca’s death, she would become Maxim’s enemy too. I suddenly felt sick and ill. I went out on to the terrace and began to walk up and down.

At half past eleven, Maxim phoned me from Frank’s office. He told me he was bringing Colonel Julyan and Frank back for lunch.

The time dragged by. At five to one, I heard the sound of a car in the drive. Maxim came into the hall with Frank and Colonel Julyan.

Colonel Julyan, the magistrate, was a middle-aged man with a kind face and grey hair.

‘This is most unpleasant for you and your husband,’ Colonel Julyan said to me. ‘I feel very sorry for both of you.’

Maxim and Frank went on into the dining-room and Colonel Julyan continued to speak to me quietly.

‘We found a body in the boat this morning. It is the body of the late Mrs de Winter. As you know, Mr de Winter identified the other body found in the sea as his wife. That makes things rather difficult for us now.’

The Colonel stopped suddenly as Maxim came back into the hall.

‘Lunch is ready; shall we go in?’ he said.

I did not look at Maxim during lunch. We talked about the weather and Colonel Julyan asked me about my life in France. Frith and Robert were in the room and no one wanted to talk about the boat. At last Frith served coffee and the servants left us.

‘I wish an inquest wasn’t necessary,’ Colonel Julyan said, ‘but I’m afraid it is. I don’t think it will take very long. De Winter will have to say that the body in the boat was the late Mrs de Winter. Then the boat-builder will say that the boat was in good order when he last saw it. This must be done.’

‘That’s quite all right,’ Maxim said. ‘We understand.’

‘I suppose Mrs de Winter had to go down into the cabin for something. Then the door shut and, somehow, she was trapped there. Don’t you think so, Crawley?’ the Colonel asked Frank.

‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Frank. I had a sudden feeling that Frank knew the truth.

‘The inquest will be on Tuesday afternoon,’ Colonel Julyan told us. ‘We’ll keep it as short as possible, but I’m afraid the reporters will be there.’

There was another silence.

‘Shall we go into the garden?’ I said.

We all stood on the terrace for a moment and then Colonel Julyan looked at his watch.

‘Thank you for the lunch,’ he said to me. ‘I’m afraid I must leave now. Would you like a lift, Crawley?’

Maxim walked with them to the car. When they had gone, he came back to me on the terrace.

‘It’s going to be all right,’ Maxim said. ‘There won’t be any trouble at the inquest. There is nothing to show what I did. Colonel Julyan thinks she was trapped in the cabin and the jury will think that too.’

I said nothing.

‘It’s you I’m sorry for,’ Maxim told me sadly. ‘I don’t care about anything else. I’m glad that I killed Rebecca. But I can’t forget what this has done to you. You have lost that young, sweet look. And it will never come back. In twenty-four hours, you have grown so much older.’

Frith brought in the newspapers at breakfast the following day. The story was in all of them. There was a picture of Manderley and an awful one of Maxim. All the papers said that Rebecca’s body had been found after the Fancy Dress Ball. They said how everyone had loved Rebecca. They all said that Maxim had married his young, second wife within a year of Rebecca’s death. It all made a good story. Maxim’s face went whiter and whiter.

I wondered what the papers would say if they knew the truth. That terrible word - murder - would be on every front page.

Frank was a great help to us. We had no more phone calls from reporters and no visitors. It was just a question of waiting - of waiting until Tuesday.

Maxim and I stayed quietly in the house or in the gardens. We did not walk in the woods or go down to the sea. The weather was very hot and the air was heavy. There were clouds, but the rain did not fall.