1. My Real Rebecca by Araminta Hall
drive ... narrow and unkempt ... Nature ... stealthy, insidious ... woods... a menace ... crowded, dark and uncontrolled ... squat oaks and tortured elms that straggled ... gravel surface gone ... gnarled roots looked like skeleton claws ... hydrangeas... gone native now, rearing to monster height ... a fallen tree ... a muddied ditch... a labyrinth, some choked wilderness, ... unnatural growth of a vast shrub.
The passage makes clear how the inexperience of the second Mrs. de Winter allowed Mrs. Danvers to assume a position of mastery, and if not dictate, then at least overawe, her into doing things according to the housekeeper's predilections. This leads to the most serious faux pas later when it comes to the choice of fancy dress for the annual ball.
Geetha said in the Hitchcock film the killing is shown to be accidental.
Gopa reading her passage
In the passage Favell, Rebecca’s lover, accuses Maxim De Winter before the magistrate, Colonel Julyan, of murdering Rebecca . He concludes the accusation thus:
Saras
Ch 1 – Manderley nostalgia
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited.
No smoke came from the chimney, and the little lattice windows gaped forlorn. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me.
… (–cut to Geetha’s reading below and then back here–)
There was Manderley, our Manderley, secretive and silent as it had always been, the grey stone shining in the moonlight of my dream, the mullioned windows reflecting the green lawns and the terrace. Time could not wreck the perfect symmetry of those walls, nor the site itself, a jewel in the hollow of a hand.
The terrace sloped to the lawns, and the lawns stretched to the sea, and turning I could see the sheet of silver placid under the moon, like a lake undisturbed by wind or storm. No waves would come to ruffle this dream water, and no bulk of cloud, wind-driven from the west, obscure the clarity of this pale sky. I turned again to the house, and though it stood inviolate, untouched, as though we ourselves had left but yesterday, I saw that the garden had obeyed the jungle law, even as the woods had done. The rhododendrons stood fifty feet high, twisted and entwined with bracken, and they had entered into alien marriage with a host of nameless shrubs, poor, bastard things that clung about their roots as though conscious of their spurious origin. A lilac had mated with a copper beech, and to bind them yet more closely to one another the malevolent ivy, always an enemy to grace, had thrown her tendrils about the pair and made them prisoners. Ivy held prior place in this lost garden, the long strands crept across the lawns, and soon would encroach upon the house itself. There was another plant too, some half-breed from the woods, whose seed had been scattered long ago beneath the trees and then forgotten, and now, marching in unison with the ivy, thrust its ugly form like a giant rhubarb towards the soft grass where the daffodils had blown.
Nettles were everywhere, the vanguard of the army. They choked the terrace, they sprawled about the paths, they leant, vulgar and lanky, against the very windows of the house. They made indifferent sentinels, for in many places their ranks had been broken by the rhubarb plant, and they lay with crumpled heads and listless stems, making a pathway for the rabbits. I left the drive and went on to the terrace, for the nettles were no barrier to me, a dreamer. I walked enchanted, and nothing held me back.
Moonlight can play odd tricks upon the fancy, even upon a dreamer's fancy. As I stood there, hushed and still, I could swear that the house was not an empty shell but lived and breathed as it had lived before. Light came from the windows, the curtains blew softly in the night air, and there, in the library, the door would stand half open as we had left it, with my handkerchief on the table beside the bowl of autumn roses. … And Jasper, dear Jasper, with his soulful eyes and great, sagging jowl, would be stretched upon the floor, his tail a-thump when he heard his master's footsteps.
… The day would lie before us both, long no doubt, and uneventful, but fraught with a certain stillness, a dear tranquillity we had not known before. We would not talk of Manderley, I would not tell my dream. For Manderley was ours no longer. Manderley was no more. (657 words)
Geetha
Ch 1 – Return to a deserted Manderley, where the unchecked growth of plants and trees has choked the grounds.
The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done, but as I advanced I was aware that a change had come upon it; it was narrow and unkempt, not the drive that we had known. At first I was puzzled and did not understand, and it was only when I bent my head to avoid the low swinging branch of a tree that I realised what had happened. Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers. The woods, always a menace even in the past, had triumphed in the end. They crowded, dark and uncontrolled, to the borders of the drive. The beeches with white, naked limbs leant close to one another, their branches intermingled in a strange embrace, making a vault above my head like the archway of a church. And there were other trees as well, trees that I did not recognise, squat oaks and tortured elms that straggled cheek by jowl with the beeches, and had thrust themselves out of the quiet earth, along with monster shrubs and plants, none of which I remembered.
The drive was a ribbon now, a thread of its former self, with gravel surface gone, and choked with grass and moss. The trees had thrown out low branches, making an impediment to progress; the gnarled roots looked like skeleton claws. Scattered here and again amongst this jungle growth I would recognise shrubs that had been landmarks in our time, things of culture and grace, hydrangeas whose blue heads had been famous. No hand had checked their progress, and they had gone native now, rearing to monster height without a bloom, black and ugly as the nameless parasites that grew beside them.
On and on, now east now west, wound the poor thread that once had been our drive. Sometimes I thought it lost, but it appeared again, beneath a fallen tree perhaps, or struggling on the other side of a muddied ditch created by the winter rains. I had not thought the way so long. Surely the miles had multiplied, even as the trees had done, and this path led but to a labyrinth, some choked wilderness, and not to the house at all. I came upon it suddenly; the approach masked by the unnatural growth of a vast shrub that spread in all directions, and I stood, my heart thumping in my breast, the strange prick of tears behind my eyes.
Thommo
Chapter 3 – The unnamed heroine’s employer uses her as a bait to inveigle guests to converse with her
I wonder what my life would be today, if Mrs Van Hopper had not been a snob.
Funny to think that the course of my existence hung like a thread upon that quality of hers. Her curiosity was a disease, almost a mania. At first I had been shocked, wretchedly embarrassed; I would feel like a whipping boy who must bear his master's pains when I watched people laugh behind her back, leave a room hurriedly upon her entrance, or even vanish behind a Service door on the corridor upstairs. For many years now she had come to the Hotel Cote d'Azur, and, apart from bridge, her one pastime which was notorious by now in Monte Carlo, was to claim visitors of distinction as her friends had she but seen them once at the other end of the post-office. Somehow she would manage to introduce herself, and before her victim had scented danger she had proffered an invitation to her suite. Her method of attack was so downright and sudden that there was seldom opportunity to escape. At the Cote d'Azur she staked a claim upon a certain sofa in the lounge, midway between the reception hall and the passage to the restaurant, and she would have her coffee there after luncheon and dinner, and all who came and went must pass her by. Sometimes she would employ me as a bait to draw her prey, and, hating my errand, I would be sent across the lounge with a verbal message, the loan of a book or paper, the address of some shop or other, the sudden discovery of a mutual friend. It seemed as though notables must be fed to her, much as invalids are spooned their jelly; and though titles were preferred by her, any face once seen in a social paper served as well. Names scattered in a gossip column, authors, artists, actors, and their kind, even the mediocre ones, as long as she had learnt of them in print.
I can see her as though it were but yesterday, on that unforgettable afternoon – never mind how many years ago – when she sat at her favourite sofa in the lounge, debating her method of attack. I could tell by her abrupt manner, and the way she tapped her lorgnette against her teeth, that she was questing possibilities. I knew, too, when she had missed the sweet and rushed through dessert, that she had wished to finish luncheon before the new arrival and so instal herself where he must pass. Suddenly she turned to me, her small eyes alight.
'Go upstairs quickly and find that letter from my nephew. You remember, the one written on his honeymoon, with the snapshot. Bring it down to me right away.'
I saw then that her plans were formed, and the nephew was to be the means of introduction. Not for the first time I resented the part that I must play in her schemes. Like a juggler's assistant I produced the props, then silent and attentive I waited on my cue. This newcomer would not welcome intrusion, I felt certain of that. In the little I had learnt of him at luncheon, a smattering of hearsay garnered by her ten months ago from the daily papers and stored in her memory for future use, I could imagine, in spite of my youth and inexperience of the world, that he would resent this sudden bursting in upon his solitude. Why he should have chosen to come to the Cote d'Azur at Monte Carlo was not our concern, his problems were his own, and anyone but Mrs Van Hopper would have understood. Tact was a quality unknown to her, discretion too, and because gossip was the breath of life to her this stranger must be served for her dissection.
KumKum
Chapter 6 – Mrs Van Hopper congratulates the heroine on landing Mr De Winter as a husband
She was standing by the window, smoking a cigarette……...I noticed he doesn’t ask me to the wedding.”
She was standing by the window, smoking a cigarette, an odd, dumpy little figure I should not see again, her coat stretched tight over her large breasts, her ridiculous hat perched sideways on her head.
'Well,' she said, her voice dry and hard, not the voice she would have used to him. 'I suppose I've got to hand it to you for a double-time worker. Still waters certainly run deep in your case. How did you manage it?'
I did not know what to answer. I did not like her smile. 'It was a lucky thing for you I had the influenza,' she said. 'I realise now how you spent your days, and why you were so forgetful. Tennis lessons my eye. You might have told me, you know.'
'I'm sorry,' I said.
She looked at me curiously, she ran her eyes over my figure. 'And he tells me he wants to marry you in a few days. Lucky again for you that you haven't a family to ask questions. Well, it's nothing to do with me any more, I wash my hands of the whole affair. I rather wonder what his friends will think, but I suppose that's up to him. You realise he's years older than you?'
'He's only forty-two,' I said, 'and I'm old for my age.'
She laughed, she dropped cigarette ash on the floor. 'You certainly are,' she said. She went on looking at me in a way she had never done before. Appraising me, running her eyes over my points like a judge at a cattle show. There was something inquisitive about her eyes, something unpleasant.
'Tell me,' she said, intimate, a friend to a friend, 'have you been doing anything you shouldn't?'
She was like Blaize, the dressmaker, who had offered me that ten per cent.
'I don't know what you mean,' I said.
She laughed, she shrugged her shoulders. 'Oh, well... never mind. But I always said English girls were dark horses, for all their hockey-playing attitude. So I'm supposed to travel to Paris alone, and leave you here while your beau gets a marriage licence? I notice he doesn't ask me to the wedding.'
Arundhaty
Chapter 7 – Examining the west wing of the mansion, the heroine makes the acquaintance of Mrs Danvers who is in charge of the house
A black figure stood waiting for me at the head of the stairs, the hollow eyes watching me intently from the white skull's face. I looked round for the solid Frith, but he had passed along the hall and into the further corridor.
I was alone now with Mrs Danvers. I went up the great stairs towards her, and she waited motionless, her hands folded before her, her eyes never leaving my face. I summoned a smile, which was not returned, nor did I blame her, for there was no purpose to the smile, it was a silly thing, bright and artificial. 'I hope I haven't kept you waiting,' I said.
I came to a little anteroom, or boudoir, furnished with a sofa, chairs, and writing-desk, which opened out to a large double bedroom with wide windows and a bathroom beyond. I went at once to the window, and looked out. The rose-garden lay below, and the eastern part of the terrace, while beyond the rose-garden rose a smooth grass bank, stretching to the near woods.
You can't see the sea from here, then,' I said, turning to Mrs Danvers. 'No, not from this wing,' she answered; 'you can't even hear it, either. You would not know the sea was anywhere near, from this wing.'
She spoke in a peculiar way, as though something lay behind her words, and she laid an emphasis on the words 'this wing', as if suggesting that the suite where we stood now held some inferiority.
'I'm sorry about that; I like the sea,' I said. She did not answer; she just went on staring at me, her hands folded before her.
"Then this was not his bedroom originally?' I said. 'No, Madam, he's never used the room in this wing before.'
'Oh,' I said, 'he didn't tell me that,' and I wandered to the dressing-table and began combing my hair. I was glad Maxim had given me a set of brushes, and that they were laid out there, upon the dressing-table, for Mrs Danvers to see. They were new, they had cost money, I need not be ashamed of them.
'I suppose you have been at Manderley for many years,' I said, making a fresh effort, 'longer than anyone else?'
Not so long as Frith,' she said, and I thought how lifeless her voice was, and cold, like her hand when it had lain in mine;
Once more, I glanced up at her and once more I met her eyes, dark and sombre, in that white face of hers, instilling into me, I knew not why, a strange feeling of disquiet, of foreboding. I tried to smile, and could not; I found myself held by those eyes, that had no light, no flicker of sympathy towards me.
'I came here when the first Mrs de Winter was a bride,' she said, and her voice, which had hitherto, as I said, been dull and toneless, was harsh now with unexpected animation, with life and meaning, and there was a spot of colour on the gaunt cheek-bones.
The change was so sudden that I was shocked, and a little scared. I did not know what to do, or what to say. It was as though she had spoken words that were forbidden, words that she had hidden within herself for a long time and now would be repressed no longer. Still her eyes never left my face; they looked upon me with a curious mixture of pity and of scorn, until I felt myself to be even younger and more untutored to the ways of life than I had believed.
I could see she despised me, marking with all the snobbery of her class that I was no great lady, that I was humble, shy, and diffident. Yet there was something beside scorn in those eyes of hers, something surely of positive dislike, or actual malice? (650 words)
Geeta
Ch 11 – The heroine confesses to Frank, the agent of Mr De Winter, that she feels inadequate
'Mrs de Winter, please don't think that,' he said. 'For my part I can't tell you how delighted I am that you have married Maxim. It will make all the difference to his life. I am positive that you will make a great success of it. From my point of view it's - it's very refreshing and charming to find someone like yourself who is not entirely - er -' he blushed, searching for a word 'not entirely au fait, shall we say, with ways at Manderley. And if people around here give you the impression that they are criticising you, it's - well - it's most damnably offensive of them, that's all. I've never heard a word of criticism, and if I did I should take great care that it was never uttered again.'
'That's very sweet of you, Frank,' I said, 'and what you say helps enormously. I dare say I've been very stupid. I'm not good at meeting people, I've never had to do it, and all the time I keep remembering how - how it must have been at Manderley before, when there was someone there who was born and bred to it, did it all naturally and without effort. And I realise, every day, that things I lack, confidence, grace, beauty, intelligence, wit - Oh, all the qualities that mean most in a woman - she possessed. It doesn't help, Frank, it doesn't help.'
He said nothing. He went on looking anxious, and distressed. He pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose. 'You must not say that,' he said. 'Why not? It's true,' I said.
'You have qualities that are just as important, far more so, in fact. It's perhaps cheek of me to say so, I don't know you very well. I'm a bachelor, I don't know very much about women, I lead a quiet sort of life down here at Manderley as you know, but I should say that kindness, and sincerity, and - if I may say so - modesty are worth far more to a man, to a husband, than all the wit and beauty in the world.'
He looked very agitated, and blew his nose again. I saw that I had upset him far more than I had upset myself, and the realisation of this calmed me and gave me a feeling of superiority. I wondered why he was making such a fuss. After all, I had not said very much. I had only confessed my sense of insecurity, following as I did upon Rebecca. And she must have had these qualities that he presented to me as mine. She must have been kind and sincere, with all her friends, her boundless popularity. I was not sure what he meant by modesty. It was a word I had never understood. I always imagined it had something to do with minding meeting people in a passage on the way to the bathroom... Poor Frank. And Beatrice had called him a dull man, with never a word to say for himself.
'Well,' I said, rather embarrassed, 'well, I don't know about all that. I don't think I'm very kind, or particularly sincere, and as for being modest, I don't think I've ever had much of a chance to be anything else. It was not very modest, of course, being married hurriedly like that, down in Monte Carlo, and being alone there in that hotel, beforehand, but perhaps you don't count that?'
'My dear Mrs de Winter, you don't think I imagine for one moment that your meeting down there was not entirely above board?' he said in a low voice.
'No, of course not,' I said gravely. Dear Frank. I think I had shocked him. What a Frankish expression, too, 'above board'. It made one think immediately of the sort of things that would happen below board.
'I'm sure,' he began, and hesitated, his expression still troubled, 'I'm sure that Maxim would be very worried, very distressed, if he knew how you felt. I don't think he can have any idea of it.' 'You won't tell him?' I said hastily.
Joe
Ch 17 – The heroine comes down to the party dressed as Caroline de Winter and causes a shock.
I came forward to the head of the stairs and stood there, smiling, my hat in my hand, like the girl in the picture. I waited for the clapping and laughter that would follow as I walked slowly down the stairs. Nobody clapped, nobody moved.
They all stared at me like dumb things. Beatrice uttered a little cry and put her hand to her mouth. I went on smiling, I put one hand on the bannister.
'How do you do, Mr de Winter,' I said.
Maxim had not moved. He stared up at me, his glass in his hand. There was no colour in his face. It was ashen white. I saw Frank go to him as though he would speak, but Maxim shook him off. I hesitated, one foot
already on the stairs. Something was wrong, they had not understood. Why was Maxim looking like that? Why did they all stand like dummies, like people in a trance?
Then Maxim moved forward to the stairs, his eyes never leaving my face.
'What the hell do you think you are doing?' he asked. His eyes blazed in anger. His face was still ashen white.
I could not move, I went on standing there, my hand on the bannister.
'It's the picture,' I said, terrified at his eyes, at his voice. 'It's the picture, the one in the gallery.'
There was a long silence. We went on staring at each other. Nobody moved in the hall. I swallowed, my hand moved to my throat. 'What is it?' I said. 'What have I done?'
If only they would not stare at me like that with dull blank faces. If only somebody would say something. When Maxim spoke again I did not recognise his voice. It was still and quiet, icy cold, not a voice I knew.
'Go and change,' he said, 'it does not matter what you put on. Find an ordinary evening frock, anything will do. Go now, before anybody comes.'
I could not speak, I went on staring at him. His eyes were the only living things in the white mask of his face.
'What are you standing there for?' he said, his voice harsh and queer. 'Didn't you hear what I said?'
I turned and ran blindly through the archway to the corridors beyond. (385 words)
Priya
Chapter 18 – The heroine feels she is in the iron grip of the dead Rebecca
Rebecca, always Rebecca. Wherever I walked in Manderley, wherever I sat, even in my thoughts and in my dreams, I met Rebecca. I knew her figure now, the long slim legs, the small and narrow feet. Her shoulders, broader than mine, the capable clever hands. Hands that could steer a boat, could hold a horse. Hands that arranged flowers, made the models of ships, and wrote 'Max from Rebecca' on the fly-leaf of a book. I knew her face too, small and oval, the clear white skin, the cloud of dark hair. I knew the scent she wore, I could guess her laughter and her smile. If I heard it, even among a thousand others, I should recognise her voice. Rebecca, always Rebecca. I should never be rid of Rebecca.
Perhaps I haunted her as she haunted me; she looked down on me from the gallery as Mrs Danvers had said, she sat beside me when I wrote my letters at her desk. That mackintosh I wore, that handkerchief I used. They were hers. Perhaps she knew and had seen me take them. Jasper had been her dog, and he ran at my heels now. The roses were hers and I cut them. Did she resent me and fear me as I resented her? Did she want Maxim alone in the house again? I could fight the living but I could not fight the dead. If there was some woman in London that Maxim loved, someone he wrote to, visited, dined with, slept with, I could fight with her. We would stand on common ground. I should not be afraid. Anger and jealousy were things that could be conquered. One day the woman would grow old or tired or different, and Maxim would not love her any more.
But Rebecca would never grow old. Rebecca would always be the same. And her I could not fight. She was too strong for me.
Devika
Chapter 20 – Maxim describes who Rebecca really was, and the bargain by which they lived, how he tolerated her after discovering her vices within five days of marrying her. The murder is described
He whipped round and looked at me as I sat there huddled on the floor. ‘You thought I loved Rebecca? ‘You thought I killed her, loving her? I hated her. Our marriage was a farce from the very first. She was vicious, damnable, rotten through and through. We never loved each other, never had one moment of happiness together. Rebecca was incapable of love, of tenderness, of decency. She was not even normal.’
‘She was clever of course,’ he said. ‘Damnably clever. No one would guess meeting her that she was not the kindest, most generous, most gifted person in the world. She knew exactly what to say to different people, how to match her mood to theirs. Had she met you, she would have walked off into the garden with you, arm-in arm, calling to Jasper, chatting about flowers, music, painting, whatever she knew to be your particular hobby; and you would have been taken in, like the rest. You would have sat at her feet and worshipped her.’
‘When I married her, I was told I was the luckiest man in the world,' he said. ‘She was so lovely, so accomplished, so amusing. Even Gran, the most difficult person to please in those days, adored her from the first. “She's got the three things that matter in a wife,” she told me: “breeding, brains, and beauty.” And I believed her or forced myself to believe her. But all the time I had a seed of doubt at the back of my mind. There was something about her eyes. . .
Once more I saw myself standing on the beach beside poor startled Ben. ‘You’re kind,’ he said, ‘not like the other one. You won’t put me to the asylum, will you?’ There was some- one who walked through the woods by night, someone tall and slim. She gave you the feeling of a snake . . .
Maxim was talking though. ‘I found her out at once, five days after we were married. You remember that time I drove you in the car? She sat there, laughing, her black hair blowing in the wind ; she told me about herself, told me things I shall never repeat to a living soul. Beauty, brains, and breeding. Oh, my God!’
‘I nearly killed her then ‘It would have been so easy. One false step, one slip. You remember the precipice. I frightened you, didn’t I? You thought I was mad. Perhaps I was.
‘She made a bargain with me up there, on the side of the precipice,’ he said. ‘ “I’ll run your house for you, “I’ll look after your precious Manderley for you, make it the most famous show-place in all the country. And people will visit us, envy us, talk about us ; they’ll say we are the luckiest, happiest, handsomest couple in all England. What a leg-pull. Max! “What a God-damn triumph!” She sat there on the hillside, laughing.
‘I did not kill her,’ he said. ‘I watched her, I let her laugh She knew I would do as she suggested: come to Manderley, throw the place open, entertain, have our marriage spoken of as the success of the century. She knew I would sacrifice pride, honour, personal feelings, every damned quality on earth, rather than stand before our little World after a week of marriage and have them know the things about her that she had told me then. She knew I would never stand in a divorce court and give her away, have fingers pointing at us, mud flung at us in the newspapers.
He came and stood before me. He held out his hands. ‘You despise me, don’t you?
I did not say anything, I held his hands against my heart. I did not care about his shame. None of the things that he had told me mattered to me at all. I clung to one thing only, and repeated it to myself, over and over again. Maxim did not love Rebecca. He had never loved her, never, never.
Gopa
Ch 23 – Favell, Rebecca’s lover, accuses Maxim De Winter before the magistrate, Colonel Julyan, of murdering Rebecca
“There he stands with that God damned superior smile on his face”.
‘Look here, Favell,' he said, 'what exactly is your trouble?'
Favell stared at him a moment. I could see he was planning something in his mind, and he was still not sober enough to carry it through. He put his hand slowly in his waistcoat pocket and brought out Rebecca's note. "This note was written a few hours before Rebecca was supposed to have set out on that suicidal sail. Here it is. I want you to read it, and say whether you think a woman who wrote that note had made up her mind to kill herself.' Colonel Julyan took a pair of spectacles from a case in his pocket and read the note. Then he handed it back to Favell.
'No,' he said, 'on the face of it, no. But I don't know what the note refers to. Perhaps you do. Or perhaps de Winter does?'
Maxim did not say anything. Favell twisted the piece of paper in his fingers, considering Colonel Julyan all the while. 'My cousin made a definite appointment in that note, didn't she?' he said. 'She deliberately asked me to drive down to Manderley that night because she had something to tell me. What it actually was I don't suppose we shall ever know, but that's beside the point. She made the appointment, and she was to spend the night in the cottage on purpose to see me alone. The mere fact of her going for a sail never surprised me. It was the sort of thing she did, for an hour or so, after a long day in London. But to plug holes in the cabin and deliberately drown herself, the hysterical impulsive freak of a neurotic girl - oh, no, Colonel Julyan, by Christ no!' The colour had flooded into his face, and the last words were shouted. His manner was not helpful to him, and I could see by the thin line of Colonel Julyan's mouth that he had not taken to Favell.
'My dear fellow,' he said, 'it's not the slightest use your losing your temper with me. I'm not the Coroner who conducted the enquiry this afternoon, nor am I a member of the jury who gave the verdict. I'm merely the magistrate of the district. Naturally I want to help you all I can, and de Winter, too. You say you refuse to believe your cousin committed suicide. On the other hand you heard, as we all did, the evidence of the boat-builder. The seacocks were open, the holes were there. Very well. Suppose we get to the point. What do you suggest really happened?'
Favell turned his head and looked slowly towards Maxim. He was still twisting the note between his fingers. 'Rebecca never opened those seacocks, nor split the holes in the planking. Rebecca never committed suicide. You've asked for my opinion, and by God you shall have it. Rebecca was murdered. And if you want to know who the murderer is, why there he stands, by the window there, with that God-damned superior smile on his face. He couldn't even wait could he, until the year was out, before marrying the first girl he set eyes on? There he is, there's your murderer for you, Mr Maximilian de Winter. Take a good long look at him. He'd look well hanging, wouldn't he?'
And Favell began to laugh, the laugh of a drunkard, high pitched, forced, foolish and all the while twisting Rebecca’s note between his fingers.
Shoba
Ch 26 – A Nature description in which the heroine contemplates the peace and quiet of Manderley
When I awoke the next morning, just after six o'clock, and got up and went to the window there was a foggy dew upon the grass like frost, and the trees were shrouded in a white mist. There was a chill in the air and a little, fresh wind, and the cold, quiet smell of autumn.
As I knelt by the window looking down on to the rose-garden where the flowers themselves drooped upon their stalks, the petals brown and dragging after last night's rain, the happenings of the day before seemed remote and unreal. Here at Manderley a new day was starting, the things of the garden were not concerned with our troubles. A blackbird ran across the rose-garden to the lawns in swift, short rushes, stopping now and again to stab at the earth with his yellow beak. A thrush, too, went about his business, and two stout little wagtails, following one another, and a little cluster of twittering sparrows. A gull poised himself high in the air, silent and alone, and then spread his wings wide and swooped beyond the lawns to the woods and the Happy Valley. These things continued, our worries and anxieties had no power to alter them. Soon the gardeners would be astir, brushing the first leaves from the lawns and the paths, raking the gravel in the drive. Pails would clank in the courtyard behind the house, the hose would be turned on the car, the little scullery maid would begin to chatter through the open door to the men in the yard. There would be the crisp, hot smell of bacon. The housemaids would open up the house, throw wide the windows, draw back the curtains.
The dogs would crawl from their baskets, yawn and stretch themselves, wander out on to the terrace and blink at the first struggles of the pale sun coming through the mist. Robert would lay the table for breakfast, bring in those piping scones, the clutch of eggs, the glass dishes of honey, jam, and marmalade, the bowl of peaches, the cluster of purple grapes with the bloom upon them still, hot from the greenhouses.
Maids sweeping in the morning-room, the drawing-room, the fresh clean air pouring into the long open windows. Smoke curling from the chimneys, and little by little the autumn mist fading away and the trees and the banks and the woods taking shape, the glimmer of the sea showing with the sun upon it below the valley, the beacon standing tall and straight upon the headland.
The peace of Manderley. The quietude and the grace. Whoever lived within its walls, whatever trouble there was and strife, however much uneasiness and pain, no matter what tears were shed, what sorrows borne, the peace of Manderley could not be broken or the loveliness destroyed. The flowers that died would bloom again another year, the same birds build their nests, the same trees blossom. The old quiet moss smell would linger in the air, and bees would come, and crickets, and herons build their nests in the deep dark woods. The butterflies would dance their merry jig across the lawns, and spiders spin foggy webs, and small startled rabbits who had no business to come trespassing poke their faces through the crowded shrubs. There would be lilac, and honeysuckle still, and the white magnolia buds unfolding slow and tight beneath the dining-room window. No one would ever hurt Manderley. It would lie always in a hollow like an enchanted thing, guarded by the woods, safe, secure, while the sea broke and ran and came again in the little shingle bays below.
Pamela
Ch 27 – The ending, with the fire that destroyed Manderley.
Back again into the moving unquiet depths. I was writing letters in the morning-room. I was sending out invitations. I wrote them all myself with a thick black pen. But when I looked down to see what I had written it was not my small square handwriting at all, it was long, and slanting, with curious pointed strokes. I pushed the cards away from the blotter and hid them. I got up and went to the looking-glass. A face stared back at me that was not my own. It was very pale, very lovely, framed in a cloud of dark hair. The eyes narrowed and smiled. The lips parted. The face in the glass stared back at me and laughed. And I saw then that she was sitting on a chair before the dressing-table in her bedroom, and Maxim was brushing her hair. He held her hair in his hands, and as he brushed it he wound it slowly into a thick rope. It twisted like a snake, and he took hold of it with both hands and smiled at Rebecca and put it round his neck.
'No,' I screamed. 'No, no. We must go to Switzerland. Colonel Julyan said we must go to Switzerland.'
I felt Maxim's hand upon my face. 'What is it?' he said. 'What's the matter?'
I sat up and pushed my hair away from my face.
'I can't sleep,' I said. 'It's no use.'
'You've been sleeping,' he said. 'You've slept for two hours. It's quarter past two. We're four miles the other side of Lanyon.'
It was even colder than before. I shuddered in the darkness of the car.
'I'll come beside you,' I said. 'We shall be back by three.'
I climbed over and sat beside him, staring in front of me through the wind-screen. I put my hand on his knee. My teeth were chattering.
'You're cold,' he said.
'Yes,' I said.
The hills rose in front of us, and dipped, and rose again. It was quite dark. The stars had gone.
'What time did you say it was?' I asked.
'Twenty past two,' he said.
'It's funny,' I said. 'It looks almost as though the dawn was breaking over there, beyond those hills. It can't be though, it's too early.'
'It's the wrong direction,' he said, 'you're looking west.'
'I know,' I said. 'It's funny, isn't it?'
He did not answer and I went on watching the sky. It seemed to get lighter even as I stared. Like the first red streak of sunrise. Little by little it spread across the sky.
'It's in winter you see the northern lights, isn't it?' I said. 'Not in summer?'
"That's not the northern lights,' he said. "That's Manderley.'
I glanced at him and saw his face. I saw his eyes.
'Maxim,' I said. 'Maxim, what is it?'
He drove faster, much faster. We topped the hill before us and saw Lanyon lying in a hollow at our feet. There to the left of us was the silver streak of the river, widening to the estuary at Kerrith six miles away. The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.
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