Mrs Danvers was in this place now, listening to the Coroner. Maxim was standing up over there. The heat was coming up at me from the floor, rising in slow waves. It reached my hands, wet and slippery, it touched my neck, my chin, my face.

  'Mr de Winter, you heard the statement from James Tabb. who had the care of Mrs de Winter's boat? Do you know anything of these holes driven in the planking?'

  'Nothing whatever.'

  'Can you think of any reason why they should be there?"

  'No, of course not.'

  'It's the first time you have heard them mentioned?'

  'Yes.'

  'It's a shock to you, of course?'

  'It was shock enough to learn that I made a mistake in identification over twelve months ago, and now I learn that my late wife was not only drowned in the cabin of her boat, but that holes were bored in the boat with the deliberate intent of letting in the water so that the boat should sink. Does it surprise you that I should be shocked?'

  No, Maxim. No. You will put his back up. You heard what Frank said. You must not put his back up. Not that voice. Not that angry voice, Maxim.

  He won't understand. Please, darling, please. Oh, God, don't let Maxim lose his temper. Don't let him lose his temper.

  'Mr de Winter, I want you to believe that we all feel very deeply for you in this matter. No doubt you have suffered a shock, a very severe shock, in learning that your late wife was drowned in her own cabin, and not at sea as you supposed. And I am inquiring into the matter for you.

  I want, for your sake, to find out exactly how and why she died. I don't conduct this inquiry for my own amusement.'

  "That's rather obvious, isn't it?'

  'I hope that it is. James Tabb has just told us that the boat which contained the remains of the late Mrs de Winter had three holes hammered through her bottom. And that the seacocks were open. Do you doubt his statement?'

  'Of course not. He's a boat-builder, he knows what he is talking about.'

  'Who looked after Mrs de Winter's boat?'

  'She looked after it herself.'

  'She employed no hand?'

  'No, nobody at all.'

  "The boat was moored in the private harbour belonging to Manderley?'

  'Yes.'

  'Any stranger who tried to tamper with the boat would be seen? There is no access to the harbour by public footpath?'

  'No, none at all.'

  'The harbour is quiet, is it not, and surrounded by trees?'

  'Yes.'

  'A trespasser might not be noticed?'

  'Possibly not.'

  'Yet James Tabb has told us, and we have no reason to disbelieve him, that a boat with those holes drilled in her bottom and the seacocks open could not float for more than ten or fifteen minutes.'

  'Quite.'

  'Therefore we can put aside the idea that the boat was tampered with maliciously before Mrs de Winter went for her evening sail. Had that been the case the boat would have sunk at her moorings.'

  'No doubt.'

  'Therefore we must assume that whoever took the boat out that night drove in the planking and opened the seacocks.'

  'I suppose so.'

  'You have told us already that the door of the cabin was shut, the portholes closed, and your wife's remains were on the floor. This was in your statement, and in Doctor Phillips', and in Captain Searle's?'

  'Yes.'

  'And now added to this is the information that a spike was driven through the bottom, and the seacocks were open. Does not this strike you, Mr de Winter, as being very strange?'

  'Certainly.'

  'You have no suggestion to make?'

  'No, none at all.'

  'Mr de Winter, painful as it may be, it is my duty to ask you a very personal question.'

  'Yes.'

  'Were relations between you and the late Mrs de Winter perfectly happy?'

  They had to come of course, those black spots in front of my eyes, dancing, flickering, stabbing the hazy air, and it was hot, so hot, with all these people, all these faces, and no open window; the door, from being near to me, was farther away

  than I had thought, and all the time the ground coming up to meet me.

  And then, out of the queer mist around me, Maxim's voice, clear and strong.

  'Will someone take my wife outside? She is going to faint.'

  chapter twenty-three

  I was sitting in the little room again. The room like a waiting-room at the station. The policeman was there, bending over me, giving me a glass of water, and someone's hand was on my arm, Frank's hand. I sat quite still, the floor, the walls, the figures of Frank and the policeman taking solid shape before me.

  'I'm so sorry,' I said, 'such a stupid thing to do. It was so hot in that room, so very hot.'

  'It gets very airless in there,' said the policeman, 'there's been complaints about it often, but nothing's ever done. We've had ladies fainting in there before.'

  'Are you feeling better, Mrs de Winter?' said Frank.

  'Yes. Yes, much better. I shall be all right again. Don't wait with me.'

  'I'm going to take you back to Manderley.'

  'No.'

  'Yes. Maxim has asked me to.'

  'No. You ought to stay with him.'

  'Maxim told me to take you back to Manderley.'

  He put his arm through mine and helped me to get up. 'Can you walk as far as the car or shall I bring it round?'

  'I can walk. But I'd much rather stay. I want to wait for Maxim.'

  'Maxim may be a long time.'

  Why did he say that? What did he mean? Why didn't he look at me? He took my arm and walked with me along the passage to the door, and so down the steps into the street. Maxim may be a long time ...

  We did not speak. We came to the little Morris car belonging to Frank.

  He opened the door, and helped me in. Then he got in himself and started up the engine. We drove away from the cobbled market-place, through the empty town, and out on to the road to Kerrith.

  'Why will they be a long time? What are they going to do?'

  'They may have to go over the evidence again.' Frank looked straight in front of him along the hard white road.

  'They've had all the evidence,' I said. "There's nothing more anyone can say.'

  'You never know,' said Frank, 'the Coroner may put his questions in a different way. Tabb has altered the whole business. The Coroner will have to approach it now from another angle.'

  'What angle? How do you mean?'

  'You heard the evidence? You heard what Tabb said about the boat? They won't believe in an accident any more.'

  'It's absurd, Frank, it's ridiculous. They should not listen to Tabb.

  How can he tell, after all these months, how holes came to be in a boat?

  What are they trying to prove?'

  'I don't know.'

  'That Coroner will go on and on harping at Maxim, making him lose his temper, making him say things he doesn't mean. He will ask question after question, Frank, and Maxim won't stand it, I know he won't stand it.'

  Frank did not answer. He was driving very fast. For the first time since I had known him he was at a loss for the usual conventional phrase. That meant he was worried, very worried. And usually he was such a slow careful driver, stopping dead at every crossroads, peering to right and left, blowing his horn at every bend in the road.

  "That man was there,' I said, 'that man who came once to Manderley to see Mrs Danvers.'

  'You mean Favell?' asked Frank. 'Yes, I saw him.'

  'He was sitting there, with Mrs Danvers.'

  'Yes, I know.'

  'Why was he there? What right had he to go to the inquest?'

  'He was her cousin.'

  'It's not right that he and Mrs Danvers should sit there, listening to that evidence. I don't trust them, Frank.'

  'No.'

  'They might do something; they might make mischief.'

  Again Frank did not answer. I realized that his loyalty to Maxim was such that he would not let himself be drawn into a discussion, even with me.

  He did not know how much I knew. Nor could I tell for certainty how much he knew. We were allies, we travelled the same road, but we could not look at one another. We neither of us dared risk a confession. We were turning in now at the lodge gates, and down the long twisting narrow drive to the house. I noticed for the first time how the hydrangeas were coming into bloom, their blue heads thrusting themselves from the green foliage behind. For all their beauty there was something sombre about them, funereal; they were like the wreaths, stiff and artificial, that you see beneath glass cases in a foreign churchyard. There they were, all the way along the drive, on either side of us, blue, monotonous, like spectators lined up in a street to watch us pass.

  We came to the house at last and rounded the great sweep before the steps.

  'Will you be all right now?' said Frank. 'You can lie down, can't you?'

  'Yes,' I said, 'yes, perhaps.'

  'I shall go back to Lanyon,' he said, 'Maxim may want me.'

  He did not say anything more. He got quickly back into the car again and drove away. Maxim might want him. Why did he say Maxim might want him?

  Perhaps the Coroner was going to question Frank as well. Ask him about that evening, over twelve months ago, when Maxim had dined with Frank.

  He would want to know the exact time that Maxim left his house. He would want to know if anybody saw Maxim when he returned to the house. Whether the servants knew that he was there. Whether anybody could prove that Maxim went straight up to bed and undressed. Mrs Danvers might be questioned. They might ask Mrs Danvers to give evidence. And Maxim beginning to lose his temper, beginning to go white ...

  I went into the hall. I went upstairs to my room, and lay down upon my bed, even as Frank had suggested. I put my hands over my eyes. I kept seeing that room and all the faces. The lined, painstaking, aggravating face of the Coroner, the gold pince-nez on his nose.

  'I don't conduct this inquiry for my own amusement.' His slow, careful mind, easily offended. What were they all saying now? What was happening?

  Suppose in a little while Frank came back to Manderley alone?

  I did not know what happened. I did not know what people did. I remembered pictures of men in the papers, leaving places like that, and being taken away. Suppose Maxim was taken away? They would not let me go to him. They would not let me see him. I should have to stay here at Manderley day after day, night after night, waiting, as I was waiting now. People like Colonel Julyan being kind. People saying 'You must not be alone. You must come to us.' The telephone, the newspapers, the telephone again. 'No, Mrs de Winter can't see anyone. Mrs de Winter has no story to give the County Chronicle.' And another day. And another day. Weeks that would be blurred and non-existent. Frank at last taking me to see Maxim. He would look thin, queer, like people in hospital...

  Other women had been through this. Women I had read about in papers. They sent letters to the Home Secretary and it was not any good. The Home Secretary always said that justice must take its course. Friends sent petitions too, everybody signed them, but the Home Secretary could never do anything. And the ordinary people who read about it in the papers said why should the fellow get off, he murdered his wife, didn't he? What about the poor, murdered wife? This sentimental business about abolishing the death penalty simply encourages crime. This fellow ought to have thought about that before he killed his wife. It's too late now. He will have to hang for it, like any other murderer. And serve him right too. Let it be a warning to others.

  I remember seeing a picture on the back of a paper once, of a little crowd collected outside a prison gate, and just after nine o'clock a policeman came and pinned a notice on the gate for the people to read. The notice said something about the

  sentence being carried out. 'Sentence of death was carried out this morning at nine o'clock. The Governor, the Prison Doctor, and the Sheriff of the County were present.' Hanging was quick. Hanging did not hurt.

  It broke your neck at once. No, it did not. Someone said once it did not always work. Someone who had known the Governor of a prison. They put that bag over your head, and you stand on the little platform, and then the floor gives way beneath you. It takes exactly three minutes to go from the cell to the moment you are hanged. No, fifty seconds, someone said. No, that's absurd. It could not be fifty seconds. There's a little flight of steps down the side of the shed, down to the pit. The doctor goes down there to look. They die instantly. No, they don't. The body moves for some time, the neck is not always broken. Yes, but even so they don't feel anything. Someone said they did. Someone who had a brother who was a prison doctor said it was not generally known, because it would be such a scandal, but they did not always die at once. Their eyes were open, they stay open for quite a long time.

  God, don't let me go on thinking about this. Let me think about something else. About other things. About Mrs Van Hopper in America. She must be staying with her daughter now. They had that house on Long Island in the summer. I expect they played a lot of bridge. They went to the races.

  Mrs Van Hopper was fond of the races. I wonder if she still wears that little yellow hat. It was too small for her. Much too small on that big face. Mrs Van Hopper sitting about in the garden of that house on Long Island, with novels, and magazines, and papers on her lap. Mrs Van Hopper putting up her lorgnette and calling to her daughter. 'Look at this, Helen.

  They say Max de Winter murdered his first wife. I always did think there was something peculiar about him. I warned that fool of a girl she was making a mistake, but she wouldn't listen to me. Well, she's cooked her goose now all right. I suppose they'll make her a big offer to go on the pictures.'

  Something was touching my hand. It was Jasper. It was Jasper, thrusting his cold damp nose in my hands. He had followed me up from the hall. Why did dogs make one want to cry? There was something so quiet and hopeless about their

  sympathy. Jasper, knowing something was wrong, as dogs always do. Trunks being packed. Cars being brought to the door. Dogs standing with drooping tails, dejected eyes. Wandering back to their baskets in the hall when the sound of the car dies away ...

  I must have fallen asleep because I woke suddenly with a start, and heard that first crack of thunder in the air. I sat up. The clock said five.

  I got up and went to the window. There was not a breath of wind. The leaves hung listless on the trees, waiting. The sky was slatey grey. The jagged lightning split the sky. Another rumble in the distance. No rain fell.

  I went out into the corridor and listened. I could not hear anything.

  I went to the head of the stairs. There was no sign of anybody. The hall was dark because of the menace of thunder overhead. I went down and stood on the terrace. There was another burst of thunder. One spot of rain fell on my hand. One spot. No more. It was very dark. I could see the sea beyond the dip in the valley like a black lake. Another spot fell on my hands, and another crack of thunder came. One of the housemaids began shutting the windows in the rooms upstairs. Robert appeared and shut the windows of the drawing-room behind me.

  "The gentlemen are not back yet, are they, Robert?' I asked.

  'No, Madam, not yet. I thought you were with them, Madam.'

  'No. No, I've been back some time.'

  'Will you have tea, Madam?'

  'No, no, I'll wait.'

  'It looks as though the weather was going to break at last, Madam.'

  'Yes.'

  No rain fell. Nothing since those two drops on my hand. I went back and sat in the library. At half past five Robert came into the room.

  "The car has just driven up to the door now, Madam,' he said.

  'Which car?' I said.

  'Mr de Winter's car, Madam,' he said.

  'Is Mr de Winter driving it himself?'

  'Yes, Madam.'

  I tried to get up but my legs were things of straw, they would not bear me. I stood leaning against the sofa. My throat was very dry.

  After a minute Maxim came into the room. He stood just inside the door.

  He looked very tired, old. There were lines at the corner of his mouth I had never noticed before.

  'It's all over,' he said.

  I waited. Still I could not speak or move towards him.

  'Suicide,' he said, 'without sufficient evidence to show the state of mind of the deceased. They were all at sea of course, they did not know what they were doing.'

  I sat down on the sofa. 'Suicide,' I said, 'but the motive? Where was the motive?'

  'God knows,' he said. 'They did not seem to think a motive was necessary.

  Old Horridge, peering at me, wanting to know if Rebecca had any money troubles. Money troubles. God in heaven.'

  He went and stood by the window, looking out at the green lawns. 'It's going to rain,' he said. "Thank God it's going to rain at last.'

  'What happened?' I said, 'what did the Coroner say? Why have you been there all this time?'

  'He went over and over the same ground again,' said Maxim. 'Little details about the boat that no one cared about a damn. Were the sea-cocks hard to turn on? Where exactly was the first hole in relation to the second?

  What was ballast? What effect upon the stability of the boat would the shifting of the ballast have? Could a woman do this unaided? Did the cabin door shut firmly? What pressure of water was necessary to burst open the door? I thought I should go mad. I kept my temper though. Seeing you there, by the door, made me remember what I had to do. If you had not fainted like that, I should never have done it. It brought me up with a jerk.

  I knew exactly what I was going to say. I faced Horridge all the time.

  I never took my eyes off his thin, pernickety, little face and those gold-rimmed pince-nez. I shall remember that face of his to my dying day.

  I'm tired, darling; so tired I can't see, or hear or feel anything.'

  He sat down on the window-seat. He leant forward, his head in his hands.

  I went and sat beside him. In a few minutes Frith came in, followed by Robert carrying the table for tea. The