Rebecca’s Tale
Sally Beauman
For Alan
We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.
And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.
That was long ago. Today, neither of them is alive.
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.
O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.
—“Encounter,” CZESLAW MILOSZ, The Collected Poems, 1931–1987
…They thought death was worth it, but I
Have a self to recover, a queen.
Is she dead, is she sleeping?
Where has she been,
With her lion-red body, her wings of glass?
Now she is flying
More terrible than she ever was, red
Scar in the sky, red comet
Over the engine that killed her—
The mausoleum, the wax house.
—“Stings,” SYLVIA PLATH, Ariel
Contents
Epigraph
1. Julyan, April 12, 1951
2. Gray, April 13, 1951
3. Rebecca, April 1931
4. Ellie, May 1951
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Sally Beauman
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
Julyan
APRIL 12, 1951
ONE
LAST NIGHT I DREAMT I WENT TO MANDERLEY AGAIN. These dreams are now recurring with a puzzling frequency, and I’ve come to dread them. All of the Manderley dreams are bloodcurdling and this one was the worst—no question at all.
I cried out Rebecca’s name in my sleep, so loudly that it woke me. I sat bolt upright, staring at darkness, afraid to reach for the light switch in case that little hand again grasped mine. I heard the sound of bare feet running along the corridor; I was still inside the dream, still reliving that appalling moment when the tiny coffin began to move. Where had I been taking it? Why was it so small?
The door opened, a thin beam of light fingered the walls, and a pale shape began to move quietly toward me. I made a cowardly moaning sound. Then I saw this phantom was wrapped up in a dressing gown and its hair was disheveled. I began to think it might be my daughter—but was she really there, or was I dreaming her, too? Once I was sure it was Ellie, the palpitations diminished and the dream slackened its hold. Ellie hid her fears by being practical. She fetched warm milk and aspirin; she lit the gas fire, plumped up my pillows, and attacked my wayward eiderdown. Half an hour later, when we were both calmer, my nightmare was blamed on willfulness—and my weakness for late-night snacks of bread and cheese.
This fictitious indigestion was meant to reassure me—and it provided a good excuse for all Ellie’s anxious questions concerning pain. Did I have an ache in the heart region? (Yes, I did.) Any breathing difficulties? “No, I damn well don’t,” I growled. “It was just a nightmare, that’s all. Stop fussing, Ellie, for heaven’s sake, and stop flapping around….”
“Mousetrap!” said my lovely, agitated, unmarried daughter. “Why don’t you listen, Daddy? If I’ve warned you once, I’ve warned you a thousand times…”
Well, indeed. I’ve never been good at heeding anyone’s warnings, including my own.
I finally agreed that my feeling peckish at eleven P.M. had been to blame; I admitted that eating my whole week’s ration of cheddar (an entire ounce!) in one go had been rash, and ill-advised. A silence ensued. My fears had by then receded; a familiar desolation was taking hold. Ellie was standing at the end of my bed, her hands gripping its brass foot rail. Her candid eyes rested on my face. It was past midnight. My daughter is blessed with innocence, but she is nobody’s fool. She glanced at her watch. “It’s Rebecca, isn’t it?” she said, her tone gentle. “It’s the anniversary of her death today—and that always affects you, Daddy. Why do we pretend?”
Because it’s safer that way, I could have replied. It’s twenty years since Rebecca died, so I’ve had two decades to learn the advantages of such pretences. That wasn’t the answer I gave, however; in fact, I made no answer at all. Something—perhaps the expression in Ellie’s eyes, perhaps the absence of reproach or accusation in her tone, perhaps simply the fact that my thirty-one-year-old daughter still calls me “Daddy”—something at that point pierced my heart. I looked away, and the room blurred.
I listened to the sound of the sea, which, on calm nights when the noise of the wind doesn’t drown it out, can be heard clearly in my bedroom. It was washing against the rocks in the inhospitable cove below my garden: high tide. “Open the window a little, Ellie,” I said.
Ellie, who is subtle, did so without further comment or questions. She looked out across the moonlit bay toward the headland opposite, where Manderley lies. The great de Winter house, now in a state of ruination, is little more than a mile away as the crow flies. It seems remote when approached by land, for our country roads here are narrow and twisting, making many detours around the creeks and coves that cut into our coastline; but it is swiftly reached by boat. In my youth, I often sailed across there with Maxim de Winter in my dinghy. We used to moor in the bay below Manderley—the bay where, decades later, under mysterious circumstances, his young wife Rebecca would die.
I made a small sound in my throat, which Ellie pretended not to hear. She continued to look out across the water toward the Manderley headland, to the rocks that mark the point, to the woods that protect and shield the house from view. I thought she might speak then, but she didn’t; she gave a small sigh, left the casement open a little as I’d requested, then turned away with a resigned air. She left the curtains half-drawn, settled me for sleep, and then with one last anxious and regretful glance left me alone with the past.
A thin bright band of moonlight bent into the room; on the air came a breath of salt and sea freshness: Rebecca rose up in my mind. I saw her again as I first saw her, when I was ignorant of the power she would come to exert on my life and my imagination (that I possess any imagination at all is something most people would deny). I watched her enter, then re-enter, then re-enter again that great mausoleum of a drawing room at Manderley—a room, indeed an entire house, that she would shortly transform. She entered at a run, bursting out of the bright sunlight, unaware anyone was waiting for her: a bride of three months; a young woman in a white dress, with a tiny blue enamelled butterfly brooch pinned just above her heart.
I watched her down the corridor of years. Again and again, just as she did then, she came to a halt as I stepped out of the shadows. Again and again, I looked at her extraordinary eyes. Grief and guilt rose up in my heart.
I turned my gaze away from that band of moonlight. Rebecca, like all who die young, remains eternally youthful; I have survived, and grown old. My heart no longer pumps very efficiently. According to our Jonah of a doctor, its arteries have narrowed and there are signs of some valvular disturbance with an unpronounceable name. I might keep ticking over for a few years more, or I might keel over tomorrow morning. In short, I may not have very much time left to me, and (as the good doctor likes to put it) I should “put my affairs in order before too long.” Thinking of this, and remembering my dream, I admitted to myself that, for motives I’ve always chosen not to examine too closely, I’ve procrastinated, prevaricated, and (as Ellie rightly said) pretended for decades. I’ve concealed the truth about Rebecca de Winter for too long.
I felt a change come upon me. There and then, I decided to make my peace with the dead. It was a canny piece of timing, no doubt infl
uenced by the fact that I might peg out and join them at any second, I’ll admit that. Nevertheless, I decided to record, for the first time, and, leaving nothing out, everything I know about Manderley, the de Winters, Rebecca, her mysterious life, and her mysterious death—and, for reasons that will become clear, I know more than anyone else does, I know a very great deal. There in my room, where the moonlight made the familiar unfamiliar, I made my resolve.
It was two o’clock in the morning. When I finally closed my eyes, afraid my dream might return, I could still hear the breathing of the sea, though the tide had turned, and by then was ebbing fast.
TWO
I AM AN OLD SOLDIER; MILITARY HABITS ENDURE, AND once I’ve finally resolved on something, I act.
“Ellie,” I said, over a fine breakfast of bacon and eggs, “we’ll walk in the Manderley woods this afternoon. I shall telephone Terence Gray and ask him to come with us. He’s been itching to snoop around there, so I doubt he’ll refuse.”
A tiny silence greeted this announcement. Ellie, who’d been zipping back and forth between stove and kitchen table, dropped a kiss on my hair—a familiarity she can indulge in only when I’m sitting down as, standing, I’m too tall for such wiles. “How smart you’re looking this morning,” she said. “Very handsome! Is that a new tie? Are you feeling better? You look better. But are you sure that—?”
“Fit as a flea,” I said firmly. “So don’t start, Ellie. He’s been angling to go there for ages and I can’t stall him forever. Today’s the day!”
“If you’re sure,” said Ellie, in a meditative way. She sat down opposite me, and fiddled first with her napkin, then that morning’s mail; her cheeks became rosy. “Maybe he’d like to come for lunch first,” she continued in a casual way. “I expect you’d enjoy that. Oh, look, there’s a package for you. That’s unusual. Makes a change from bills…”
Did I have a sense of foreboding even then? Perhaps, for I chose not to open my package in front of Ellie, although there was nothing especially remarkable about it—or so I thought at the time. A stout brown envelope, sealed with sticky tape, containing what felt like a booklet of some kind; it was addressed to A. L. Julyan, J.P., Esq., The Pines, Kerrith. This was unusual, in that most people still address me as “Colonel Julyan,” although I retired from the Army nearly a quarter of a century ago. The “J.P.” was inaccurate. It’s fifteen years since I served as magistrate here. I did not recognize the writing, nor could I have said if it was a man’s or a woman’s—and one can usually spot a female hand, I find. Women can’t resist certain florid calligraphic tricks and flourishes that a man would eschew.
I was pleased to receive it, I’ll admit that. I get very few letters these days, most of my former friends and colleagues having turned up their toes long ago. My sister, Rose, a don at Cambridge, writes occasionally, it’s true, but her scholarly spider’s hand is unmistakable (as well as unreadable), and this wasn’t from her. I carried it off to my study like a dog with a bone, my own ancient dog, Barker (so called because he’s profoundly silent; he’s now too old and toothless to bother with bones), trotting at my heels. There, Barker settled himself on the hearth rug, and I settled myself at my grandfather’s desk, facing the leaky bay window, with its view of a lugubrious monkey puzzle tree, a palm, some stunted roses, and—beyond a small terrace—the sea.
I picked up my pen, and began writing down my list of morning tasks. This habit, ingrained since my days as a subaltern, remains with me even now. I still write these dratted lists every day, although they test even my powers of invention. I can hardly write “potter about,” or “tidy desk,” or “read Daily Telegraph until general tomfoolery of the modern world threatens to induce heart failure.” I refuse to write “woolgathering” as a potential activity, although that is how I spend too much of my time.
Today, my list was distinctly promising. It read:
Rebecca’s death: Summarize salient facts. State objectives.
Draw up “witness” list re Manderley and de Winter family, etc.
Organize all confidential material relating to Rebecca, and file p.d.q.
Telephone Terence Gray.
Open parcel. If contents urgent (unlikely), reply.
For about two minutes, I felt galvanized by this list. Then a familiar panic set in. Writing the name “Rebecca” immediately upset me. I was daunted by that word “facts.” Somehow, whenever I consider Rebecca’s brief life, and the perturbing circumstances of her death, I find it difficult to retain my habitual objectivity. Facts are thin on the ground anyway; rumour is, and always has been, rife, and, with the best will in the world, certain prejudices seed themselves around.
Resolving to weed them out, I picked up my pen, drew out a sheet of paper, and began writing. At school, I was taught the fiendish art of précis by a melancholy beak called Hanbury-Smythe, a man with a Cambridge double first, who had had a briefly distinguished career in the Foreign Office. He had a weakness for the bottle, too, but we won’t dwell on that. His claim was that there was no problem, no situation, no matter how great its complexity, that could not be summarized in three sentences, and that reducing it in this way promoted clarity of thought. One’s subsequent course of action, one’s objectives, he believed, then became transparently obvious. I think this belief gave him some problems during his spell as a diplomat in the Balkans, but never mind. I was an early convert to the Hanbury-Smythe method, and used it throughout my Army career with conspicuous success.
I employed the Hanbury-Smythe technique now. Not long afterward (well, within the hour) I had produced the following:
THE MYSTERY OF REBECCA’S FINAL HOURS
On the night of 12 April, 1931, Mrs. Maximilian de Winter returned from a visit to London, arriving at Manderley, her West Country home, some time after nine; at approximately ten P.M., she left the house alone and on foot, walking down to the bay below, where her sailboat was moored. She was never seen alive again.
Fifteen months later, as a result of an unrelated shipping accident, and long after all searches had been abandoned, both her missing boat, which had been scuttled, and her body were discovered. The inquest verdict of “suicide” was controversial, but subsequently, and as a direct result of the local magistrate’s ingenious and energetic inquiries, it was discovered that Mrs. de Winter had been diagnosed as mortally ill and had been informed of that diagnosis by a London doctor on the day of her disappearance; thus, a motive for killing herself, which had seemed lacking before, now presented itself and the matter was resolved.
I looked at this glumly: With the aid of clumsy sentence construction and sufficient semicolons, you can always cheat. My summary was dull; although factually “correct,” it contained at least eight evasions and one misleading assumption; I could count no less than six suppressiones veri, all of them whoppers. I’d got it down to three sentences, and I’d produced a travesty of the truth. Hanbury-Smythe was a donkey and a drunkard and his methods were useless. The matter was resolved? Would that it had been! I was not proud of myself. Rebecca deserved better than this.
Deciding to improve on this effort, I opened the desk drawer where I keep the press cuttings relating to Rebecca’s disappearance and death carefully filed. It is a thick file that has grown relentlessly fatter with the passing of years—there is something about this case that newshounds cannot resist. They’re obsessed with the idea that there was a miscarriage of justice, of course; most seem to believe there was a concerted cover-up (they don’t hesitate to point the finger, I might add) and, given Rebecca’s beauty and réclame, the story makes undeniably good “copy,” as someone said to me recently—it was Terence Gray, I think.
I inspected the cuttings carefully. The Hanbury-Smythe approach having failed me, maybe these professional wordsmiths could give me a few tips. They, along with our local gossips, have contrived to keep the story alive. Speculation about Rebecca herself, and the manner of her death, has never died down, as I’d once naively expected it would. Quite the reverse. He
r disappearance and demise are still the subject of frequent articles; most of them—as Gray scornfully put it—are “cuttings jobs,” in which by dint of repetition the most dubious information has hardened into “truth.” There have been at least two books devoted to the subject, both purporting to contain new and sensational information—and both of them are works of romantic fiction (in my view, at least).
As a result, the “Manderley Mystery,” as it’s come to be called, has become one of the “Classic Conundrums of Crime”—I’m quoting here from a man named Eric Evans, whom I was once foolish enough to allow to interview me. In those days—it was before the last war—there had been such a deluge of scandal, and it had rained down on my head for so long, that I’d finally decided to break my silence. I would produce proof of Rebecca’s final illness, and set the record straight. I know now that this was an error of the first magnitude. No self-respecting newshound is interested in “setting the record straight.” What they’re after is dirt.
Mr. Evans presented himself to me as an experienced crime reporter, a man with a nose for the truth. He wrote to me on paper with the Daily Telegraph heading (almost certainly pilfered, as I came to realize). I did notice that his letter was poorly typed, misspelled and ungrammatical, but I blamed some secretary girl. I believed him, fool that I was, when he spoke of a “crusade for truth.” I know I was at a low ebb—the gossip in Kerrith was by then so bad that I’d had to resign my seat on the Bench; even so I should have known better. I realized Evans was a crank within two minutes of meeting him, and ejected him immediately—thus acquiring a brand-new enemy, of course.
The scene of our interview, here in my study at The Pines, went like this:
(A November afternoon, 1936. Colonel Julyan, until recently magistrate for the district of Kerrith and Manderley, and an imposing figure, is seated at his desk. His wife, Elizabeth, whose health is now poor, opens the door, announces the visitor, and retreats. Enter Eric Evans, a man in his fifties, with thinning hair, a pale complexion, horn-rimmed spectacles, a northern accent, and a fanatical look. He is carrying a suitcase, which he immediately opens. It proves to be filled with newspaper cuttings, photographs of Rebecca de Winter torn from magazines, and the handwritten notes for the book that he now announces he is writing on the “Manderley Mystery.” He sits down and glares at Barker, the Colonel’s young dog, who is growling. Evans does not produce a notebook or a pen, but embarks on his questions at once.)
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