"Excuse me, sir," said the boatbuilder, "but there is a little bit more to it than that. And if you would allow me I should like to make a further statement."
"Very well, go on," said the Coroner.
"It's like this, sir. After the accident last year a lot of people in Kerrith made unpleasantness about my work. Some said I had let Mrs. de Winter start the season in a leaky, rotten boat. I lost two or three orders because of it. It was very unfair, but the boat had sunk, and there was nothing I could say to clear myself. Then that steamer went ashore, as we all know, and Mrs. de Winter's little boat was found, and brought to the surface. Captain Searle himself gave me permission yesterday to go and look at her, and I did. I wanted to satisfy myself that the work I had put in to her was sound, in spite of the fact that she had been waterlogged for twelve months or more."
"Well, that was very natural," said the Coroner, "and I hope you were satisfied."
"Yes, sir, I was. There was nothing wrong with that boat as regards the work I did to her. I examined every corner of her there on the lighter up the pill where Captain Searle had put her. She had sunk on sandy bottom. I asked the diver about that, and he told me so. She had not touched the ridge at all. The ridge was a clear five feet away. She was lying on sand, and there wasn't the mark of a rock on her."
He paused. The Coroner looked at him expectantly.
"Well?" he said, "is that all you want to say?"
"No, sir," said Tabb emphatically, "it's not. What I want to know is this. Who drove the holes in her planking? Rocks didn't do it. The nearest rock was five feet away. Besides, they weren't the sort of marks made by a rock. They were holes. Done with a spike."
I did not look at him. I was looking at the floor. There was oilcloth laid on the boards. Green oilcloth. I looked at it.
I wondered why the Coroner did not say something. Why did the pause last so long? When he spoke at last his voice sounded rather far away.
"What do you mean?" he said, "what sort of holes?"
"There were three of them altogether," said the boatbuilder, "one right for'ard, by her chain locker, on her starboard planking, below the water-line. The other two close together amidships, underneath her floor boards in the bottom. The ballast had been shifted too. It was lying loose. And that's not all. The sea-cocks had been turned on."
"The sea-cocks? What are they?" asked the Coroner.
"The fitting that plugs the pipes leading from a washbasin or lavatory, sir. Mrs. de Winter had a little place fitted up right aft. And there was a sink for'ard, where the washing-up was done. There was a sea-cock there, and another in the lavatory. These are always kept tight closed when you're under way, otherwise the water would flow in. When I examined the boat yesterday both sea-cocks were turned full on."
It was hot, much too hot. Why didn't they open a window? We should be suffocated if we sat here with the air like this, and there were so many people, all breathing the same air, so many people.
"With those holes in her planking, sir, and the sea-cocks not closed, it wouldn't take long for a small boat like her to sink. Not much more than ten minutes, I should say. Those holes weren't there when the boat left my yard. I was proud of my work and so was Mrs. de Winter. It's my opinion, sir, that the boat never capsized at all. She was deliberately scuttled."
I must try and get out of the door. I must try and go back to the waiting room again. There was no air left in this place, and the person next to me was pressing close, close... Someone in front of me was standing up, and they were talking, too, they were all talking. I did not know what was happening. I could not see anything. It was hot, so very hot. The Coroner was asking everybody to be silent. And he said something about "Mr. de Winter." I could not see. That woman's hat was in front of me. Maxim was standing up now. I could not look at him. I must not look at him. I felt like this once before. When was it? I don't know. I don't remember. Oh, yes, with Mrs. Danvers. The time Mrs. Danvers stood with me by the window. 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 sea-cocks were open. Do you doubt his statement?"
"Of course not. He's a boatbuilder, 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 harbor belonging to Manderley?"
"Yes."
"Any stranger who tried to tamper with the boat would be seen? There is no access to the harbor by public footpath?"
"No, none at all."
"The harbor 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 sea-cocks 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 sea-cocks."
"I suppose so."
"You have told us already that the door of the cabin was shut, the port-holes 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 sea-cocks 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 wi
ndow; 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."
23
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 marketplace, through the empty town, and out onto 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 anymore."
"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 traveled 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 somber 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 sometime, 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 gray. 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.