Rebecca

can't hurt us if we are together. You'll have children too.' After a while he glanced at his watch. 'It's ten past six,' he said, 'I shall have to be going. It won't take long, not more than half an hour. We've got to go down to the crypt.'

I held his hand. 'I'll come with you. I shan't mind. Let me come with you.'

'No,' he said. 'No, I don't want you to come.'

Then he went out of the room. I heard the sound of the car starting up in the drive. Presently the sound died away, and I knew he had gone.

Robert came to clear away the tea. It was like any other day. The routine was unchanged. I wondered if it would have been so had Maxim not come back from Lanyon. I wondered if Robert would have stood there, that wooden expression on his young sheep's face, brushing the crumbs from the snow-white cloth, picking up the table, carrying it from the room.

It seemed very quiet in the library when he had gone. I began to think of them down at the church, going through that door and down the flight of stairs to the crypt. I had never been there. I had only seen the door. I wondered what a crypt was like, if there were coffins standing there. Maxim's father and mother. I wondered what would happen to the coffin of that other woman who had been put there by mistake. I wondered who she was, poor unclaimed soul, washed up by the wind and tide. Now another coffin would stand there. Rebecca would lie there in the crypt as well. Was the vicar reading the burial service there, with Maxim, and Frank, and Colonel Julyan standing by his side? Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. It seemed to me that Rebecca had no reality any more. She had crumbled away when they had found her on the cabin floor. It was not Rebecca who was lying in the crypt, it was dust. Only dust.

Just after seven the rain began to fall. Gently at first, a light pattering in the trees, and so thin I could not see it. Then louder and faster, a driving torrent falling slant ways from the slate sky, like water from a sluice. I left the windows open wide. I stood in front of them and breathed the cold clean air. The rain splashed into my face and on my hands. I could not see beyond the lawns, the falling rain came thick and fast. I heard it sputtering in the gutter- pipes above the window, and splashing on the stones of the terrace. There was no more thunder. The rain smelt of moss and earth and of the black bark of trees.

I did not hear Frith come in at the door. I was standing by the window, watching the rain. I did not see him until he was beside me.

'Excuse me, Madam,' he said, 'do you know if Mr de Winter will be long?'

'No,' I said, 'not very long.'

'There's a gentleman to see him, Madam,' said Frith after a moment's hesitation. 'I'm not quite sure what I ought to say. He's very insistent about seeing Mr de Winter.'

'Who is it?' I said. 'Is it anyone you know?'

Frith looked uncomfortable. 'Yes, Madam,' he said, 'it's a gentleman who used to come here frequently at one time, when Mrs de Winter was alive. A gentleman called Mr Favell.'

I knelt on the window-seat and shut the window. The rain was coming in on the cushions. Then I turned round and looked at Frith.

'I think perhaps I had better see Mr Favell,' I said.

'Very good, Madam.'

I went and stood over on the rug beside the empty fireplace. It was just possible that I should be able to get rid of Favell before Maxim came back. I did not know what I was going to say to him, but I was not frightened.

In a few moments Frith returned and showed Favell into the library. He looked much the same as before but a little rougher if possible, a little more untidy. He was the sort of man who invariably went hatless, his hair was bleached from the sun of the last days and his skin was deeply tanned. His eyes were rather bloodshot. I wondered if he had been drinking.

'I'm afraid Maxim is not here,' I said. 'I don't know when he will be back. Wouldn't it be better if you made an appointment to see him at the office in the morning?'

'Waiting doesn't worry me,' said Favell, 'and I don't think I shall have to wait very long, you know. I had a look in the dining-room as I came along, and I see Max's place is laid for dinner all right.'

'Our plans have been changed,' I said. 'It's quite possible Maxim won't be home at all this evening.'

'He's run off, has he?' said Favell, with a half smile I did not like. 'I wonder if you really mean it. Of course under the circumstances it's the wisest thing he can do. Gossip is an unpleasant thing to some people. It's more pleasant to avoid it, isn't it?'

'I don't know what you mean,' I said.

'Don't you?' he said. 'Oh, come, you don't expect me to believe that, do you? Tell me, are you feeling better? Too bad fainting like that at the inquest this afternoon. I would have come and helped you out but I saw you had one knight-errant already. I bet Frank Crawley enjoyed himself. Did you let him drive you home? You wouldn't let me drive you five yards when I offered to.'

'What do you want to see Maxim about?' I asked.

Favell leant forward to the table and helped himself to a cigarette. 'You don't mind my smoking, I suppose?' he said, 'it won't make you sick, will it? One never knows with brides.'

He watched me over his lighter. 'You've grown up a bit since I saw you last, haven't you?' he said. 'I wonder what you have been doing. Leading Frank Crawley up the garden path?' He blew a cloud of smoke in the air. 'I say, do you mind asking old Frith to get me a whisky and soda?'

I did not say anything. I went and rang the bell. He sat down on the edge of the sofa, swinging his legs, that half-smile on his lips. Robert answered the bell. 'A whisky and soda for Mr Favell,' I said.

'Well, Robert?' said Favell, 'I haven't seen you for a very long time. Still breaking the hearts of the girls in Kerrith?'

Robert flushed. He glanced at me, horribly embarrassed.

'All right, old chap, I won't give you away. Run along and get me a double whisky, and jump on it.'

Robert disappeared. Favell laughed, dropping ash all over the floor.

'I took Robert out once on his half-day,' he said. 'Rebecca bet me a fiver I wouldn't ask him. I won my fiver all right. Spent one of the funniest evenings of my life. Did I laugh? Oh, boy! Robert on the razzle takes a lot of beating, I tell you. I must say he's got a good eye for a girl. He picked the prettiest of the bunch we saw that night.'

Robert came back again with the whisky and soda on a tray. He still looked very red, very uncomfortable. Favell watched him with a smile as he poured out his drink, and then he began to laugh, leaning back on the arm of the sofa. He whistled the bar of a song, watching Robert all the while.

'That was the one, wasn't it?' he said, 'that was the tune? Do you still like ginger hair, Robert?'

Robert gave him a flat weak smile. He looked miserable. Favell laughed louder still. Robert turned and went out of the room.

'Poor kid,' said Favell. 'I don't suppose he's been on the loose since. That old ass Frith keeps him on a leading string.'

He began drinking his whisky and soda, glancing round the room, looking at me every now and again, and smiling.

'I don't think I shall mind very much if Max doesn't get back to dinner,' he said. 'What say you?'

I did not answer. I stood by the fireplace my hands behind my back. 'You wouldn't waste that place at the dining-room table, would you?' he said. He looked at me, smiling still, his head on one side.

'Mr Favell,' I said, 'I don't want to be rude, but as a matter of fact I'm very tired. I've had a long and fairly exhausting day. If you can't tell me what you want to see Maxim about it's not much good your sitting here. You had far better do as I suggest, and go round to the estate office in the morning.'

He slid off the arm of the sofa and came towards me, his glass in his hand. 'No, no,' he said. 'No, no, don't be a brute. I've had an exhausting day too. Don't run away and leave me, I'm quite harmless, really I am. I suppose Max has been telling tales about me to you?'

I did not answer. 'You think I'm the big, bad wolf, don't you?' he said, 'but I'm not, you know. I'm a perfectly ordinary, harmless bloke. And I think you are behaving splendidly over all this, perfectly splendidly. I take off my hat to you, I really do.' This last speech of his was very slurred and thick. I wished I had never told Frith I would see him.

'You come down here to Manderley,' he said, waving his arm vaguely, 'you take on all this place, meet