Maxim waited. He stared in front of him still. Then he looked at me, sitting beside him on the floor.
“That’s all,” he said, “there’s no more to tell. I left the dinghy on the buoy, as she would have done. I went back and looked at the cottage. The floor was wet with the salt water. She might have done it herself. I walked up the path through the woods. I went into the house. Up the stairs to the dressing-room. I remember undressing. It began to blow and rain very hard. I was sitting there, on the bed, when Mrs. Danvers knocked on the door. I went and opened it, in my dressing gown, and spoke to her. She was worried about Rebecca. I told her to go back to bed. I shut the door again. I went back and sat by the window in my dressing gown, watching the rain, listening to the sea as it broke there, in the cove.”
We sat there together without saying anything. I went on holding his cold hands. I wondered why Robert did not come to clear the tea.
“She sank too close in,” said Maxim. “I meant to take her right out in the bay. They would never have found her there. She was too close in.”
“It was the ship,” I said; “it would not have happened but for the ship. No one would have known.”
“She was too close in,” said Maxim.
We were silent again. I began to feel very tired.
“I knew it would happen one day,” said Maxim, “even when I went up to Edgecoombe and identified that body as hers. I knew it meant nothing, nothing at all. It was only a question of waiting, of marking time. Rebecca would win in the end. Finding you has not made any difference has it? Loving you does not alter things at all. Rebecca knew she would win in the end. I saw her smile, when she died.”
“Rebecca is dead,” I said. “That’s what we’ve got to remember. Rebecca is dead. She can’t speak, she can’t bear witness. She can’t harm you anymore.”
“There’s her body,” he said, “the diver has seen it. It’s lying there, on the cabin floor.”
“We’ve got to explain it,” I said. “We’ve got to think out a way to explain it. It’s got to be the body of someone you don’t know. Someone you’ve never seen before.”
“Her things will be there still,” he said. “The rings on her fingers. Even if her clothes have rotted in the water there will be something there to tell them. It’s not like a body lost at sea, battered against rocks. The cabin is untouched. She must be lying there on the floor as I left her. The boat has been there, all these months. No one has moved anything. There is the boat, lying on the sea-bed where she sank.”
“A body rots in water, doesn’t it?” I whispered; “even if it’s lying there, undisturbed, the water rots it, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”
“How will you find out? how will you know?” I said.
“The diver is going down again at five-thirty tomorrow morning,” said Maxim. “Searle has made all the arrangements. They are going to try to raise the boat. No one will be about. I’m going with them. He’s sending his boat to pick me up in the cove. Five-thirty tomorrow morning.”
“And then?” I said, “if they get it up, what then?”
“Searle’s going to have his big lighter anchored there, just out in the deep water. If the boat’s wood has not rotted, if it still holds together, his crane will be able to lift it onto the lighter. They’ll go back to Kerrith then. Searle says he will moor the lighter at the head of that disused creek halfway up Kerrith harbor. It drives out very easily. It’s mud there at low water and the trippers can’t row up there. We shall have the place to ourselves. He says we’ll have to let the water drain out of the boat, leaving the cabin bare. He’s going to get hold of a doctor.”
“What will he do?” I said. “What will the doctor do?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“If they find out it’s Rebecca you must say the other body was a mistake,” I said. “You must say that the body in the crypt was a mistake, a ghastly mistake. You must say that when you went to Edgecoombe you were ill, you did not know what you were doing. You were not sure, even then. You could not tell. It was a mistake, just a mistake. You will say that, won’t you?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
“They can’t prove anything against you,” I said. “Nobody saw you that night. You had gone to bed. They can’t prove anything. No one knows but you and I. No one at all. Not even Frank. We are the only two people in the world to know, Maxim. You and I.”