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…