“You come down here to Manderley,” he said, waving his arm vaguely, “you take on all this place, meet hundreds of people you’ve never seen before, you put up with old Max and his moods, you don’t give a fig for anyone, you just go your own way. I call it a damn good effort, and I don’t care who hears me say so. A damn good effort.” He swayed a little as he stood. He steadied himself, and put the empty glass down on the table. “This business has been a shock to me, you know,” he said. “A bloody awful shock. Rebecca was my cousin. I was damn fond of her.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m very sorry for you.”
“We were brought up together,” he went on. “Always tremendous pals. Liked the same things, the same people. Laughed at the same jokes. I suppose I was fonder of Rebecca than anyone else in the world. And she was fond of me. All this has been a bloody shock.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, of course.”
“And what is Max going to do about it, that’s what I want to know? Does he think he can sit back quietly now that sham inquest is over? Tell me that?” He was not smiling anymore. He bent towards me.
“I’m going to see justice is done to Rebecca,” he said, his voice growing louder. “Suicide… God Almighty, that doddering old fool of a Coroner got the jury to say suicide. You and I know it wasn’t suicide, don’t we?” He leaned closer to me still. “Don’t we?” he said slowly.
The door opened and Maxim came into the room, with Frank just behind him. Maxim stood quite still, with the door open, staring at Favell. “What the hell are you doing here?” he said.
Favell turned round, his hands in his pockets. He waited a moment, and then he began to smile. “As a matter of fact, Max, old chap, I came to congratulate you on the inquest this afternoon.”
“Do you mind leaving the house?” said Max, “or do you want Crawley and me to chuck you out?”
“Steady a moment, steady a moment,” said Favell. He lit another cigarette, and sat down once more on the arm of the sofa.
“You don’t want Frith to hear what I’m going to say, do you?” he said. “Well, he will, if you don’t shut that door.”
Maxim did not move. I saw Frank close the door very quietly.
“Now, listen here, Max,” said Favell, “you’ve come very well out of this affair, haven’t you? Better than you ever expected. Oh, yes, I was in the court this afternoon, and I dare say you saw me. I was there from start to finish. I saw your wife faint, at a rather critical moment, and I don’t blame her. It was touch and go, then, wasn’t it, Max, what way the inquiry would go? And luckily for you it went the way it did. You hadn’t squared those thick-headed fellows who were acting jury, had you? It looked damn like it to me.”
Maxim made a move towards Favell, but Favell held up his hand.
“Wait a bit, can’t you?” he said. “I haven’t finished yet. You realize, don’t you, Max, old man, that I can make things damned unpleasant for you if I choose. Not only unpleasant, but shall I say dangerous?”
I sat down on the chair beside the fireplace. I held the arms of the chair very tight. Frank came over and stood behind the chair. Still Maxim did not move. He never took his eyes off Favell.
“Oh, yes?” he said, “in what way can you make things dangerous?”
“Look here, Max,” said Favell, “I suppose there are no secrets between you and your wife and from the look of things Crawley there just makes the happy trio. I can speak plainly then, and I will. You all know about Rebecca and me. We were lovers, weren’t we? I’ve never denied it, and I never will. Very well then. Up to the present I believed, like every other fool, that Rebecca was drowned sailing in the bay, and that her body was picked up at Edgecoombe weeks afterwards. It was a shock to me then, a bloody shock. But I said to myself, That’s the sort of death Rebecca would choose, she’d go out like she lived, fighting.” He paused, he sat there on the edge of the sofa, looking at all of us in turn. “Then I pick up the evening paper a few days ago and I read that Rebecca’s boat had been stumbled on by the local diver and that there was a body in the cabin. I couldn’t understand it. Who the hell would Rebecca have as a sailing companion? It didn’t make sense. I came down here, and put up at a pub just outside Kerrith. I got in touch with Mrs. Danvers. She told me then that the body in the cabin was Rebecca’s. Even so I thought like everyone else that the first body was a mistake and Rebecca had somehow got shut in the cabin when she went to fetch a coat. Well, I attended that inquest today, as you know. And everything went smoothly, didn’t it, until Tabb gave his evidence? But after that? Well, Max, old man, what have you got to say about those holes in the floorboards, and those sea-cocks turned full on?”