Mrs De Winter by Susan Hill Read Free Book Online

brush with mortal danger, there had been too much misunderstanding, we had almost lost one another as a result of it. We knew our own luck, knew the value of what we had too well to dare to take any risk, even of the slightest angry word over something trivial. When people have been through what we had, they do not tempt fate.
    I held his hand. ‘It will soon be over,’ I said. *We will have to be polite to people, say the right things, for Giles’s sake. For Beatrice. But then they will be gone.’
    ‘And we can go. First thing tomorrow. Perhaps even tonight.’
    ‘But surely … we will have to stay and support Giles a bit longer? A day or two. He looks so awful, poor man, so broken.’
    ‘He has Roger.’
    We were silent. Roger. There was nothing to be said.
     
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    ‘He has plenty of friends. They always did. We would be no use to him.’
    I did not reply, did not press it, not yet, did not dare to say that I wanted to stay, not because of Giles or Roger or Beatrice, but because we were here, home, back at last and my heart was full. I felt released, new born, desperate with a sort of sickness at the sight of the autumn fields, the trees and hedgerows, the sky and the sunlight, even the black flocks of swirling, flapping crows. I was guilty and ashamed, as if I were betraying Maxim and my loyalty to him as his wife, so that then, in a small, pathetic gesture that only I could understand I deliberately turned my head away from the window and refused to look at what I saw and loved, and instead kept my eyes only on Maxim’s pale, ill looking face, and on my own hand holding his aad on the black leather of the car seat and the shoulders of the driver’s black coat.
    We were slowing down, the house was there, we could see Roger helping his father out of the other car.
    Maxim said, ‘I can’t face it. I can’t stand what they will say and how they will look at us. Julyan was there. Did you see him?’
    I had not.
    ‘On two sticks. And the Cartwrights and the Tredints.’
    ‘It doesn’t matter, Maxim. Fll talk to them, I’ll deal with them all, you will only have to shake hands. Besides, they will want to talk about Beatrice. No one will mention anything else at all.’
    They won’t have to. It will be written all over their faces and I shall see it. I shall know what they are thinking.’
     
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    As I paused, as the door opened, in that split second before I began to get out of the car then, I heard what Maxim had just said being played and replayed over and over again in my mind, so that the second seemed to last for an eternity, I was standing there, frozen, forever, there was all time and no time in which I heard it. ‘It will be written all over their faces. I shall know what they are thinking.’ And my own small, secret, poisonous voice supplied the answer. ‘He is a murderer. He shot Rebecca. That is Maxim de Winter who killed his wife.’
    There’s Frank now. Hell.’
    ‘Maxim, Frank of all people will be careful not to say anything. Frank will help us, you know that. Frank will understand.’
    ‘It’s the understanding I don’t think I can cope with.’
    And then he left the car, turning away from me, I saw him cross the drive, saw Frank Crawley step forward, offer his hand, saw him touch Maxim’s arm for a moment, drawing him into his protective circle. Sympathetic. Understanding.
    And the golden October sun shone down on us, all the black crows, gathering for the feast.
     
    People were very kind to us. I felt their kindness like a blanket wrapping us round, warm, suffocating, and they were tactful, too, they tried not to stare. I could see them trying. Wives had said to husbands before setting out, Now remember, if the de Winters are by any chance there — and I’ve heard that they may be coming — don’t ask … don’t mention … don’t stare, and so they did not, they avoided us, skirting the far
     
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    side of the room, or else they did the opposite, strode up to us heartily,