'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 any more.'
'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.