'Who looked after Mrs de Winter's boat?'
'She looked after it herself.'
'She employed no hand?'
'No, nobody at all.'
"The boat was moored in the private harbour belonging to Manderley?'
'Yes.'
'Any stranger who tried to tamper with the boat would be seen?
There is no access to the harbour by public footpath?'
'No, none at all.'
'The harbour is quiet, is it not, and surrounded by trees?'
'Yes.'
'A trespasser might not be noticed?'
'Possibly not.'
'Yet James Tabb has told us, and we have no reason to disbelieve him, that a boat with those holes drilled in her bottom and the seacocks open could not float for more than ten or fifteen minutes.'
'Quite.'
'Therefore we can put aside the idea that the boat was tampered with maliciously before Mrs de Winter went for her evening sail.
Had that been the case the boat would have sunk at her moorings.'
'No doubt.'
'Therefore we must assume that whoever took the boat out that night drove in the planking and opened the seacocks.'
'I suppose so.'
'You have told us already that the door of the cabin was shut, the portholes closed, and your wife's remains were on the floor.
This was in your statement, and in Doctor Phillips', and in Captain Searle's?'
'Yes.'
'And now added to this is the information that a spike was driven through the bottom, and the seacocks were open.
Does not this strike you, Mr de Winter, as being very strange?'
'Certainly.'
'You have no suggestion to make?'
'No, none at all.'
'Mr de Winter, painful as it may be, it is my duty to ask you a very personal question.'
'Yes.'
'Were relations between you and the late Mrs de Winter perfectly happy?'
They had to come of course, those black spots in front of my eyes, dancing, flickering, stabbing the hazy air, and it was hot, so hot, with all these people, all these faces, and no open window; the door, from being near to me, was further away than I had thought, and all the time the ground coming up to meet me.
And then, out of the queer mist around me, Maxim's voice, clear and strong.
'Will someone take my wife outside?
She is going to faint.'
Chapter twenty-three
I was sitting in the little room again.
The room like a waiting-room at the station.
The policeman was there, bending over me, giving me a glass of water, and someone's hand was on my arm, Frank's hand.
I sat quite still, the floor, the walls, the figures of Frank and the policeman taking solid shape before me.
'I'm so sorry,' I said, 'such a stupid thing to do.
It was so hot in that room, so very hot.'
'It gets very airless in there,' said the policeman, 'there's been complaints about it often, but nothing's ever done.
We've had ladies fainting in there before.'
'Are you feeling better, Mrs de Winter?' said Frank.
'Yes. Yes, much better.
I shall be all right again.
Don't wait with me.'
'I'm going to take you back to Manderley.'
'No.'