Listen to the sea.'
Even with the windows closed and the shutters fastened I could hear it; a low sullen murmur as the waves broke on the white shingle in the cove.
The tide would be coming in fast now and running up the beach nearly to the stone cottage.
'He has not used these rooms since the night she was drowned,' she said.
'He had his things moved out from the dressing-room.
We made up one of the rooms at the end of the corridor.
I don't think he slept much even there.
He used to sit in the armchair.
There would be cigarette ash all round it in the morning.
And in the daytime Frith would hear him in the library pacing up and down.
Up and down, up and down.'
I too could see the ash on the floor beside the chair.
I too could hear his footsteps; one, two, one, two, backwards and forwards across the library… Mrs Danvers closed the door softly between the bedroom and the ante-room where we were standing, and put out the light.
I could not see the bed any more, nor the nightdress case upon the pillow, nor the dressing-table, nor the slippers by the chair.
She crossed the ante-room and put her hand on the knob of the door and stood waiting for me to follow her.
'I come to the rooms and dust them myself every day,' she said.
'If you want to come again you have only to tell me.
Ring me on the house telephone.
I shall understand.
I don't allow the maids up here.
No one ever comes but me.'
Her manner was fawning again, intimate and unpleasant.
The smile on her face was a false, unnatural thing.
'Sometimes when Mr de Winter is away, and you feel lonely, you might like to come up to these rooms and sit here.
You have only to tell me.
They are such beautiful rooms.
You would not think she had gone now for so long, would you, not by the way the rooms are kept?
You would think she had just gone out for a little while and would be back in the evening.'
I forced a smile.
I could not speak.
My throat felt dry and tight.
'It's not only this room,' she said. 'It's in many rooms in the house.
In the morning-room, in the hall, even in the little flower-room.
I feel her everywhere.
You do too, don't you?'
She stared at me curiously.
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
'Sometimes, when I walk along the corridor here, I fancy I hear her just behind me.
That quick, light footstep.
I could not mistake it anywhere.
And in the minstrels' gallery above the hall.
I've seen her leaning there, in the evenings in the old days, looking down at the hall below and calling to the dogs.
I can fancy her there now from time to time.
It's almost as though I catch the sound of her dress sweeping the stairs as she comes down to dinner.'
She paused.
She went on looking at me, watching my eyes.
'Do you think she can see us, talking to one another now?' she said slowly.
'Do you think the dead come back and watch the living?'
I swallowed.
I dug my nails into my hands.