the flat

Rebecca de Winter's London flat was the secret counterpart to Manderley, a place where she shed the public persona of the perfect wife and lived according to her own rules. Located by the river, it was the site of her most private and unguarded existence, a space Maxim could not control and where she entertained lovers like Jack Favell. The flat represented the fundamental deception at the heart of the de Winter marriage: the gulf between the gracious hostess admired by the county and the woman who, as Maxim later revealed, would streak to London "like an animal to its hole in the ditch" after a weekend of playing the angel at Manderley.

Rebecca's Private Domain

The flat was Rebecca's personal territory, furnished and maintained entirely according to her taste and for her purposes. It was there that she kept her own schedule, made her own appointments, and received visitors Maxim would never have permitted at Manderley. The flat's existence allowed her to maintain the fiction of a happy marriage while living a completely independent life. When Maxim described her pattern of behavior, he noted that after fulfilling her social obligations at Manderley—garden parties, pageants, prize-givings—she would be "up at dawn driving to London, streaking to that flat of hers by the river like an animal to its hole in the ditch, coming back here at the end of the week, after five unspeakable days." The flat was thus the lair where she returned to her true nature, away from the constraints of her role as Mrs. de Winter.

The Scene of the Final Day

On the last day of her life, Rebecca spent the afternoon in London before driving down to Manderley. She left a note for Favell at his flat, written in her characteristic slanting hand, saying she was going down to Manderley right away and would be at the cottage on the beach that evening, asking him to follow her. The porter at Favell's building saw her leave the note at three o'clock. Earlier that day, she had kept a hair appointment from twelve to one-thirty, lunched at her club, and then—crucially—visited a doctor's consulting rooms in Bloomsbury under the false name "Mrs. Danvers." This appointment, recorded in her engagement diary as "Baker, two o'clock," was with a specialist who confirmed that she was suffering from terminal cancer. The flat and the London day thus formed the prelude to the confrontation at the cottage where Maxim shot her, and the medical truth she learned there provided the motive that would later explain the verdict of suicide at the inquest.

Narrative Significance

The flat functions as a spatial emblem of Rebecca's duality, the place where she was most herself and least the public figure. Its existence underscores the theme of hidden knowledge that pervades the novel: the second Mrs. de Winter, who never sees the flat, must piece together its significance from fragments of conversation and Maxim's anguished confessions. The flat is also the point of origin for the chain of events that leads to the discovery of the truth about Rebecca's death—the appointment with Doctor Baker, the note to Favell, and the final drive to Manderley. In the novel's moral geography, the flat represents the urban, modern, and transgressive pole opposed to the rural, traditional, and seemingly inviolate world of Manderley, yet it was from this London base that Rebecca's influence reached out to destroy the peace of the great house.