Rebecca's death

Rebecca's death is the concealed crime around which the entire narrative of Rebecca revolves, a murder that Maxim de Winter confesses to his second wife in the library at Manderley, shattering the official story of a drowning accident. For more than a year, the public, the servants, and even the inquest believed that Rebecca had been lost at sea when her boat capsized in the bay. The truth, which Maxim reveals in a single, devastating confession, is that he shot her in the stone cottage on the cove, placed her body in the cabin of her sailing boat, and scuttled the vessel in the deep water beyond the headland. This event, long buried, resurfaces when a stranded ship's diver discovers the sunken boat and the remains inside, forcing Maxim to confront the past he thought he had escaped.

Causes and Background

The murder was the culmination of a marriage that Maxim describes as a "farce from the very first." Rebecca, he tells his second wife, was "vicious, damnable, rotten through and through" and incapable of love, tenderness, or decency. She had made a cynical bargain with him on the hills above Monte Carlo shortly after their wedding: she would run Manderley, make it a showplace, and play the part of the perfect wife, while he would tolerate her secret life in London and her affairs. For years, Maxim endured this arrangement, putting Manderley first, but the situation deteriorated when Rebecca began to grow careless, bringing her lovers to the estate and using the cottage on the cove for assignations. The final crisis came when Rebecca, returning from London earlier than expected, told Maxim she was pregnant and that the child would pass as his heir, entailing Manderley to her son. This threat to his beloved home, combined with years of degradation, drove Maxim to the breaking point.

What Happens

On the night of the murder, Maxim had dined with Frank Crawley and returned to Manderley around half past ten. Finding Rebecca's scarf and gloves in the hall, he guessed she had gone to the cottage on the cove. He took a gun and went down through the woods, intending to frighten her and her lover, Jack Favell. To his surprise, Rebecca was alone, lying on the divan with an ashtray full of cigarette stubs. She looked ill and queer. When Maxim confronted her about Favell and declared the end of their arrangement, Rebecca calmly revealed her pregnancy and her plan to pass the child off as his. She taunted him, saying that no one would ever believe him if he tried to divorce her, that she could make him look foolish, and that the child would inherit Manderley. As she stood by the window, smiling, one hand in her pocket, the other holding a cigarette, Maxim fired at her heart. The bullet passed right through. She did not fall at once but stood there, looking at him, that slow smile on her face, her eyes wide open. Maxim then had to deal with the aftermath: the blood on the floor, the need to fetch water from the cove to clean the cottage, the window that kept banging in the wind. He carried her body to the boat, Je Reviens, and took it out into the bay. In the darkness and the squally wind, he struggled with the sails, opened the seacocks, and drove a spike through the bottom planks. The boat sank, and he returned to the cove in the dinghy, then walked back through the woods to the house, undressed, and was sitting in his dressing-room when Mrs Danvers knocked to say she was worried about Rebecca.

Consequences and Aftermath

The immediate consequence was a false identification: Maxim went to Edgecoombe and identified a different body as Rebecca's, a mistake that allowed the official story of a drowning accident to stand. For over a year, he lived with the secret, haunted by the fear that the truth would emerge. The discovery of the boat by the diver, prompted by the stranding of a ship in the bay, unravels the cover-up. The inquest, initially leaning toward suicide, is complicated by the boat-builder James Tabb's testimony that the boat had been deliberately scuttled with holes and open seacocks. Jack Favell, Rebecca's cousin and lover, attempts blackmail, but the revelation from Doctor Baker that Rebecca was terminally ill with cancer and had only months to live provides a plausible motive for suicide, allowing the verdict to stand. The ultimate consequence is the destruction of Manderley itself, which burns to the ground on the night Maxim and his second wife return from London, a fire that may have been set by the vengeful Mrs Danvers, who disappears after learning the truth. The novel ends with the narrator dreaming of Manderley as a ruined, overgrown shell, a sepulchre where their fear and suffering lie buried.