Free Rebecca's Tale by Sally Beauman

1912—certainly before the first war.
    I did not recognize her. I will write that again. I did not recognize her . Now I can see that the resemblance of this child to the woman I knew was evident—hair and eyes were unmistakable even then. Now I can see that I should have made the connection at once. After all, not a day has gone by in twenty-five years without my thinking of her. But, at the time, puzzled, uneasy, and flustered, I could not see the resemblance. Not until I turned the page and discovered the two title words written down in an otherwise empty notebook. They were written in black ink, in a child’s spiky hand, the tail of the last letter curling down the page in a long punning flourish: Rebecca’s Tale .
    I was shaken—very shaken. Who wanted to torment me now, and why? I’m ashamed to admit it, but I will: My first thought was that Rebecca herself had sent this, that it was a communication from the grave. I felt dizzy for a moment. I looked at the words Rebecca’s Tale , and my desk tilted. Could it be her handwriting? Was this, inembryo, the hand I knew so well? I thought it was. I looked at the size and swoop of the capital letters: I thought of that small coffin, that child’s coffin in my dream.
    I was very agitated. My heart started its bumping and thumping routine again. When I was sure I was more composed, I examined the sepia picture postcard. It had once been glued in on the final page, and the glue marks seemed old. I had never seen that particular postcard of Manderley before, and its presence in the notebook puzzled me. As far as I knew, Rebecca had no connection with this area in childhood and had never visited it, so why would she paste a picture of Manderley in a notebook she’d had as a young girl?
    The handwriting on the envelope bore no resemblance to Rebecca’s, or to the writing in the notebook, as I would have realized at once had the shock been less acute. The postmark was indecipherable. I examined the very ordinary heavy-duty envelope. It could have been bought anywhere in the country, in any one of a thousand stationery shops or village stores; I had a similar batch in my own desk drawers. I looked at the postmark through my magnifying lens; one of the letters might conceivably have been a “K,” though it could have been an “E.”
    I stared at this evidence. A sudden suspicion came to me, and I at once placed my call to Terence Gray.
    I made no mention of the lunch Ellie had proposed: Let the persistent Terence (or the Terrier or the Terror, as I sometimes call him) fend for himself. I had mixed feelings toward Gray at the best of times, and at that precise moment was not at all kindly inclined to him. Could he possibly have sent me this? If so, why? I’d get the answers to those questions, I resolved, before the day was out.
    “Has something happened, Colonel Julyan?” he asked as I made a few weather remarks. “There’s nothing wrong, I hope? You sound very agitated, sir.”
    I ignored the question. I proposed the afternoon walk, as planned. I said nothing of notebooks anonymously sent, nothing of winged children, and nothing of my dream. As expected, Mr. Mysteryman agreed at once.
    “I’m coming over to lunch anyway, sir,” he said. “I thought you’d know. Ellie called me earlier. So, I’ll see you about twelve-thirty. I’ll look forward to it, Colonel Julyan. There’s a great deal to tell you. Iheard from Jack Favell this morning. He called me from London, and he’s agreed to see me at last. Oh, and I went over to see Frith yesterday, at that nursing home you mentioned….”
    “You did what ?” I said.
    “I went to see Frith, sir. At St. Winnow’s. He’s very frail, of course, but you’re mistaken as to his being senile. Whoever told you that was quite wrong. His memory was excellent. We talked for two hours, and he gave me some fascinating material….”
    Material ? I hung up. Two shocks within half an hour was too much. Frith, whom I’d