Rebecca

The mystery of Rebecca's death unravels when a diver, investigating a separate shipwreck near Manderley, discovers Rebecca's sailing boat still submerged with her decomposed body inside — proof that the body identified as hers two months after her supposed drowning was actually someone else's. Confronted with this, Maxim finally tells the narrator the truth: his marriage to Rebecca was a hollow sham. Rebecca was cruel, promiscuous, and manipulative, carrying on affairs while performing the role of the perfect wife for society's benefit. On the night she died, she goaded Maxim by telling him she was pregnant with another man's child that he would be forced to raise as his own heir. In a rage, Maxim shot her. He then placed her body in her own boat and scuttled it at sea to make her death look like a sailing accident. Rather than recoiling from him, the narrator feels only relief — she now knows Maxim has always loved her, and never loved Rebecca.

When Rebecca's boat is raised, it becomes clear the boat's sea-cocks were deliberately opened, and an inquest is convened. Jack Favell, Rebecca's cousin and lover, tries to blackmail Maxim, insisting Rebecca would never have killed herself, and produces a note she sent him the night she died as evidence she was planning to meet him, not end her life. This leads to the discovery that Rebecca had visited a London doctor shortly before her death. The doctor reveals that Rebecca had cancer and only months to live — and, due to a malformation of her uterus, could never have conceived a child at all. Her claim of pregnancy was a lie. Maxim and the narrator conclude that Rebecca, knowing she was dying and unwilling to face a slow, painful decline, deliberately provoked Maxim into killing her quickly — a final act of control even in death, consistent with Mrs. Danvers' own comment that Rebecca feared nothing except a lingering death.

With the inquest's suicide verdict standing and Favell's blackmail attempt defused, Maxim and the narrator believe they might finally be free of Rebecca's shadow. But they learn that Mrs. Danvers has vanished from Manderley without warning. Uneasy, Maxim insists on driving through the night to get home. As they approach, they see a glow lighting the horizon and ash blowing on the wind — Manderley is on fire. The novel ends at this moment, with the house engulfed in flames, strongly implying that Mrs. Danvers, unable to bear seeing Rebecca's memory erased and the new Mrs. de Winter reign in her place, has set the fire herself.

The book's opening chapters, which frame the entire narrative as a memory, make clear the aftermath: Manderley is destroyed, and Maxim and the narrator now live a rootless, quiet life together in small hotels around the Mediterranean, unable to return to England or rebuild what was lost. The narrator's recurring dream of Manderley — beautiful, overgrown, and gone — bookends the story, confirming that the estate's destruction was final and that the couple's peace, however hard-won, comes at the cost of the home and the life Maxim once had.