Manderley has become mistress of Manderley, senses an atmosphere of doom about it, due to the death of Max's first wife (the titular Rebecca), and it is hinted that she haunts the estate. Childhood visits to Milton Hall, Cambridgeshire, home of the Fitzwilliam family, influenced the descriptions of Manderley, especially the interior. She told the 10th Earl Fitzwilliam in a letter that when she wrote "Rebecca" 20 years later, the interior of Manderley was based on her recollection of the rooms and 'big house feel' of Milton in the First World War. The adult du Maurier's Cornish home near Fowey, called
The House on the Strand the phone but suddenly finds he is unable to grip it. The ending is left open: is Dick dead, paralysed or simply collapsing? Daphne du Maurier said of it: "What about the hero of "The House on the Strand"? What did it mean when he dropped the telephone at the end of the book? I don’t really know, but I rather think he was going to be paralysed for life. Don’t you?" The House on the Strand The House on the Strand is a novel by Daphne du Maurier. First published in the UK in 1969 by Victor Gollancz, with