Episode 35: The People She Meets

Friday, August 12, 1966

My name is Victoria Winters. The hand of death brushed close to the house on Widow’s Hill, then moved away, stirring the musty air with its touch, filling the corridors with the overpowering scent of fear and hatred.

David crouches down on the stairs in eavesdropping position as the phone rings. Carolyn answers. It’s Joe. She tells him she’ll take it in the other room. 

David picks up on the first phone after she leaves.

Joe pretends to be drunk. Very funny, Joe. 

Then he tells her how he went to pay Burke back for paying for his drinks and found he was having a little party with Vicki. Joe wants Carolyn to tell him she loves him, but she is not in the mood.

After hanging up, she goes into the hall and sees David by the phone. She asks if he was listening to her conversation. He doesn’t reply, and she grabs him, demanding an answer. He yells at her to let him go.

She goes back to the drawing room and looks pensively out the window. David follows her and tells her he didn’t listen to her call. She wants to know why he isn’t locked in his room. He tells her Aunt Elizabeth unlocked it. He wants to know where his father is. She doesn’t know and doesn’t care. She tells him to go find Miss Winters. He doesn’t know why she had to come there in the first place.

“Maybe she likes the people she meets,” Carolyn says bitterly.

David says he doesn’t like Vicki. He hates her.

Carolyn asks him to go up to his room.

David theorizes that Carolyn likes Burke. That’s why she’s upset—because Vicki is having dinner with him.

“So you didn’t listen to my phone call, did you?”

David says Vicki is probably only seeing Burke because she knows Carolyn likes him.

“Oh, David, David, you are a monster. A real, solid, 14-karat monster.”

“It’s true,” David shrieks in his evil voice. “Everything—”

“Get out of here!” Carolyn shrieks back.

A recast and jovial Sam Evans runs into Joe at the restaurant and they discuss hangovers. Joe asks how many times he had to propose to his wife before she said yes.

“I never did propose, Joe. She asked me.” Sam advises Joe not to come to him for advice. He doesn’t even know what to do about his own life. Joe says he always thought of Sam as a man who was doing exactly what he wanted to do. “A façade, my dear boy.” He adds, “If Maggie comes in, tell her I went up to see Burke Devlin.” He seems happy about it.

Joe advises him to knock first.

Sam tells Burke he hopes he isn’t disturbing him.

“Why should you be any different?” Burke says, and invites him to come in. He offers Sam Vicki’s abandoned steak. Sam wonders if the young lady was Carolyn Stoddard. Burke lets him know it wasn't.

But Sam has come about the portrait. He isn’t going to be able to do it after all. He doesn’t have the time right now. Burke is willing to wait. Sam doesn’t think the portrait would be that good, since he hasn’t done one in years.

Burke wonders if Sam doesn’t want to do a portrait of a man accused of murder. He assures him the automobile accident is all cleared up now.

Carolyn watches the clock as she waits for Vicki to get home. 

Vicki thanks her for the use of the car and asks if there is anything left over from dinner. “I’m starved.”

“Why, didn’t Burke feed you well?”

Vicki asks if Carolyn is upset because she met Burke. Carolyn says Vicki has a perfect right to see anyone she wants.

“I don’t think you really mean that.”

“You think I’m jealous of you, don’t you?”

Vicki says she hardly knows Burke, and Vicki has always thought of her with Joe.

Carolyn says she’s surprised Vicki would have dinner with Burke after warning Carolyn about him so much. (That is actually a good point.)

Vicki says she just went to talk to Burke to see if he could help her find out anything about her past. Carolyn wants to know if she and Burke made any plans for her future while they were at it. Vicki decides to go see what’s in the kitchen.

Sam tells Burke he told Maggie he’d slow down on his drinking. Burke points out that he told her he’d do Burke’s portrait too.

Burke thinks Roger is applying some kind of pressure to Sam.

Why should Roger care if Sam does a portrait of Burke?

Because that would be ten or twenty days of posing, ten or twenty days when Sam and Burke would see each other.

Burke offers $1500, and Sam gives in.

Sam goes back to the restaurant and asks Joe to sit with him for a while. He asks about Joe’s girlfriend troubles. Joe just wants to be happy.

Sam notes that that’s a simple goal, but one of the most elusive. He advises Joe to marry Carolyn and take her away—while there’s still time.

Carolyn apologizes to Vicki. She admits she was jealous, even though Burke doesn’t mean anything to her. She just has to grab everything.

“That’s a good way to end up with nothing.” She tells Carolyn the next time she sees Burke Devlin, she’ll come home ready for a fight.

Carolyn worries, if even she can turn against her for no reason at all.

After Carolyn leaves, Vicki calls the hotel and asks for Burke. He’s not available, but she doesn’t leave a message.

She catches David skulking outside the drawing room. At first he won’t answer her. Then he says, “You’re going to be sorry you ever came here.”

        Cast, In Order of Appearance

Victoria Winters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Alexandra Moltke

David Collins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David Henesy

Carolyn Stoddard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nancy Barrett

Joe Haskell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joel Crothers

Sam Evans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  David Ford

Burke Devlin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mitchell Ryan

Fashion by Ohrbach’s

Directed by Lela Swift

Story created and written by Art Wallace