Episode 51: A Clump of Seaweed

Monday, September 5, 1966

My name is Victoria Winters. Collinwood mansion, situated on top of Widow’s Hill, has a long history of sudden and violent death, and once again it strikes—this time under my very eyes.

Vicki screams as she and Carolyn look down at the dead body in the crashing waves on the beach.

Roger tries to convince Liz she should go to sleep. Liz is afraid something has happened to Bill. Roger wonders if Bill has to ask permission from Liz every time he spends the night with a friend. Worrying about her daughter is one thing, but Bill is something else again.

Liz agrees. Bill is the most reliable man she’s ever known.

Carolyn and Vicki burst in and tell Roger and Liz about the dead body. 

Liz wants Roger to go out and check with a flashlight, but he says that’s why they have Matthew.

Liz calls Matthew and asks him to go check it out.

Carolyn and Vicki insist it was a dead body. Not a rock and not seaweed.

Vicki wonders if maybe this is a joke David is playing. He does have death on his mind.

Matthew makes his way down the beach.

Roger wonders if it could have been a dead woman. That's what all the legends are about. The second one was a governess.

Vicki says she knows all about that—and that another is supposed to happen.

Carolyn asks to bunk with Vicki for the night, and they decide in favor of Liz’s suggestion of cocoa. 

Carolyn wonders who it could have been. No one states the obvious possibility.

Liz tells Roger she chooses to believe the girls are mistaken. She wants to talk about this meeting with Bill Malloy.

“He’s old-fashioned and hidebound,” Roger complains.

Liz acknowledges that Bill lacks initiative and intuition (which sounds nothing like Bill! For shame, Liz, for shame!).

She tells Roger she asked Ned to come back, but he turned her down. Roger wonders if she had a personal reason for calling him.

Matthew comes back. Carolyn and Vicki come back from the kitchen. Matthew tells them there is no body. 

Carolyn wonders if it could be a ghost. Matthew says he knows too much to laugh at the tales of Collinwood.

Vicki wonders if it could have been washed out to sea.

Roger says that’s impossible. There wouldn’t have been time.

Matthew says nothing is impossible at Collinwood.

Roger and Liz go back to the drawing room.

Carolyn isn’t sure of what she saw anymore. Vicki wonders if Matthew could be lying.

Liz wonders to Roger if Matthew is telling the truth.

Roger calls Sam, asking if he’s heard from Bill Malloy. He has not. Roger says neither has he and hangs up.

Liz goes to talk with Matthew. 

He tells her he expected to find Bill Malloy when he went to look for the body. Everyone knows he was missing. He was a man of habits. This represents a break from his habits.

She asks Matthew to take her down to see where the body isn’t.

Vicki and Carolyn are heading out to look again too. Carolyn doesn’t want to; she hoped Uncle Roger would. Vicki asks him if he will come with them.

Matthew shows Liz the clump of seaweed down below that looks like a dead man. Now she can go put the girls’ minds at ease.

Vicki and Carolyn continue trying to convince Roger. He says he doesn’t want this mysterious death rumor to get back to David. It could cause irreparable harm.

Liz returns to tell them there’s no need to go look. Carolyn and Vicki are convinced.

Roger says they expected to see death because of David.

Vicki tells them what David said earlier, about being able to see Bill Malloy, dead, in his crystal ball, and that Roger had killed him.

        Cast, In Order of Appearance

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

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

Roger Collins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Louis Edmonds

Elizabeth Collins Stoddard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joan Bennett

Matthew Morgan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Thayer David

Fashion by Ohrbach’s

Directed by John Sedwick

Written by Francis Swann