Episode 80: Dance Steps

Friday, October 14, 1966

My name is Victoria Winters. The death of a friend of the Collins family has been written off as accidental, but in this great and gloomy house, there is still one man searching for something, something he fears might connect him with a death that was thought to have been accidental.

Roger retraces his steps searching for the pen.

Vicki comes in. Well, you do move about silently, don’t you?”

“Perhaps I could wear wooden shoes,” she counters.

“I suppose you wonder what I was doing.”

“Not at all. I know what you were doing.”

“Just what do you think I was doing?”

“You were practicing a new dance step.”

He says he was trying to remember something, but it wasn’t very important.

She is looking for something too, or someone—David.

Roger says he received a call that David was at the Collinsport Inn with Burke Devlin, but David was already gone when Roger got there to retrieve him.

Roger tries to convince Vicki to convince Liz not to hire Mrs. Johnson. Liz comes in and tells Roger not to interfere with the running of her house. Vicki suddenly has something to do.

Liz says she wants to spend more time with other things instead of the running of the house—for instance, David, since Roger has no time for him.

Roger thinks that’s what Vicki is for. Liz says she isn’t tied to David twenty-four hours a day, and she wants Vicki to spend more time with Carolyn.

If Liz is so concerned about David’s choice of companions, why has he become such good friends with Burke Devlin? (This actually goes against Roger’s case, as it suggests Liz having more time to spend with David would be a good thing.)

Carolyn asks Vicki for advice about Joe. Just because she broke a date with him, she hasn’t heard from him. Vicki suggests Carolyn call Joe.

“Then he’ll think I’m in the wrong.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Of course, but I don’t want him to know that.” She decides to call him.

Roger tells Liz that David was having something to eat with Burke Devlin at the Collinsport Inn. Mrs. Johnson was there too.

“With both of them?”

“Apparently not,” Roger admits.

Liz says she will speak to David about it.

Carolyn gets a good response to her phone call to Joe and is very happy. Roger asks why she’s so sure she gave the fountain pen back to him. She says because it was the night Bill Malloy died.

Roger looks on the beach for the pen.

Carolyn reports her success—Joe pretended the argument was all his fault. She wants to borrow a scarf. (Maybe she can get back the one she gave to Vicki—and didn’t she say she had a ton of them?)

Liz comes in to Vicki’s room, worrying about what to do with David. She needs help.

Carolyn says she should hire Mrs. Johnson. And it would be a nice thing to do for Mr. Malloy.

Carolyn hears Joe’s car in the drive and asks Vicki to go down and let him in.

Liz asks Carolyn about David and Burke. David thinks Burke is his friend.

She asks her mother if her hair’s all right.

“I wish everything in this house were as all right as your hair.”

Joe asks Vicki if Carolyn knows about his dancing with Maggie the other night. She might not understand. Vicki says she hasn’t said anything and she promises she won’t. Joe says if he weren’t in love with Carolyn, he might be in love with her.

Liz comes down and tells Joe she’d like to talk to him. They go into the drawing room.

Roger comes home. She asks if he’s found David. He says no.

He asks if anyone is in the drawing room. She tells him Liz and Joe. He wants to know what Joe is doing there. She says he’s here to see Carolyn. Roger asks if Carolyn knows about last night. Vicki says not unless Roger has said something. She suggests he doesn’t.

Roger interrupts Joe and Liz and discovers that Liz wants to give Joe a better job since Bill has died.

Roger is feeling threatened, so when Carolyn comes down, he tells her that Joe is only a fisherman. She wants to know what’s wrong with being a fisherman. 

Roger says they always think there are more fish in the sea. He tells her Joe had a “date” with Maggie last night. 

Roger and Carolyn go their separate ways, but when Joe and Liz are coming out from their discussion, Carolyn rushes down and rants that she isn’t something to be bought and sold and that Joe can be independent without her.

Vicki has been writing with the pen she found on the beach.

Carolyn comes in to confront Vicki. She wants to know why Vicki didn’t tell her.

“Would that have made you happy?”

Carolyn says Vicki is supposed to be her friend.

“I think I am.”

Carolyn says Liz offered Joe an opportunity for advancement in the company, but he wants to own his own boat.

Isn’t that what Carolyn wanted too?

Yes, because that’s what he wanted. And then they could get married.

“That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it?”

Carolyn isn’t sure. She thinks she’d like to go for a walk and fall in like Bill Malloy and not have any more problems.

“You do that. Only don’t get washed up on Widow’s Hill.”

Joe tells Liz to tell Carolyn he’ll call her later—if she’ll talk to him. Liz says she’ll get over it. Joe says there always seems to be something for her to get over. Liz asks him to seriously consider what she’s been saying.

Liz asks Roger to tell Carolyn she wants to speak with her. 

Then she calls Mrs. Johnson and tells her she’d like to speak to her about a job.

Roger comes to Vicki’s room looking for Carolyn. Vicki shows him the fountain pen she found.

 

                          Cast, In Order of Appearance

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

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

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

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

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

Fashion by Ohrbach’s

Directed by Lela Swift

Written by Francis Swann