The Collinsport Weather Report: Episode 87: The Treachery of a Small Boy

Tuesday, October 25, 1966

My name is Victoria Winters. Collinwood is a mansion with more than eighty rooms—but most of them have been closed off for years, and their only visitors have been ghosts and specters that locked doors cannot keep out—or in. As I have been kept a prisoner by the treachery of a small boy who has told no one where I am, time has seemed endless, and all I can do is sit—and wonder whether anyone will ever come to my rescue.

Vicki continues to be trapped in the closed-off wing of Collinwood.

“Well, kitten,” Roger says, asking her why she’s been out so late on such a night.

“Not fit for man nor beast,” she says. “Kittens love it.”

“Your mother was worried. She was about to send a posse out to search for you.”

“She never would have found me.”

“Are you as clever at hiding as Vicki is?”

Carolyn wants to know what he means, since she only worried about herself tonight—not her friend Vicki. She remarks that it’s strange that Vicki hasn’t been seen. Roger wonders if she could be at the Evans house. Carolyn, remembering to be angry and jealous over Joe, says Maggie had other plans for the evening, confirms that they were with Joe, and stalks off.

Joe is telling Maggie a story.

“It sounds like a Joseph Conrad story. How did you get back in?”

“Well, we didn’t. Not that night. They cut the engines off and we just drifted. Some of us sang songs. The old men told their favorite stories. Everybody’d heard ’em a hundred times except me.”

“Oh, I wish I’d been there.”

“Then we all realized that the silence had sort of crept up on us. The sea was calm again and starting to get light. And—with the sun rising, of course we got our bearings back. We returned to port about, oh, five in the afternoon. It’d been quite a night.”

Maggie pronounces it a great adventure and gets more coffee. Joe asks her why a boat is always called a she.

Maggie says that, like hurricanes (and women), they are unpredictable.

Joe grills Maggie on diesel engines and rigging of a schooner’s sail, which she rattles off before asking him about his boat, the one he wants to buy.

He tells her his partnership fell through. She says if only her father had kept even a little of the money he got for his big $15,000 painting sale years ago, they could have gone into partnership with Joe.

But he blew all the money, so she’s going to snitch some of his fine old brandy and properly lace their coffee—if Joe will join her.

He will. There’s only one problem. “What will you do with a drunken sailor . . .” Joe begins to sing.

Maggie laughs.

Carolyn asks Roger to not tell her mother something. He promises, with reservations. Carolyn tells him she was with Burke. And she tells him that Burke and Sam were together.

Roger doesn’t understand why Carolyn claims to care about him and still tries to be friendly with a man who’s sworn to destroy him. Carolyn says Burke was completely different, and he and Sam said it was a night of no enemies.

Roger notes that he wasn’t invited.

And they were singing to the memory of a good friend whose ghost was seeking vengeance.

“Bill Malloy,” Roger says. “Did they elaborate on this theory of ghost seeking vengeance?”

“No.” But Burke asked why Vicki didn’t come, so that’s how she knows that he hasn’t seen her.

“That brings us back to the mystery of Miss Vicki Winters. . . . It’s odd, isn’t it? She came to us out of nowhere—”

Carolyn says she came from the foundling home.

“Well, but neither they nor she knew who she really was. So, as I say, she came to us from nowhere, and now it seems she’s disappeared into nowhere.”

Carolyn doesn’t think Vicki has disappeared.

“Well, when a person is there one minute and then not there the next minute, what would you call it?”

Carolyn said there was a logical explanation.

“Well, it’s very true. You remember not long ago, how upset people got when Bill Malloy disappeared, but there was a logical explanation for it.”

“Yes. He was dead. You don’t think anything could have happened—“

He didn’t mean to put such an idea into her head. Vicki probably just wanted to be alone. He thinks she’s not far away.

Carolyn wants him to look for her. He says he’s going to wait up but she should go to bed.

Maggie and Joe say good night. He kisses her on the cheek. After he’s gone, she says, “Good night . . . pal.”

(Sam never made it back home for dinner, even though he rushed out at Carolyn and Burke early on, and Carolyn is back home at Collinwood, which is farther away. This will probably not be addressed.)

Roger turns down the lights and gets a flashlight out of the drawer.

He decides this would be a good time to check out the secret passage in the drawing room.

Carolyn comes downstairs to discover he’s gone.

Roger goes through the closed-off section with his flashlight.

He goes upstairs, through cobwebs, downstairs.

He goes up a spiral staircase.

Vicki wakes up and thinks she hears a noise.

She calls out, asking if it’s David.

Roger hears her.

He sees the key that she knocked out of the lock.

He picks it up. She calls out, “Who is it?”

Roger knocks something over to make a noise.

“Who’s out there?” she cries.

Then he takes a handy cane out of a stand and runs it across the door. Then he puts on a weird voice and says, “Victoria Winters, leave Collinwood. You are in danger here Go home. Go home.”

“Who is it?”

Roger unlocks the door.