The Three C's Ladies Club
The three members that comprised what would affectionately become known as the Three C's Ladies Club were roughly the same age. All were retired. Two were widowed, and the third was divorced. Two of the women had been born and raised in Puritan Falls, while the third was a Pennsylvanian by birth. Of the native Bay Staters, Maureen McHugh had been an emergency room nurse and Elaine Kearney a high school history teacher. Glenda Wayman, the transplant from Pennsylvania, after getting her degree at UMass, took a job as a librarian.
Although all three women lived in the same small New England village, they were only casually acquainted until the night of Puritan Falls High School's annual tricky tray auction. Elaine, Maureen and Glenda, who had all gone to the function alone, decided to sit together at a small table set up in the crowded school gym. While waiting for the drawings to begin, they drank coffee from the cafeteria and ate baked goods sold by the PTA.
"This coffee tastes like they drained it from the school buses," Glenda declared, adding another container of creamer and packet of sweetener to her cup.
"It tastes better than the swill they served at the hospital," Maureen laughed.
"When I was teaching here, I always brought my own coffee in a thermos," Elaine said.
"These cream puffs are delicious, though," Maureen declared. "I'll bet Sylvia Marzano made them. She used to work for an Italian bakery in Boston, you know."
The topic of conversation at the table shifted from food to the weather and then to politics. Discussion of the recovering economy was interrupted when Miss Carson, an English teacher and advisor to the theater club, walked on the makeshift stage to announce the winning numbers as the tickets were removed from each of the jars.
"What a drama queen," Elaine remarked under her breath. "No doubt she'll read the numbers like she's auditioning for the role of Lady Macbeth."
The other two women, who had a similar opinion of the flamboyant, melodramatic Miss Carson, burst into laughter. In that moment of shared merriment, the three women ceased to be casual acquaintances and became friends.
At the end of the evening, the ladies gathered together their winnings. Glenda won an mp3 player that she would give to her granddaughter, and Maureen won a Rachel Ray knife block and cutlery set and a tote bag filled with Bath & Body Works fragrances. Elaine was the big winner in the group, having garnered a $100 gift card from the Olive Garden and an Amazon Kindle electronic reader.
"That was fun," Glenda said as she walked out the door to the parking lot. "The three of us should get together sometime."
"Yeah," Maureen agreed. "I think that would be nice."
"Is next Wednesday a good time for you both?" Glenda asked.
"Are you kidding?" Elaine laughed. "Since I retired from teaching, all my nights are free."
When the women met in Glenda's Danvers Street house the following Wednesday, none of them envisioned it would be only the first of many such evenings. That casual gathering was the birth of what they would later call the Three C's Ladies Club (the C's referring to coffee, cake and conversation). During those first four hours of laughter, gossip and shared secrets, the three women found what had previously been lacking in their lives: friendship.
"I haven't had a close friend since college," Elaine admitted. "With juggling a husband, three kids, a job and a house, I just never had time to socialize, not even during the summers when school was out."
"Me either," Glenda concurred. "When I wasn't working at the library, I made extra money as a research assistant for one of the professors at the college."
Maureen had had a similar problem.
"I'm sure I don't have to tell you how demanding it is working in a hospital emergency room. Hell, I never had enough time for my husband, much less a close friend. That's probably why my marriage eventually failed."
"Now that we're all retired, though, we ought to have plenty of time for friendship," Elaine said, reaching for another one of Glenda's delicious fudge brownies.
* * *
Six months later the three women gathered in Maureen's saltbox on Atlantic Avenue. Glenda, who was gazing at the ocean through the bay window, noticed a lull in the conversation. Since their initial gathering, they had learned nearly everything there was to know about each other and were running out of things to talk about.
"Instead of just drinking coffee and eating cake every week, why don't we do something at our little get-togethers?" the former librarian suggested.
"Like what?" Elaine asked.
"I don't know," Glenda replied. "What about a book club? We can each tell about a book we recently read."
"Sounds too much like an oral book report," the ex-teacher laughed.
"Instead of a book club," Maureen offered, "why don't we do something for the community? We can make something together to sell at the harvest arts and crafts fair to raise money for the hospital or some other worthy charity."
"Sounds like fun!" Glenda exclaimed. "Why don't we make a quilt?"
The idea was vetoed because the other two women hated to sew.
"A bake sale?" Elaine asked.
Her friends shook their heads. While the idea of making something for the arts and crafts fair appealed to them, they could not agree on an activity they all wanted to do.
Glenda's eyes went back to the ocean. As her two friends bandied about more suggestions for crafts projects, she silently watched a boat sail toward the Puritan Falls lighthouse.
"I once had the idea of writing a book about that lighthouse," she remarked offhandedly during the next lull in conversation. "But then my husband died, and I lost interest in the project."
"I've always been fascinated with the light's history myself," Elaine admitted.
"Which history is that?" Maureen asked. "The one they tell in school or the one people whisper about on dark, stormy nights?"
Glenda smiled mischievously at the other two women and said, "We finally found something we're all interested in. Why don't we write that book together?"
"Do you think we stand a chance of actually having it published?" Maureen asked after the three women agreed to jointly write a book about the one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old lighthouse.
"We can publish it ourselves," Glenda replied. "I have a friend who runs a print shop."
Elaine, who volunteered at the Puritan Falls Historical Society three afternoons a week, suggested, "We can sell the books in the society's gift shop."
"And at the hospital coffee shop," Maureen said.
"Don't forget the college and village libraries," Glenda added. "And I'm sure we can get Rebecca Coffin, Abigail Cantwell and some of the other local businesses to agree to display the book for us."
Despite their enthusiasm, not one of the three women thought they would sell more than a handful of copies. The sales figures did not matter, though. They were not writing the book for profit but for enjoyment.
* * *
The project was a true group effort. All three women took part in writing. Glenda, the former librarian, did the bulk of the research. Maureen, who helped put herself through college by typing term papers, typed the manuscript on her computer. And Elaine, an amateur shutterbug, wanted to photograph the interior and exterior of the lighthouse.
Thinking it would be nice to have a photograph of the harbor shot from the gallery of the light, Elaine brought her camera to the top of the structure late one Sunday afternoon. A storm was threatening, so there were no sightseers in or around the lighthouse. The sound of her footsteps on the metal stairs echoed through the tower.
When the retired history teacher walked out onto the gallery, she encountered a girl of sixteen or seventeen standing at the railing, looking out to sea. What made Elaine take particular notice of this young woman was her attire: she wore an outfit from the late 1800s. While unusual, it was not disturbing since there was a local theater group that staged plays on the grounds of the former light station during the summer months. Elaine assumed the girl must be one of the actors.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know there was anyone up here."
The girl turned, and Elaine saw a look of profound sadness on her face.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"I'm looking for my father. He's out there somewhere," the girl explained, nodding her head toward the wide expanse of the Atlantic. "He left me here to visit my aunt, and I haven't seen him since."
"Did you call the Coast Guard?"
The teenager shook her head, but before Elaine could offer her assistance, the girl vanished before her eyes. When the distraught woman walked through the door of her saltbox nearly half an hour later, she immediately went to the phone and called her two friends. They both dropped what they were doing and ran to her side.
"Are you sure it was a ghost you saw?" Maureen asked excitedly.
"Either that or she was a better illusionist than David Copperfield," Elaine replied.
"Did she say anything to you?"
"She said her father left her here to stay with her aunt for a few days, but she never saw him again."
Glenda pursed her lips pensively as Maureen continued to badger Elaine with questions. Then Elaine noticed her silence.
"You don't believe me, do you?"
"Yes, I do. Furthermore, I have a pretty good idea who your ghost is."
Glenda went to her car and returned with an accordion file folder stuffed with newspaper clippings, computer printouts, photocopies and photographs.
"Just give me a moment to find it."
Glenda went to the pocket labeled HISTORY: 1850 TO 1900, removed a thick stack of documents and quickly thumbed through them.
"Ah, here it is," she announced.
When Elaine saw the photograph on the copy of the old newspaper, she cried, "That's her!"
"That's Lucy Cowell," Glenda explained. "It was a sad tale. After Captain Cowell lost his wife, his daughter became the center of his world. The girl lived on the ship with her father, but occasionally she would visit her aunt in Puritan Falls. One August day she decided to accompany a group of local teenagers who were going to picnic in the park adjacent to the old light station. According to legend, when they finished their lunch, the youngsters went into the lighthouse. After exploring the tower, they headed back toward the picnic area. Lucy told them she had dropped her handkerchief inside the lighthouse. She went back into the building, and that was the last time anyone ever saw her.
"The local kids were waiting for her at the picnic area when they heard a terrible scream followed by a cry for help. When they headed back toward the lighthouse to investigate, the place was empty. What they did find was blood on the floor of the upstairs room, drops of blood on the stairs and Lucy's blood-stained handkerchief in a closet. Fearing the worst, one of them went into town and got the police. A search party was quickly organized, but Lucy was never found."
"Did the police have any theories?" Elaine asked.
"It was generally believed that the missing girl was murdered in the lighthouse. Authorities thought the killer was a local man who hid the body until after the search was over. Since the remains never turned up, my guess is that the killer weighted the body down and dumped it in the ocean."
"The poor father!" Maureen exclaimed. "He must have been heartbroken."
"He carried his daughter's bloody handkerchief with him until the day he died."
"And now the girl's spirit haunts the lighthouse, looking for her father," Elaine said. "What a tragic tale."
* * *
The following Wednesday, when the women met in Maureen McHugh's house, the hostess gave the other two women copies of the latest section of the typed manuscript for their review.
"Make whatever changes you want," she told them.
"Ah, one of the unappreciated wonders of our modern age: the word processor," Glenda laughed.
"You can say that again!" Maureen agreed. "No more correction tape or Wite-Out or, worse, having to retype pages or whole documents."
The two women read over their copies, making minor changes in red pen.
"I was wondering," Elaine said when Maureen cut into her cranberry streusel Bundt cake, "if we should include a chapter on Lucy Cowell in our book."
"Definitely," Glenda decided. "Our readers will want to know about the disappearance and possible murder of the girl. That's the kind of story that people eat up. Most people really aren't interested in who designed the light or how much it cost to build it."
"Isn't it sad," Maureen commented, "that we are all intrigued by such a tragedy? A young woman, practically a child, vanishes without a trace, and we're titillated by the mystery."
"That's human nature," Elaine said. "Just look at the tabloids and see the coverage they give to JonBenet Ramsey and Natalee Holloway. And even go back in history. People are still fascinated by Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden, the Kennedy assassination and the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. I think this preoccupation with tragedy stems from man's basic desire to know the truth."
"I think you're giving people too much credit," Glenda argued. "It's not truth we care about as much as sensationalism. We want to know the gory details. We've all become Gladys Kravitz."
"Don't forget about those paranormal shows on TV, the ones where people go through haunted houses wearing night vision goggles, trying to contact the dead," Elaine added.
Maureen suddenly fell silent. She did not want to share her idea with her friends—not just yet, anyway.
When Glenda and Elaine went home at the end of the evening, Maureen turned on her laptop computer and typed in PARANORMAL INVESTIGATORS NORTHEAST MASSACHUSETTS. She was not sure if her search would have any matches and was astonished to find more than twenty-eight thousand results on her search engine. She went through five pages of listings before finding what she was looking for: two local students who claimed to have had experience communicating with the dead.
Maureen sprang the news on her friends at the following meeting of the Three C's Ladies Club.
"I've contacted a paranormal investigation group. I'm going to try to find out exactly what happened to Lucy Cowell."
"Are you serious?" Glenda asked.
"Yes. If what you've told us is true, that poor girl has been searching for her father all these years. Don't you want her to be at rest?"
"A month ago I would have scoffed at the idea at the paranormal," Elaine confessed, "but since seeing the ghost in the lighthouse, I'm not so sure anymore."
"What about you?" Maureen asked the third woman.
"Why not? If there's a chance to find out what happened to Lucy Cowell, I'm all for meeting with these investigators."
* * *
Kevin McCoy and Marla Lovejoy, met with the Three C's Ladies Club at the foot of the Puritan Falls lighthouse. Kevin carried an EMF meter, digital camera and sound recorder. Marla was introduced as a psychic.
"Do you want us to tell you what we know about the background of the ghost?" Maureen asked.
"No," the girl replied. "I'd rather hear the story straight from the spirit itself."
Elaine had previously arranged with the head of the Lighthouse Preservation Society to allow the paranormal group to conduct an after-hours investigation in the lighthouse. After the last of the visitors left and the building was officially closed for the evening, Kevin set up his equipment in the lantern room, and Marla went out onto the gallery at the exact spot where Maureen had seen Lucy Cowell's ghost.
"I feel a strong presence here," the psychic announced. "A young girl ... in her teens."
The three women watched the psychic intently, encouraged by her words.
"She's looking for something ... no, someone. A man."
Maureen wanted to cry out, "Yes! That's right. She was looking for her father," but she wisely kept silent.
"She hears his footsteps on the stairs, and she's overjoyed."
"That's not right," Maureen began. "She ...."
Elaine gently elbowed her friend, urging her to keep quiet.
"It's a young man. The two are in love and plan to run away together."
"Maybe he's the one who murdered her," Glenda whispered to her friends.
"Her father thinks she's too young to get married," Marla continued, "so she and the young man have concocted an elaborate plan to sneak away. When she rushes into his arms, she notices his hand is bleeding; he cut it on a rock in the cave where he'd been hiding. The girl tries to wrap her handkerchief around his hand, but he's in a rush. He wants to get into the cave before the tide comes in."
The blood wasn't Lucy's; it was the young man's, Maureen thought.
"He goes to a closet, removes a suitcase the girl had hidden there earlier. In doing so, he drops the bloody handkerchief on the floor. He doesn't stop to pick it up even though his hand is still bleeding. He's in too much of a hurry. They leave down the stairs and open a trapdoor at the bottom of the light tower. As they're escaping, the girl turns her ankle on the stairs. She screams in pain and calls to her young man for help. He picks her up and carries her down the ladder. All they have to do is wait in the cave until dark, and then they can sail away together and get married."
The psychic turned to the three older women, looked at them expectantly and asked, "Is that about what you expected to hear?"
"No," Maureen replied, "but it does fit the facts."
"What about the girl's father?" Elaine asked. "When I saw the ghost, she was looking for him."
"I don't know," Marla replied. "I don't feel his presence here."
The group waited for more than an hour, but there was no further contact from beyond.
* * *
It was Elaine Kearney's turn to host the weekly meeting of the Three C's Ladies Club. As a treat, she had made her specialty: chocolate chip and macadamia nut biscotti.
Glenda was the first to bring up the subject of the ghost.
"I've been doing some research on the property around the lighthouse. According to several early sources, there were caves in those rocks, which were used by smugglers. During the Civil War, the Army feared that prisoners of war who escaped Fort Warren might hide out in them, so they dynamited the rocks to seal the entrances."
"I also have something to add to our book," Elaine announced. "I spoke with one of the directors of the Historical Society, and I learned that during the 1960s, when there were major repairs done to the lighthouse, the construction workers found a trapdoor above a large hole in the ground, a hole that might very well have led to a secret cave at one time."
Maureen reached into her bag, took out two copies of the printout of the latest chapter in their book and handed them to her friends. She waited silently as they read through what she had written.
Glenda's head popped up, her eyes staring in amazement.
"How on earth did you find all this out?"
"My cousin who lives in New Jersey is very big into genealogy," Maureen explained. "She searched through the vital records and found a marriage license for Lucy Cowell and a young man named Henry Brownlow. It was dated less than a week after Lucy disappeared."
"So the two of them waited in the smuggler's cave until nightfall," Elaine said, summarizing the information in the printout. "Then they went down to New York and got married. I wonder if Lucy ever tried to contact her father."
"Maybe she would have once her baby was born," Glenda hypothesized. "By all accounts, her father was a kind and loving man, and although he disapproved of the marriage because of the girl's age, he would no doubt have accepted it once it was a fait accompli."
"I agree," Maureen said. "I think the sea captain would have welcomed his daughter and grandchild with open arms and probably would have done all he could to aid the struggling young family."
"But since both Lucy and the baby died during childbirth, we'll never know," Glenda concluded.
* * *
The book on the Puritan Falls lighthouse sold surprisingly well, not only in the village itself but also in small towns throughout northeastern Massachusetts. Encouraged by the sales figures, Glenda's old college friend suggested the women write another book for him to publish.
"I think we should write another one, too," Maureen said. "We've got plenty of time on our hands."
"What would we write about?" Glenda asked.
"This is Puritan Falls," Elaine laughed. "I'm sure we can find dozens of local mysteries to solve. People love old legends even if the truth doesn't make it into the book."
She was referring to the fact that when their history of the Puritan Falls lighthouse was published, the chapter on Lucy Cowell told only of the blood stains, the bloody handkerchief and the girl's disappearance. The three authors had decided not to reveal that the young woman eloped with a local boy and died in childbirth less than a year later.
"Sometimes the mystery is more romantic than the truth," Maureen said wistfully.
Not one of the women in the Three C's Ladies Club realized that the truth of the disappearance having finally been uncovered if not published had set poor Lucy Cowell Brownlow free. Her spirit would never again walk the gallery of the lighthouse in search of her father's ship, for she had been reunited with the souls of her parents, husband and unborn child for all eternity.
This story was inspired by the legend of Muriel Trevenard who disappeared after entering the Yaquina Bay lighthouse in Oregon.
Ever since seeing Shutter Island, Salem keeps a safe distance from lighthouses.
