The Castle by the Sea
Memory is a strange thing, especially for those of us in our twilight years. If someone were to ask me where I went for vacation last year, it might take me a few moments to come up with the correct answer. I often forget phone numbers, birthdays and the PIN number for my ATM card. However, I remember the time I first saw Victoria Liggett as though it were only yesterday.
Most people think of Newport, Rhode Island, as the summer playground for the wealthy socialites of the Gilded Age, but not everyone in Newport summered in a seventy-room "cottage" on Bellevue Avenue. I, for instance, lived there year-round with my parents and siblings in an apartment above my father's hardware store. Before the great stock market crash of twenty-nine, we had lived in a small house with a garage and a backyard, but during the Depression, my family needed to economize wherever possible.
Like most people of modest means, I was impressed by the splendor of the Breakers, the Elms, Kingscote, Beach Cliff and the other grand palaces that dotted our fair city. Yet it was Chandler Cottage that intrigued me most. Unlike the other elegant mansions, Chandler Cottage was painted black. In my vivid, schoolboy imagination, I saw the dark house populated by an evil witch, a blood-sucking vampire, a voodoo queen or a mad scientist bent on reanimating dead bodies.
My favorite scenario, however, was that a beautiful princess was being held prisoner in the black house, waiting for a handsome prince to rescue her. This particular fantasy was born one September evening in 1932, while I was walking home from a friend's house and passed the cottage on Seaview Avenue. It was dusk, and the last golden rays of sunlight were sinking along the western horizon. The ebony-hued building was barely visible in the gathering darkness.
As I stopped momentarily to stare at what most people in Newport referred to as "that monstrosity," I saw a movement in the shadows. Someone was walking along the veranda. I froze. It was not a living person I had seen; it was a ghost!
I ran as fast as my legs would allow and did not slacken my pace until I burst through the door of my father's hardware store. In the familiar, well-lit shop, surrounded by barrels of nails, shelves laden with hand tools, cans of paint and stacks of do-it-yourself books, I felt safe.
"Is that you, son?" my father called from behind the counter.
"Yes, Dad," I replied, trying to catch my breath after my exertions.
"What's wrong? You're as white as a sheet. Aren't you feeling well?"
"I just saw a ghost!"
The words were out, and I immediately felt better having uttered them.
"Where?"
"On Seaview Avenue, on the veranda of the black house."
Father's eyes widened.
"What did this ghost look like?"
"I didn't see her face, but I could tell from the clothes that it was a woman."
"What sort of clothes did your ghost wear?"
"She had on a long skirt that went down to the ground and a blouse with long sleeves. Her clothes looked like those in the old photograph of Grandma Rosa."
Father smiled, gently placed his calloused hand on my shoulder and explained, "That was no ghost, son. That was just Victoria Liggett. She lives in that house."
"Someone actually lives there?" I asked with amazement.
"During the summer she does. She'll probably be going back home soon."
"Where does she live the rest of the year?"
"Somewhere in Pennsylvania—Philadelphia, I believe."
"Do you know her? Who is she? Have you ever been inside her house? Why is ...?"
"Slow down, son, or you'll run out of questions," my father laughed.
"Sorry, Dad. But I've always been curious about that place."
"So are most people around here, but I don't have any answers for you. I don't know Miss Liggett very well; I've never even been formally introduced to her. She and her parents have been coming here to Newport every summer since 1907, but they keep to themselves."
"Why?"
"Some people like their privacy. And you be sure to respect that. Do you hear me? You forget about Miss Liggett and that house. I don't want you going over there and snooping around the property."
"I won't," I promised.
I spoke the truth, albeit a half-truth. I was not about to trespass on the grounds of the black house, peep into its first-story windows or ring the doorbell on the ruse of selling Christmas cards or magazine subscriptions, but I had no intention of forgetting about the family that owned the mysterious home on Seaview Avenue.
* * *
Labor Day weekend came and went, and things began to quiet down in Newport once most of the summer people left. School resumed, and I returned to my books and the ongoing quest to master reading, writing and arithmetic. At recess one day I brought up the subject of the black house before a group of my fellow students.
"You mean you don't know about Victoria Liggett?" one of my classmates asked with disbelief. "She's nuts! A real certified loony. She killed her parents, but because she's crazy, she didn't have to go to jail."
"Did she kill them in that house?" I asked with mounting horror and fascination.
"Nah. She killed them during the winter."
"How did she do it?"
"She poisoned their Sunday dinner."
I was disappointed. Poison seemed a dull and unimaginative murder weapon. Not far from Newport, in Fall River, Massachusetts, a spinster named Lizzie Borden allegedly struck her father and stepmother with a hatchet, a murder that led to the most sensational trial in New England history. Victoria's crime paled by comparison. Still, even a dull murder in one's own town was preferable to a more lurid homicide in a neighboring state.
I soon learned, however, that this scandalous rumor, like so many tales spread about the people in the black house, wasn't true. Cornelia Doddsworth Liggett, Victoria's mother, was still alive and living in virtual seclusion with her daughter, and Millard Liggett, her husband, had died of natural causes in Philadelphia in 1913. I learned these facts from—of all people—Mr. Hobson, my math teacher, a man who terrified me when I had to stand before him and recite my times tables but who proved to be a veritable fountain of knowledge when it came to the lives of the wealthy summer residents.
"I could write a book about the Hoffmans, the Morses, the Vanderbilts, the Astors and so many others," Mr. Hobson boasted. "I know their favorite foods, their bad habits, the sports they like to play and the names of their pets; I could tell you what books they read, what music they listen to and what charities they contribute to."
"How do you know so much about them?" I asked, suspecting him of gross exaggeration.
"I attended hundreds of social events in Newport during my college days, before the Great War, and I became privy to many fascinating conversations of the summer people."
If Mr. Hobson's intention was to impress me, he succeeded. I couldn't have cared less that he knew algebra, geometry and a mystical art known as calculus, but by having been inside the houses on Belmont Avenue and glimpsing a world so near and yet so far away from my own, he became like a god to me. Every day after school I went to this classroom where I washed the blackboard, banged the chalk dust from the erasers and aligned the desks in neat, straight rows.
My brownnosing didn't go unrewarded. Mr. Hobson never grew bored of talking about Newport's summer colony or about the conversations of George Cadwalader, Mrs. H. Barton Jacobs or George Henry Warren.
It was only after I became a man and Mr. Hobson retired that I realized my teacher never actually spoke to any of Newport's social elite except to inquire if they wanted cream and sugar in their tea or if a certain meat was cooked to their liking. He acquired all his trivial information while waiting tables at the lavish summer social functions. He knew the wealthy visitors' likes, dislikes, peccadilloes and idiosyncrasies not because he was on an intimate basis with them but because he was invisible to them. They had no qualms about discussing personal matters in front of a waiter, any more than they would have cared if the statues in the fountains at Rosecliff overheard what they said. However, at a young age, I saw my math teacher as being in their confidence, and I, in turn, wanted to be in his.
As time passed, though, I grew bored with Mr. Hobson's talk about life at Beechwood, Marble House, The Reef and Harbourview and found the nerve to question him about the Liggett family.
"Were you ever at any parties at the black house?"
"The Liggetts? Good heavens, no!" my teacher declared quite snobbishly. "Those people weren't on the Social Register. In fact, they weren't even millionaires!"
"So? They still lived in a large house on Seaview Avenue, didn't they?"
"My boy," Mr. Hobson carefully explained, "one can buy a mansion; all it takes is money. But one cannot buy his way into high society as easily."
It was hard for a youngster to understand this social hierarchy in a country where all men were supposedly created equal. After all, hadn't we all been taught as much in school? Perhaps, I thought, Thomas Jefferson, the author of our venerated Declaration of Independence, had never been to Newport.
"So, you don't know anything about Miss Liggett and her parents?" I asked with disappointment.
"I didn't say that," Mr. Hobson replied somewhat defensively. "While I never actually met the owners of that monstrosity on Seaview Avenue, I have heard quite a bit about them."
"Could you tell me what you know?"
"Why? What's your interest in the Liggetts?"
"I'm just curious. One of my friends told me Miss Liggett murdered her parents."
"Nonsense! Victoria Liggett wouldn't hurt a fly! She's one of those mousy, spineless, insipid creatures, the kind who suffer from vapors, no doubt."
I thought my teacher was a bit harsh on the poor woman, but then I realized he was just repeating what he'd heard others say.
"What is she like, then?"
Mr. Hobson looked at his watch and announced, "It's almost four o'clock. Why don't I drive you home? On the way, we can stop at the soda fountain, and I'll tell you all about the Liggett family."
* * *
Cornelia Doddsworth Liggett was born to a Pennsylvania family that could trace its roots back to the American Revolution. One of her ancestors had been an acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin and was known to have been an ardent patriot. Although the Doddsworths were once one of the wealthiest families in Pennsylvania, by the time Cornelia was born, they were reduced to living in a state of genteel poverty. Millard Liggett, on the other hand, lacked his wife's breeding and family history. But although he'd started life in modest financial circumstances, thanks to hard work, keen intelligence and dogged determination, he managed to make a small fortune.
With his considerable wealth, Millard eventually moved his wife and daughter into a large brownstone in a fashionable section of Philadelphia and purchased a summer home in Newport. Still, his hard-earned fortune was no match for that of the robber barons and captains of industry that flocked to the Rhode Island Mecca by the sea during the summer months.
Why the Liggett family returned to Newport every year Mr. Hobson couldn't guess. It wasn't to enjoy the social season, for they were outcasts. Perhaps it was a matter of pride, a grim insistence that they were as good as their neighbors, or perhaps it was simply an honest desire to escape the sweltering heat of Philadelphia and cool off in the ocean breezes that blew in from Narragansett Bay.
"If that's the case," Mr. Hobson contended, "why didn't they just go to the New Jersey shore? You don't have to be anyone special to summer at Atlantic City or Cape May."
As I quietly sipped my Coca-Cola, Mr. Hobson concluded his tale of Cornelia and Millard Liggett and moved on to the pièce de résistance: their daughter, Victoria.
"She is an oddball, that one. I saw her only once, at a charity function. As I recall, she was quite pretty—dark hair and large, doe-like brown eyes. She was shy and quiet; too quiet, if you ask me. I didn't see her speak to anyone except her mother, but I guess that was to be expected. She must have felt uncomfortable being around people who normally wouldn't have given her the time of day."
It didn't occur to me then to wonder if my math teacher felt much the same way when in the presence of Newport society.
"Miss Liggett never had any suitors—not in Newport, anyway. Perhaps the young men of Philadelphia took more of an interest in her. But even if they had, she never married. She lived with both her parents until 1913 when her father passed away."
"How did he die?"
"Heart attack, I believe. He didn't die here. It was a custom for Mr. Liggett to return home a few days before his wife and daughter and open the house. That year, however, he died shortly after arriving in Pennsylvania, while Miss Liggett and her mother were still in Newport preparing to leave."
"It must have been quite a shock to them when they got back to Pennsylvania."
"Old Man Liggett's death certainly seems to have unhinged them. When she came back the following summer, Miss Liggett had the house painted black. It created quite a stir; I can assure you. It was the damnedest thing! Yet she and her mother continue to return every summer even though they rarely venture out of their house. I haven't seen them in years, but I have it on excellent authority that they dress in clothing dating from before the turn of the century. Even in the 1920s when most women bobbed their hair and shortened their skirts, the Liggett women insisted on wearing their hemlines at ankle length and their hair piled atop their heads in a nineteenth-century chignon."
"I saw her," I suddenly blurted out.
"Saw who?" Mr. Hobson asked.
"Victoria Liggett. She was walking along her veranda, dressed exactly like you described, in clothes my grandmother might have worn."
"So that's why you're so interested in her."
Mr. Hobson laughed and looked at his watch again. It was getting late. My parents would be wondering where I was, and Mr. Hobson had to get home to his family. I didn't mind leaving; I had a lot of homework to do that night. Besides, there was little else my math teacher could tell me about Victoria Liggett.
No one, it seemed, knew her very well. To the people of Newport—both the rich and the not-so-rich—she was nothing more than an eccentric recluse who shut herself away in a house that everyone agreed was an eyesore and a blight on the otherwise perfect setting of Seaview Avenue. But to me, she was an enigma, a mystery I hoped one day to solve. Although I now saw my fantasies about vampires, witches, voodoo queens and mad scientists as preposterous, one daydream remained: Chandler Cottage was a castle by the sea, and inside dwelt a beautiful princess waiting to be rescued by her Prince Charming.
* * *
Nearly a decade passed. I had graduated from high school and was working in my father's hardware store. I never lost my fascination for the woman in the black house; however, other things took center stage in my life, and Victoria was relegated to the wings. I had passed through the door of puberty, and as a man, I developed more than a passing interest in the younger, more attainable ladies of Newport.
It was in the summer of 1941 that I saw Victoria Liggett for the second time. I had made a date to meet an attractive blonde on the Cliff Walk one evening, and in my eagerness to see her, I arrived early. It was nearly dark when I saw the figure of a woman approach. To my surprise, it was none other than my lady of mystery.
By that time, she was in her early fifties, yet still a remarkably attractive woman. Once again she wore the clothing and hairstyle of a bygone era. I found this quite odd, since most women, even those without money—and the Liggett ladies were by no means poor—tended to be overly fashion-conscious. My own mother wouldn't dream of wearing an outfit so long out of style. Could Victoria be denying the passage of time? Was she desperately trying to retain her lost youth, or was she attempting to return to a simpler, happier point in her life?
When Victoria looked up and saw me, she seemed startled. She demurely cast her eyes down and quickened her pace, no doubt prepared to run should I make a sudden move. For years I had longed to meet this woman. Now here was my chance, but it was rapidly slipping away.
"G-good evening, M-miss Liggett," I stammered nervously.
Despite years of rejection by Newport's upper crust, Victoria remained a woman of good breeding and manners. Although extremely shy, she was by no means rude.
"Good evening. Do I know you, sir?"
My heart was racing, and I forgot all about the young blonde I was supposed to meet.
"My father owns the hardware store in town."
Her body seemed less tense, and she managed a slight smile, perhaps because I was not one of the summer people who had looked down their noses at her and her family over the years.
"I hope you and your mother are well," I said.
Victoria's large, doe-like eyes clouded over.
"My mother passed away last year."
"Forgive me," I said, immediately contrite. "I didn't know. My condolences to you."
I suddenly realized I was speaking like a character from a Jane Austen novel. What was I going to do next, bow at the waist and kiss her hand?
"It's getting dark. Would you like me to see you to your door?"
"That would be most kind of you."
I waited several moments, expecting to hear her say, "But no, thank you." To my surprise, she didn't. We both took several steps in the direction of the black house. My mind was in turmoil, trying to think of what to say, but my companion saved me from making a social faux pas by speaking first.
"Do you plan to go into the hardware business, too?" she asked.
"I haven't made up my mind what I want to do yet," I confessed.
"I envy you," she said sadly. "You must have many options to choose from. At your age, I had only two: marriage or spinsterhood. When I was young, you see, well-bred ladies were not permitted to have a career."
I was taken aback by both her words and the passion with which she spoke them. More than ever, I wanted to get to know this mysterious woman, but at that moment I heard my name being called. I turned and saw my date running toward me, waving her hand in the air.
"I'm sorry I'm late," the blonde panted, trying to catch her breath. "I hope you didn't think I'd forgotten our date."
"No. I was just walking Miss Liggett home. I'll be back in a few minutes."
"Don't be silly," the older woman insisted. "I can find my way."
"But it's dark out ...."
"Thank you, but no. It has been a pleasure to meet you, sir."
Then she nodded to the young woman, turned and walked away. I was dejected and fought the urge to run after her.
Nearly every evening that summer I strolled along the Cliff Walk, hoping to encounter Victoria again, but I didn't. September arrived, and the summer people left without my seeing her again. But there was always next summer, I thought with the foolish optimism of youth.
* * *
The nation's economy was improving, thanks to the New Deal programs instituted by President Roosevelt. But Americans had new problems to cast shadows on their future: the growing tensions in Europe threatened the peace of the entire world. Then came December 7, 1941, and the attack on Pearl Harbor thrust the country into war.
I temporarily put my career decisions on the back burner and enlisted in the Navy. It was while I was serving aboard the Massachusetts that I discovered another piece of the puzzle that was the life of Victoria Liggett. One of my shipmates was from Philadelphia and had grown up in the same neighborhood where she lived when she was not in residence in Newport.
"Do you know her?" I asked.
"Not well," he admitted. "She's a good deal older than I am, after all, and she keeps to herself. My mother knew her, though. They attended art school together. However, Miss Liggett's father withdrew his daughter from the school before she could complete her studies."
"Why did he do that?" I asked.
My shipmate laughed.
"It all seems a bit ridiculous now, but things were different back then. While genteel young women were allowed to paint floral arrangements and seascapes, it was quite another matter to paint people in their natural state."
"You mean nude?"
"Yes. When Miss Liggett's father learned that his daughter was to be exposed to the secrets of the male anatomy, he quickly ordered her home."
"I wonder if she had any talent as an artist," I mused.
"I've seen some of her work, and I think it's quite good, not that I'm an art expert. She paints people—with their clothes on, of course," he added jokingly. "It was rather sad, actually. To my mother, art was nothing more than a hobby, but Miss Liggett took it seriously. I understand she had once hoped to study in Paris."
This new bit of knowledge made Victoria's words to me that evening on the Cliff Walk even more poignant. As a man, I had my choice of career. With the right education and hard work, I could go into any profession I chose; all I needed was ambition and the capital to finance my plans. Victoria, on the other hand, had the burning desire to paint, but by reason of her sex and social position, she had been denied her dream.
* * *
When the war was over, I returned to Newport and spent the summer—always the busiest time of year for Newport businesses—working at the hardware store. My brother, eight years my senior, was married and living in Providence. My sister, two years younger than I was, was engaged to a man who had just returned from France. Most of my boyhood friends were gone. Some found jobs outside Newport, while others, not as fortunate as I, never made it back from the war alive.
Later that year, when the summer people left Newport, I departed, too. I had finally chosen the road I would take: I decided to become a doctor, specifically a psychiatrist.
In my third year of college, my mother wrote to me that Victoria Liggett had died.
"It was the talk of the town," she informed me. "With no heirs, she left the house and its furnishings to one of the local art associations. Can you imagine everyone's surprise when they saw what was inside the house? It was filled with paintings. Canvases were stacked high in every room, literally thousands, and nearly every one, with few exceptions, was a portrait of Miss Liggett herself."
When I finished reading the letter, I shed a tear for the once beautiful princess who had lived in the castle by the sea, for no Prince Charming had ever rescued her. She died alone, her dream unfulfilled, her life lived in the shadows of that dark house. I didn't dwell too long on the death of that enigmatic woman, however. I had to concentrate on finishing college and then on going to medical school.
* * *
The years passed quickly. All too soon I realized I had grown old. Both my children were married with grown children of their own. Shortly after I turned sixty-five, I sold my psychiatric practice to a younger man and retired to Peaceful Harbor, a small village in northeastern Massachusetts.
I had been living in Peaceful Harbor for several years when I received word that my granddaughter was to be married. My wife and I decided to drive to the wedding in New York and do a little sightseeing along the way.
We first stopped at Fall River—most famous for being the site of the Andrew and Abby Borden double homicide. Despite my childhood curiosity about the gruesome murders, of more interest to me at my advanced age was Battleship Cove, the world's largest naval ship exhibit and the home of the Massachusetts. The sight of my former ship brought on a surge of memories.
After leaving Fall River, my wife and I drove to Newport. It had been several decades since I'd last visited my childhood home. My father had died more than twenty years earlier, and my mother passed away eight years after him.
Time had changed Newport. It was no longer the summer home of the Northeast's wealthiest families. It now catered to a new breed of summer visitors: middle-class tourists who thronged to the city to see the Gilded Age mansions and to discover how the "other half" once lived. Although the Breakers, Marble House, the Elms, Rosecliff, Chateau-sur-Mer, Kingscote and Belcourt Castle have been meticulously maintained by the Newport Mansions Preservation Society, many of the old cottages, including Seafield, the Reefs, Seaverge, Harbourview, Beachholm and Gull Rock, fell into disrepair and were later demolished.
As I drove down Seaview Avenue, I was delighted to see that Chandler Cottage was still standing. No longer black, the house had been painted and renovated by subsequent owners. As was the case with the Bordens' former Fall River home, Chandler Cottage had been turned into a bed and breakfast. On the spur of the moment, I put on my turn signal and pulled into the parking lot.
"Why are we stopping here?" my wife asked. "I thought we were staying at the Marriott."
"This is the house I told you about," I cried with excitement. "This was her house!"
We were fortunate that there was a vacancy. As my wife and I took our luggage upstairs to our room, I noticed the paintings hanging on the walls: most were portraits of Victoria Liggett. On the way back downstairs, I closely examined each one.
"She really was quite talented," I remarked, "although I admit I am no art critic."
"The rest of the collection is housed in the cottage out back," one of Chandler Inn's employees told me. "Feel free to go and see it."
The Liggett collection proved to be more than just an exhibit of Victoria's paintings. In addition to rough sketches and etchings, there were a number of newspaper clippings and magazine articles (written posthumously) describing Victoria's artwork, her death and her reclusive life. More interesting, as far as I was concerned, were personal papers and a diary that once belonged to the artist.
"Sweetheart, why don't you go into town and do a little shopping?" I suggested, hoping to spare my wife the boredom of sitting around the inn while I viewed the exhibit.
My wife smiled with relief and gratitude.
"I won't spend all your money," she jokingly promised as I handed her my car keys.
Once I was alone, I picked up the pile of newspaper and magazine clippings. While there was little about Victoria's life printed in those articles that I didn't already know, I did learn that after her death her paintings, which she'd generously donated to a local art association, were subsequently consigned to the town garbage dump. Many had been incinerated before a local businessman stepped in and rescued those that remained. The man organized an exhibit, but the work didn't receive the recognition it deserved. Eventually, the canvases and sketches were relegated to the attic, and when the businessman died, his heirs put the artwork on the curb to be picked up with the trash. Miraculously, the paintings were once again rescued—this time by a passing motorist. Finally, Victoria's art was returned to her former summer home where the owners of the inn decided to open a permanent exhibit.
I next read several art reviews. While the critics all agreed that Victoria had some talent, none of them praised her work. One critic rudely suggested that Victoria had an obsession with painting her own countenance and thus must suffer from narcissism. As a trained psychiatrist, I sincerely doubted this.
Finally, I picked up the diary, hoping to at last learn some of the secrets that were kept hidden within the walls of the once black house. However, the diary held little insight into Victoria's past. The entries reported the mundane details of her day-to-day existence as well as poetic descriptions of flower beds, sunsets and thunderstorms. I read through half the diary and sighed with disappointment. I fanned through the remaining pages, and a loose sheet of paper fell to the floor.
When I first read the poem written on the fine stationery, I assumed it had been written by Victoria since it was a sonnet expressing undying love and passionate desire. It was just the sort of verse a romantic young woman might pen. But then I noticed the handwriting was not the same as that in the diary entries.
"I'll be damned," I said with pleasant surprise, "Victoria had an admirer. I wonder if her parents knew about him."
I received the answer to my question when I turned the page over and read the dedication: For my darling daughter, Victoria, with love. The sonnet wasn't from a beau at all; Millard Liggett had written it. I was stunned. This wasn't the type of poem a man wrote for his daughter. I felt a sickness in the pit of my stomach. I'm not being fair to the man, I reasoned. Perhaps he just enjoyed writing poetry. It could be that Victoria admired his work, and her father dedicated one of his sonnets to her as one would dedicate a book to a loved one. The words of passion didn't necessarily mean that Millard's feelings toward his daughter were inappropriate.
I slipped the poem back into the diary and walked toward the stacks of canvases. Most of the paintings showed Victoria in ages ranging from her early twenties to her late fifties—shortly before her death. She wasn't always alone in these self-portraits; sometimes her mother was by her side. It was the renderings of Cornelia Doddsworth Liggett that told me all I needed to know about the secrets Chandler Cottage held. In each portrait, Victoria had painted her mother in profile only. Even though her own face was seen in full view, her mother's was always turned to the side.
All the pieces of the puzzle suddenly fell into place. I had spent most of my adult life delving into people's psyches. I knew too much about the signs of sexual abuse not to recognize them here. The sonnet written by Millard Liggett had expressed desire for his daughter. Although whether he had ever acted on his desire I have no idea.
Yet even if he hadn't actually committed incest, the feelings of jealousy and possessiveness were there. It was probably those feelings that had made him withdraw Victoria from art school. Most likely, they were also the reason he kept returning to Newport each summer, to a place where he and his family lived in social limbo. In Newport, there was no danger of his losing his daughter to a potential suitor.
I looked at the sad, doe-like eyes in the portrait of Victoria at age thirty, some five years after the death of her father. Even though Millard was gone, there was no way for his daughter to escape the damage he had caused.
As for Mrs. Liggett, there was little doubt in my mind that she knew what was in her husband's heart. She knew and, as Victoria's paintings revealed over and over again, she had turned away from the truth.
I left the room, anxious to escape the terrible knowledge I had sought for so long. My wife hadn't returned from her shopping spree yet, so I decided to take a stroll along the Cliff Walk. As I stood looking out at Easton Bay, a young boy approached me.
"Hi, mister," he called. "Are you staying in that house?"
"Yes, I am. Why?"
"Just wondering. Where do you come from?"
"I live in Massachusetts, but I was born and raised right here in Newport."
"No kidding?" he asked, his eyes wide with surprise. "In one of the mansions?"
"No, my father used to own a hardware store in town."
"If you lived here, then you must have heard the stories about that place," he exclaimed, nodding his head toward Chandler Inn.
"No," I said, deciding to play ignorant for the boy's sake. "What stories?"
The boy's eyes brightened considerably.
"For one thing, it's haunted!" he explained, eager to share his shocking knowledge.
"Really? By whom?"
"The old lady who used to live there. When she was young, she murdered her parents—poisoned them."
The surprised look on my face was genuine. I was amazed that that particularly nasty rumor was still alive and well after all those years and was still traveling along the Newport grapevine.
I wanted to tell him the truth, that Victoria was not only innocent of any crime but had in fact been a victim. Yet I held my tongue. Perhaps the idea of a young woman going mad and killing her mother and father was in some bizarre, macabre way preferable to the truth. Maybe that's why the Lizzie Borden case has withstood the test of time.
"She once painted the house black," the boy continued—at least that much of his story was true. "I heard she was a Satanist who worshipped the devil."
Now, that was a new one!
"And just who told you that?" I asked.
"The older kids, and they ought to know, right?"
"Age doesn't necessarily bring knowledge. In fact, your friends have got it all wrong. The woman who lived in that house was no witch. She was a beautiful princess," I said, recalling my favorite childhood fantasy. "She was kept prisoner there by a jealous king and a queen who pretended to be blind."
The boy scoffed at the idea.
"That's fairy tale stuff!"
"It's true, though. She stayed in her prison, waiting to be released, but no one ever came to her rescue. Instead, all the people here turned away, refusing to see that she was in any trouble."
"Did you try to help her?"
"I was a mere boy, no older than you are, and she was a grown woman. At the time I didn't realize anything was wrong. If I had known her when she was younger—well, I like to think that I would have tried to help her."
"The place sure seems haunted to me," the boy said, apparently preferring the more sensational version of events.
I looked back at the house, weighing the various possibilities: a helpless princess held prisoner in a castle, an unpunished killer living in a haunted house or an ordinary woman having to cope with the tragic circumstances of her past.
"I suppose it might be haunted at that," I said with a sigh.
"Well, mister, I better get home now. It'll be dark soon."
"It's been nice talking to you, young man," I replied.
With the boy gone, I was left alone on the Cliff Walk. Just as the sun dipped below the western horizon, I saw my wife pull into the parking lot and get out of the car, her arms filled with shopping bags. I walked over to give her a hand.
"Who was that you were talking to?" she asked.
"Just a boy from the neighborhood."
"No, I mean her."
I turned back toward the Cliff Walk where, to my surprise, I saw in the moonlight a silhouette of a young woman dressed in clothing from the 1890s. Her face was obscured by the brim of a large, plumed hat, but I knew who it was. The ghostly apparition turned, waved to me and then vanished into the darkness. Perhaps now that her terrible secret was known, Victoria Liggett's spirit would at last be free to leave the castle by the sea.
The main character in this story is loosely based on artist Beatrice Turner (the black house, the outdated fashions, the self-portraits, etc.). However, the events and characters in this story are purely fictional. Although Beatrice's father did dedicate a love poem to his daughter and Beatrice always painted her mother in profile, there is no indication that the artist was ever molested by her father.
No, Salem. Rosecliff is where they filmed The Great Gatsby, not The Great Cat-sby!
