by Wendy Webb
That may have had something to do with the fact that I’d had occasion to meet Penelope Dare twenty years ago, after the suspicious death of her father and sister. I was a journalist covering the crime beat at the time, and the case of Chester and Chamomile Dare was one of the first I’d worked on as a young reporter. I supposed Miss Penny, as she was known, was now nearing the age that her father had been all of those years ago.
Penelope Dare had inherited a massive fortune when her father and sister died, but according to local lore, had never again left the Cliffside property. She had spent the intervening years, between when I first met her and the day I was bumping along in the backseat of a chauffeur-driven car to see her again, devoting her life to carrying on her father’s work of running a fellowship for artists and writers, a retreat where creative types could focus on their craft without any distractions from the outside world. Cliffside was nationally, even internationally, known, with artists and writers competing for the fellowships that would allow them to spend two or four weeks at Cliffside.
I had grown up in the area, knowing Cliffside’s reputation, and had seen the Dare sisters and their father around town from time to time. They were an elegant family, the women so dignified in their beautiful clothes. I remember once running into one of the sisters on the street in front of the drugstore—I was about ten years old. She’d bent down and told me what a beautiful little girl I was. I never forgot that. It wasn’t something I heard often. I had been abandoned as an infant, left in a local orphanage by a mother I never knew, and had grown up in a series of foster homes before being adopted when I was twelve. Suffice it to say there wasn’t a lot of affection in my early life. As I rode along toward Cliffside, I still could scarcely grasp that the little girl without a home or a real family was going to be living in the most elegant and beautiful place in the county, carrying on the work of the Dares. I couldn’t believe my luck.
Frankly, I needed a change. My nerves had been on edge for months, an indefinable sense of dread enveloping me as heavily as this fog. People said to trust one’s instincts, and mine had always been spot on, but lately those instincts had been leading me astray. I had become skittish and fearful of, well, almost everything. I had been having horrible dreams, about death and danger. I attributed them to my job. I encountered horrible things almost every day—death, murder, unspeakable things—and it was seeping into my nightmares.
It had cost me my job at the newspaper, I’m ashamed to admit. Not that I blamed my boss. You can’t have a scared rabbit as an investigative reporter, he said to me, and he was right. I had lost whatever it was that had made me good at my job, and I couldn’t explain why.
The doctors told me it was a cumulative effect from all of the horrible stories I had covered over the years. Post-traumatic stress disorder, they said. Crime had been my beat, and as such, I had been deeply involved in all manner of horror and heartbreak in our corner of the world. School shootings. Teenage suicides. Domestic violence. A serial killer preying on young boys. I think a piece of me died every time I had to go to a crime scene while that monster was still on the loose.
I had seen too much death, and it was catching up with me. I felt, however irrational this may sound, that death was an entity unto itself, that there really was a Grim Reaper out there somewhere, and he was coming for me. It haunted me at night, made me wonder what manner of evil was lurking outside my windows. But, PTSD? I didn’t agree with that diagnosis. That was for people who had been through real trauma themselves. Not for people reporting on the trauma.
What I did not know then, but do now, is that something wicked was indeed wending its way into my life, only I was too caught up in my own circumstances to notice.
I was busy looking for another job. Oh, I knew my former boss at the newspaper would give me a good recommendation and, with my experience and body of work behind me, I could land a job at just about any paper in the country. But I couldn’t stomach the idea of doing that anymore. Chasing crime. Hunting down evil.
So, when I heard on the news about Miss Penny’s decision to retire as the director of Cliffside, a possibility glistened on the horizon. Overseeing a place where writers and artists came for solitude and creativity seemed as far away from crime reporting as it was possible to get. I could feel my whole body relaxing at the thought of it.
It was strange—I had thought about that place often over the years. I’d catch myself daydreaming about the house and grounds on many occasions. I was oddly intrigued by the possibility of working there.
When I saw the notice that she was retiring, I wondered if Miss Penny had found her replacement or if she was still looking. So I picked up the phone and called her. She remembered me right away.
“How nice to hear from you after all these years,” Penelope Dare said to me, her voice crackling with age. “I’ve followed your career, Eleanor—you’ve made quite a name for yourself. Your articles are riveting.”
“That’s very kind, thank you,” I said, “but you may not have heard, I’ve left the paper.”
“Oh?”
“It’s true,” I said. “And actually, that’s the reason I’m calling. I’m wondering if you’ve already found a director to step in when you retire, or if the position is still open.”
“Hundreds have applied,” she said, clearing her throat. “I haven’t made my decision yet. Are you calling to apply for the job?”
I winced. Hundreds. What were the chances she’d consider me? But I pressed on. “Well, yes,” I said. “I am. I’d love the chance to talk with you about it.”
She was silent for a moment and then said, “What a delightfully interesting idea.”
And so, we talked. I asked her why she was retiring, and she told me age was taking its toll. She had devoted her life to this pursuit and now she was ready for a rest, it was as simple as that. She asked me why I was interested in being the director of Cliffside, and I told her I needed a change and the thought of working with artists and writers was appealing. More than that, Cliffside itself seemed to be pulling me toward it, I told her. I had been able to think of little else since I’d heard the news of her retirement.
As we were talking, Cliffside swam into my mind. It was a magnificent building sitting on forty acres of pristine forestland with hundreds of feet of Lake Superior shoreline. It had its own private system of trails through the woods and along the water. There was a boathouse with sailboats, kayaks, and a powerboat. From Cliffside’s veranda overlooking the water, you could see up and down the shoreline for miles. It was quite spectacular.
Living in a beautiful place like Cliffside, hosting artists and writers—compared to what I’d been through recently—sounded like heaven.
We ended our conversation with her deciding to take some time to think about it and consider other candidates. I worried for days that she might not choose me. It was an awfully big responsibility, stepping into her shoes and running the institution her father had created.
But at the end of that week, I got the call. I was to be the new director of Cliffside Manor, starting in a month’s time. The letter of agreement arrived in the mail the next day.
I remember hanging up the phone after that call and feeling a tingle of excitement sizzle through me. I was starting a whole new chapter of my life.
CHAPTER 2
We rounded the last bend, and Cliffside came into view, materializing out of the fog. I had first seen it twenty years earlier, but I still gasped at the sight of it. It was an enormous, sprawling, white-stone structure with a red-tiled roof, its front dominated by a series of archways that ran the length of the building. It was three stories tall, and I noticed mullioned windows on the upper floors. I thought I detected movement in one of those windows but couldn’t be sure. It might have been a curtain swaying in the breeze.
The place had a Mediterranean feel—the archways, the white stone, the tiled roof—and it reminded me, of all things, of a golf club where I had attended a wedding some years earlier.<
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Miss Penny was standing under one of the archways when we pulled up, and as we rolled to a stop, I was struck by how the years had aged her. The ramrod straight posture I remembered her possessing—even in the midst of her grief—had given way to the curvature of age. She seemed smaller now, diminished somehow. Her hair, pulled into a severe bun, had faded from mousey brown to gray. But her bright smile was warm and welcoming, in stark contrast to the gloom outside.
“You’ve arrived!” she called to me as I stepped out of the car. “Welcome! Welcome back to Cliffside.”
The driver dealt with my bags as Miss Penny walked over to me.
“It’s wonderful to see you again, Miss Harper,” she said, extending her hand.
“It’s lovely to see you, too,” I said, taking her hand in mine, her skin paper-thin and brittle, as though it might disintegrate at the slightest touch. I noticed the lines surrounding her eyes, trails of the sadness and grief she had experienced. “It’s been a long time.”
“Twenty years and sixty-seven days since that horrible morning Father and Milly were taken from us,” she said, smiling a sad smile.
My stomach did a quick flip as I remembered the scene of the accident, the car smashed to pieces at the bottom of the cliff, Chester Dare’s eyes wide open, his hands still gripping the steering wheel, Chamomile thrown several yards away, her neck skewed at an odd angle. I shook my head to dissipate the vision.
“I’m sure they’d be very proud of what you’ve accomplished in their memory,” I said. “This place, what you’re doing for the arts. Carrying on your father’s work.”
“Father was a great patron of the arts, and Milly herself was a poet.” She smiled. “I do what I can to keep their memory alive.
“But, no more talk of that now,” she went on, waving her hand as if to sweep away the memories. “Today is a happy day.” She gestured toward a set of massive double doors. “Let’s go inside. I’ll show you your new home.”
We walked through the doors and into an enormous foyer, its pinkish marble floors gleaming. There stood a man and a woman, both dressed in black, waiting, it seemed, for me.
“I’d like you to meet Harriet and Mr. Baines,” Miss Penny said to me. “They are in charge of the household here at Cliffside. The maids, the cooks, the gardeners, and the driver—all under their watchful eye. Generally, Harriet runs the inside of the house, and Mr. Baines runs the outside.”
She turned to them. “Our new director, Eleanor Harper.”
Harriet smiled warmly at me. “It’s a pleasure, ma’am. Miss Penny has spoken so highly of you. Should you have need of anything, anything at all, please let me know.”
Mr. Baines took a step forward and bowed slightly. “We’re all very glad to have you at Cliffside, Miss Harper,” he said. I noticed a slight accent buoying his words.
“I’m glad to be here,” I said, my stomach tightening. “I hope you won’t mind bearing with me while I learn the ropes.”
“Not at all, ma’am,” Harriet said. “I’m sure you’ll do just fine.”
They both stood there, expectant smiles on their faces. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do or say next.
Miss Penny broke the silence. “I’m going to give our new director a tour and help her get settled,” she said. “We’ll have dinner at six thirty in the main dining room, with cocktails at five thirty.”
“Very good, ma’am,” Harriet said, and she and Mr. Baines shuffled off to points unknown.
Miss Penny took my arm, and we began our walk around the enormous house.
The foyer spilled down a couple of stairs to a sunken drawing room filled with sofas and overstuffed chairs arranged in groups. A piano sat in one corner, a fireplace in the other. Heavy Oriental rugs lay on the floors. Beyond the drawing room, there was a smaller salon, and on the opposite end of the building, I could see through the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows onto the veranda. A lawn stretched beyond that before disappearing into the fog.
“My father built Cliffside in 1925 as a sanatorium for TB patients,” she said as we walked from room to room.
Tuberculosis. I remembered that. “He built it mainly for his employees, is that right?”
Miss Penny nodded. “He never came down with TB, but many of his employees did. It was a dreadful disease, just dreadful.”
“We didn’t talk about this back when I was first here—as you said, there were other things to cover—but now I’m curious. Why didn’t they just send people to a hospital? Why build a special facility?”
“The treatment for TB consisted mainly of isolation, rest, and clean air,” she explained. “They had to isolate the patients from the rest of the population because the disease was so infectious, and the treatment took months, if not years. TB was so rampant at the time that, if the patients simply went to a hospital, they’d be clogging up all of the beds for months and years, leaving no room for patients with other ills. It wasn’t feasible.”
“The treatment took months?”
“I can’t imagine it, being away from one’s family all of that time, in isolation,” she said, a sad tone in her voice. “There wasn’t a TB sanatorium in the region, so my father built one, thinking there was no place on earth with cleaner air and a more relaxing atmosphere than we have right here. It was something truly wonderful that he did. TB was a real plague in his time. The disease was a killer. Sanatoriums sprang up all across the country, but the cure rate wasn’t very high. They used to call these places ‘waiting rooms for death.’”
A shiver ran through me.
She pointed to a framed, black-and-white print hanging on the opposite wall. “During the renovation, we found some old photos that we’ve put up.”
I walked over to get a better look. It was a shot of the Cliffside veranda lined with patients lying on chaise lounges, covered in white blankets.
I squinted. “There must be sixty people out there,” I said.
“The facility could house twice that,” she said. “The second floor had semi-private and private rooms, and the third floor was just one big, open space lined with beds, like a hospital ward. That’s where the children were.”
We crossed the room and went through a door leading outside to the veranda. “If it were a nicer day, you could see down the shoreline for miles from here. It really is quite spectacular. Apparently, it was one reason my father chose this location.”
“I suppose he thought a nice view would alleviate the boredom,” I said. I could almost see those patients from the photograph come to life here, lying on their chaises where we stood, nurses tending to them.
“If you’re interested, Harriet could tell you some tales from when it was a sanatorium. My father kept Milly and me far away from the property in those days. Isolation of the patients was the whole point, and he had no intention of putting us in harm’s way. But Harriet’s mother was here. She has heard a lifetime of stories about Cliffside.”
A possibility scratched at the back of my mind, the history of the place floating in the air around me like so many ghosts. An old TB sanatorium, turned into a beautiful retreat. It sounded like the stuff of a good feature article. I was giving up crime reporting, I told myself, but I didn’t have to give up writing altogether. I decided to look into it and see what I could dig up.
“What happened to Cliffside when they cured TB?” I asked. “It wasn’t a retreat right away, if I’m remembering correctly.”
Miss Penny nodded. “The sanatorium closed in the early 1950s. After it had been thoroughly disinfected, my father sold our family home in town and we moved in here. That’s when my father got the idea to turn it into a retreat for writers and artists. It became his life’s passion. We were all so happy until—” She stopped short. Tears glistened in her eyes. “They were my life, you see,” she said. “When they were gone, I had to do something. I had to find a purpose.”
“So, you carried on your father’s work,” I said, getting the full picture now. An image of Penelope Dare floated
through my mind, the way she had looked twenty years earlier. So stoic, so matter-of-fact, her grief never on display. But I knew it was always simmering just below the surface. And I could understand the need to throw oneself into a project, to channel that grief into something tangible and real.
We walked back through the doors and into the main drawing room, where we found Harriet holding a tray with a teapot and two cups.
“Some tea, ma’am?” she said. “I thought it would be just the thing on such a soggy day.”
“Oh, thank you, Harriet,” Miss Penny said. “I think we’ll take it up in my office. We’ve got some matters to discuss, forms to fill out, that sort of thing.”
She nodded, and then she was off with the tray, presumably heading upstairs to where I remember there being a study. Miss Penny and I lingered awhile, looking at photos hung on the walls in the main rooms, before walking up the long, wide circular staircase to the second floor, where she led me into a room lined with bookshelves. A heavy, antique desk sat facing a bay window with a built-in seat that overlooked the back lawn. A leather armchair and ottoman sat next to a fireplace that had been laid but not lit. Harriet’s tea tray sat on the end table.
“This is the director’s office,” Miss Penny said, pouring tea into both of our cups and handing one to me. “Your office, now. A little better than the bullpen at the newspaper, I’ll wager?”
“Slightly.” I smiled and took a sip of the tea, remembering the chaos and noise of a crowded newsroom when deadlines neared. It was a stark contrast to this quiet haven.
We spent the next hour or so wrangling with paperwork—tax and insurance forms, an employment contract—but with that done, Miss Penny poured us both another cup of tea and sank into the armchair, crossing her legs.