Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches.
1934: 1
Some moments return tous, intact and incandescent, undimmed by the passage of time. It is like that when I remember that December of 1934 and the night that Virginia Somerset went missing.
Any good writer must provide a setting for their story, and therefore before I speak to you about Virginia I must describe the time and place we inhabited. Certain details will be crucial for your understanding of this tale.
I must warn you that I will also narrate this story in my own voice, in my own way, and at my own pace, which may not seem like the way you might tell it, but it is important that I do it like this, for it will be the lone method that can perhaps render the truth of Virginia Somerset, or as much truth as I can approximate on paper.
We were in the midst of the Great Depression, a tragedy that seemed to have no end, though, I must admit, in the beginning I had not understood the extent of it. In 1929, when it all started, many folks shrugged it off. Who could blame them? People had been having a merry time for most of the decade. Women bared their knees and rouged them up, men parted their hair in the middle and tried to imitate Rudolph Valentino, and they all sipped illicit liquor and danced the weekends away.
Even as late as 1931 the papers were saturated with stories urging people to buy stocks at a bargain price. We thought things would turn around. But they didn’t. Then, one morning, it was as if we all woke up from a spell, panic-stricken, and realized the ditch we’d rolled into.
My father had been a draftsman but lost his job. To make ends meet, he borrowed money on his life insurance policy and sold cardboard games where you’d punch a slot and try to win a prize. Everyone gambled; it was the chance to make a pile of cash with a little money, so he sold those betting games, which kept us from starving. My mother baked pies and sold them from out of our kitchen. Five cents a pie.
A lot of people used white-rabbit money instead of real cash, and lots of folks depended on charity to get by. I was lucky. Stoneridge College had accepted me on a special work-learn program, which meant I helped one of the French teachers, Mrs.Thérèse Audrain, and in exchange I received tuition and room and board.
Other girls back in my hometown in Ohio were washing laundry for pennies. When a manufacturer advertised for skilled workers at ten dollars a week, a riot started as people tried to get to the front of the line for a chance at the jobs.
It was hard on everyone, but harder for women. There were no flophouses for ladies. I met a girl from New York who said women would go into Grand Central and sleep in the waiting room, pretending they were catching a train. Where else could they go?
College granted me a place to live and study, plus hot meals. Best of all for my family, it meant they could take in lodgers and rent my room. They had three young men living at their apartment during that time, two sharing my old room and another rooming with my brother. My parents and my younger sister shared the third bedroom.
And what a place to live I had! Room 11 of Joyce House might not have seemed like much to other girls, merely a bed and a desk and a window. But for me it was a chance at freedom.
Because of the Great Depression, many women found it harder to secure work. If you were married, they wouldn’t hire you. Menwere supposed to be the breadwinners, and if you were married and working, you were stealing a man’s job.
But I was single, and I knew that there were a few industries that hired women: retail and advertising. The trouble was those places liked to have college graduates. Macy’s demanded it; you couldn’t be a shopgirl there without a degree, it was a posh place.
If I could get a degree at a place like Stoneridge, with the excellent connections it might yield, I was sure I’d be able to land a job. If things went sour, I figured I could be a teacher and my English degree would still come in handy.
Otherwise I’d have to marry. That’s what was expected of girls. We’d find a guy, pop out a couple of kids, and spend our days cooking and cleaning for them. Or else I’d be stuck scrambling to earn three dollars a week at a factory. Either way, I’d never get a chance to sit in front of a typewriter again.
Joyce House and Stoneridge were my one chance to secure a degree. Besides, Mrs. Audrain was a pleasant-enough woman and my work was far from exhausting, my room was comfortable, and my learning proceeded at a brisk pace. I was also making useful connections.
This is why I didn’t contradict Carolyn when she found my new roommate, Virginia Somerset, “entirely insufferable,” in her own words.
Carolyn Wingrave was beautiful, witty, and wealthy. Her father owned the Wingrave Manufacturing Company, which was a cotton mill that employed hundreds of people in Temperance Landing.
Everyone in the area knew the Wingraves; they’d been around for ages. I believe the Wingrave cotton mill was founded in the 1830s, when textile mills were popping up all over Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, but the Wingraves had lived in Massachusetts Bay long before that, and they were proud of their solid roots and outstanding lineage.
They had a grand house called the Willows, built in the Federal style and then altered to fit the whims of Carolyn’s father. Carolyn might have lived there if she wanted and commuted to campuseach morning, but she roomed at Joyce House because it allowed her more freedom than being with her parents. After all, our house mother was not a real mother, merely an employee who attempted to enforce the college’s rules yet was often faced with a few dozen young women who smuggled their share of alcohol and cigarettes into their rooms.
This, then, was the world I inhabited, spending my days flitting between classes and my leisure time sitting by the pond reading a book, playing checkers in our common room, or joining the other girls for a movie night in town. This was an innocent world, insulated from strife. It was a world of light. After Ginny’s disappearance I would know the shape of shadows.
—
Now that I’ve describedthe setting, I must paint a portrait of the girl.
Virginia Somerset arrived at Stoneridge as a second-year transfer student. She came from California, where her father maintained a thriving medical practice. While many industries struggled, Hollywood kept on churning out films and Dr. Somerset had a clientele composed of studio executives, movie stars, and well-known entertainers. You might think this meant Ginny would be eagerly received among the other well-heeled girls who attended Stoneridge. But she was new money, and while I thought Ginny was effervescent, Carolyn found her gauche.
She was also a Catholic. Her mother had been an Italian beauty who’d met Dr. Somerset when he was touring Europe. Back then, affluent people still took a dim view of folks who embodied such traits—new money, foreign roots, and the lack of a good Protestant heritage would keep you out of the tonier country clubs—and Carolyn was more snobbish than your average girl.
Perhaps the biggest point against Ginny was her eccentricity. At a time when most women, Carolyn and myself included, were trying to imitate Joan Crawford or Jean Harlow, our eyebrows plucked, our eyelashes heavy with mascara, our hair bleached and curled, Ginny kept her thick, dark hair long and her eyebrows natural. While the girls at Stoneridge wore dresses with puffysleeves and frilly bows, or else put on fur-trimmed woolen suits, Ginny sewed her own clothes and wore dresses that looked more like tunics, showing her slender arms, with colorful sashes around the waist. The hems often reached her ankles, and she looked more like a playful nymph than a proper lady. She liked to knit, using five different types of yarn to make gloves that left her fingers exposed. She went around hatless, weaving ribbons and beads into her hair.
She was, most important, a Spiritualist, which she revealed the first day we met as she was unpacking her suitcase and pinning her drawings on the wall on her side of the room. She was dressed all in green, with a silver belt around her waist, and resembled a sprite as drawn by Arthur Rackham.
She’d stretched out a hand and proclaimed, with a straightforwardness that caught me off guard, “I’m your roommate, Ginny Somerset. I like dancing and painting and designing my own clothes, I speak to ghosts, and I can draw your natal chart. I’m a Spiritualist.”
