English
Victoria Winters receives a letter from Ernest Collins. Ernest, a cousin to Roger and Elizabeth has been living in New York City for the past several years. Vicki and Ernest share a brief romantic history with one another, but Ernest was pressured to leave Collinsport after being implicated in the suspicious suicide death of a woman named Stella Hastings.
Soon after, Vicki learns that a new family will be spending the summer at Collinwood. Henry Francis, an old college friend of Liz's is bringing his invalid daughter, Dorothy, to Collinwood to recuperate from post-operative brain surgery. Roger Collins begins having a relationship with Henry’s other daughter, Rachel Francis.
In the midst of all of this, Vicki begins seeing strange phenomena around the estate. She notices a shadowy figure stalking her on Roger’s boat, and she sees ghostly images appearing in several windows at the great house.
That night, someone attacks Vicki in the upstairs hall of Collinwood. They sling a silk stocking about her neck and try to strangle her. Vicki survives, but the attacker disappears. She tells Elizabeth about the event, and wants to contact the police. Liz is nervous about letting police officers into her home, and she tells Vickie that she would rather keep the matter under wraps.
Frustrated beyond measure, Vicki decides to leave the house to spend some time in town with her friends. She meets with Will Grant, the Collins family lawyer, his cousin, Nora Grant and a local artist named Paul Caine. Both Will and Paul have an interest in Victoria, but she is too scared by recent events to even begin contemplating a new boyfriend. Besides which, she still has long-distance feelings for Ernest Collins.
More and more strange events continue to take place and everybody begins to suspect everybody else. Henry Francis suspects Paul Caine of being a silk stocking murderer from Philadelphia, and Will Grant begins to suspect both Paul and Henry of being up to no good. Elizabeth suspects that the Collins’ groundskeeper, Matthew Morgan, may be responsible for attacking Vicki. Vicki grows increasingly paranoid and even begins to distrust Roger and Elizabeth.
Vicki eventually discovers that Henry Francis is not all that he’s reputed to be. His daughter Rachel, is not his daughter at all, but is in fact his wife. His other daughter, Dorothy, is actually a rich heiress named Grace Fontaine. Henry and Rachel kidnapped Dorothy and kept her drugged into a constant stupor so that they could blackmail the Fontaine family for money. Henry had decided to disguise Grace as an invalid and sequester her away at Collinwood, knowing that Elizabeth would brook no outside interference from the authorities.
Vicki learns of this scam and threatens to expose Henry and Rachel. Henry chases Vicki out of Collinwood and onto the docks where Roger keeps his boat. He is prepared to kill Vicki, when out steps Paul Caine – the aloof local artist. Paul is not an artist at all, but is in fact an undercover detective. He has been trailing Henry’s activities for some time now. The two get into a shootout on the boat, and Paul delivers a fatal gunshot into Henry’s body.
After the dust settles, everything begins to slowly return to normal (or at least, as normal as things are apt to be at a place like Collinwood).