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Charity Elmore leads guests on a tour that advances from the inn’s stately rooms — ready for an Agatha Christie mystery to break out at any moment — to the lighthouse tower and widow’s walk up top.

After dark, I climbed the spiral staircase to the widow’s walk and stood by the pulsing beacon, which felt forbidden but isn’t.

I saw, in sharp, ink-black silhouette against the sky, turrets and pikes, a widow’s walk.

It was as if all the political journalists in Washington were packed onto some widow’s walk craning their necks for the first sign of bipartisanship’s mast.

Eventually, it would expand to 8,000 square feet, with five flights of stairs leading to a cupola that overlooks the city; at the top, they’d install a window that opens onto a widow’s walk where the Galighers and their company could escape the swampy summer mosquitoes and gaze out across the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.