One day in 1897, Edward Collins convenes his siblings Judith, Carl, and Quentin for a family meeting in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood. Their grandmother Edith died the night before. She was supposed to tell Edward a celebrated family secret, but did not do so. Edward is convinced she must have told one of the others, and declares that no one will leave the room until he finds out which.
Returning viewers know that Edith did not tell any of them, and we can imagine a half hour of nothing but the four Collinses of Collinwood sitting around staring at each other. Fortunately, Quentin points out that Edith was briefly alone with their recently arrived and thoroughly mysterious cousin, Barnabas Collins, and she might possibly have told him. Edward orders Carl to go to the Old House on the estate, where Barnabas is staying. Carl asks why it’s always him who has to do these things, and Edward angrily shoos him away. Louis Edmonds and John Karlen were both talented comic actors, and this little exchange is very funny.
In the Old House, Carl finds Sandor Rákóczi coming up from the cellar. He asks Sandor what he is doing there. Sandor says he lives there. Carl says that he’d heard Barnabas was living in the house now. Sandor says that Barnabas hired him and his wife Magda as servants. Carl laughs at that and says of Barnabas “He is an odd one, isn’t he?” Sandor gives him a fierce look, offended. Carl apologizes.
Carl explains that he has come to fetch Barnabas. Sandor says Barnabas won’t be back until after dark. Carl explains why they need him at the great house, and Sandor laughs. “You must have Gypsy blood! Nobody in the family trusts nobody else!” Carl laughs, too.
This scene may remind longtime viewers of the first time we saw Thayer David on this set, when he was playing crazed handyman Matthew Morgan. The dramatic date and the date of production were both 1966 then. Strange and troubled boy David Collins found Matthew hiding in the Old House, and agreed to help him avoid the police. Carl is a grown man, but he is as eager to please and uninterested in asserting dominance for any length of time as was the nine year old David. Further, he is so naive that he reacts with bewilderment to the idea that lust for money might be a motive for murder. Carl may not be less prejudiced against Romani people than are the rest of the Collinses, but his childlike qualities allow him to laugh at a joke that would have drawn a violent response from any of his siblings.
Carl insists that Sandor go home with him and tell Edward that Barnabas is away. Again, this shows Carl’s childishness. He wants to prove to Edward that he did as he was told and went to the Old House. In fact, Edward is appalled to see Sandor in the great house, and can barely stand listening to him.
While Sandor is leaving, Judith stops him. Sandor is astounded that she is speaking to him at all. She tells him that her grandmother may have tolerated his presence in the Old House, but that she and her brothers will not. Sandor and his wife Magda are to leave the property within twenty four hours. Judith does not give Sandor a chance to tell her that Barnabas has hired them as servants.
On the terrace, Quentin finds Rachel Drummond, the new governess. The two of them look very good together. In fact, Quentin’s seductive manner and Rachel’s response to it make them the most attractive couple we have seen on the show, by a long way.
They talk about the house. Quentin mentions that no one has been in the room on top of the tower since 1796, 101 years ago. Later that night, Rachel will see a light burning in the room, and she will rush into the drawing room to tell Edward about it.
She comes in after a meeting between Edward and Judith. Judith came to tell her brother about something entirely new to the audience. She says that the matter relating to the tower room is going well. Maidservant Beth goes to the room three times a day, and Beth also goes into town regularly to take money to a Mrs Fillmore.
This will interest returning viewers. The other day, Quentin found Beth going into town with a parcel and an envelope containing $300 in cash. Beth said Judith gave her permission to go to town to conduct personal errands, and claimed, absurdly, that she had saved the money from her salary. We now know that she was taking the money to this Mrs Fillmore for some purpose of Edward and Judith’s. Later, Quentin found Beth taking a tray of food upstairs. He asked who was supposed to eat it; she said it was for Edith. When he pointed out that it was more than Edith could eat, she said Judith would be eating with her. In Edith’s room, Beth told Judith about this. She said they would have to be more careful now that Quentin was back home, and dismissed her to take the rest of the food “upstairs.” We now know that this “upstairs” is the tower room, and that Beth is helping Judith and Edward to hide someone there of whose presence in the house Quentin is unaware.
However much this may interest us, it does not interest Edward at all. He is outraged that Judith so much as mentioned the matter to him, saying that he wants her to handle it without notifying him in any way. She objects that they will have to talk about it sometimes; he does not agree.
When Rachel enters and tells them about the light, Edward detains her with a disquisition about the impossibility of the tower room being lighted while Judith scurries off and goes upstairs. After a while, Edward takes Rachel back to the terrace and shows her that the room is dark. He asserts that it was also dark when she looked at it earlier, and it has been dark for over a hundred years.
Longtime viewers will recognize this scene. In March 1968, Dark Shadows was set in 1796, and Barnabas had just become what he is again now, a vampire. Barnabas’ father, haughty overlord Joshua, confined him to the tower room while he tried to find a way to free his son of his curse. Barnabas’ mother Naomi saw lights in the tower room, as did his second cousin Millicent. When Naomi told Joshua about the lights, he pretended not to see them, and when Millicent told her husband Nathan she had seen the lights, he, for his own reasons, also pretended not to see them. Those pretenses led each woman to go to the room, resulting in madness for Millicent and suicide for Naomi. Quentin tells Rachel that the tower room has been closed since 1796 because “a woman killed herself” there; that is an explicit reference to Naomi.
Like Edward and Judith, Joshua and Naomi were played by Louis Edmonds and Joan Bennett. It is a sign of how much more dynamic the 1897 section is than the 1790s section that Judith is an active participant in whatever scheme is going on, not simply a helpless person who stumbles upon a terrible secret and promptly kills herself.
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