Vampire Barnabas Collins has crossed over from the universe where Dark Shadows took place for its first 196 weeks and established himself as a character on another soap opera with the same title, made by the same people and broadcast in the same time slot. His best friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, has joined him in the cast of this new show. Barnabas is pretending to be a descendant of another Barnabas Collins, who in this continuity lived a quiet life and died a natural death in 1830. Julia is impersonating another Julia Hoffman, who was the housekeeper at the great house of Collinwood and a fanatical devotee of the undead Angelique until our Julia beat her to death and stole her French maid outfit.
Barnabas has taken three victims. These are alcoholic novelist Will Loomis; Will’s wife, the former Carolyn Collins Stoddard; and masochistic barmaid Buffie Harrington. Will and Carolyn own the Old House on the grounds at Collinwood, which in his own universe was Barnabas’ home. He lives there now as their unwelcome guest. Buffie has not been seen since #1023, and is mentioned today for the first time since #1028. Will discovered Julia next to Barnabas’ coffin shortly after she killed Hoffman; when he saw the corpse, he realized who Julia was and was delighted to meet her. It becomes clear only today that Carolyn also knows who Julia is. It is Carolyn who brings up Buffie’s name in her conversation with Julia. Carolyn says that Buffie was working at Collinwood the previous year. She assumes that Julia will recognize Buffie’s name in connection with something other than her former employment on the estate, so it is plausible that she knows that she has been inducted into the sisterhood of the scarf, but it is not made explicit.
Carolyn and Julia are talking about the séance at which Angelique died the first time. This séance was reenacted in #990. They made a big deal at that time about how everyone involved in the original séance was in attendance at the reenactment, with only two exceptions. Foul-tempered sourpuss Quentin Collins, Angelique’s widower, refused to have anything to do with it. And since Angelique herself was in the tomb at that time, her identical twin sister Alexis sat in for her. Neither Carolyn nor Buffie was there; since someone has to tell Julia about the séance, it makes sense to retcon her into attendance. It is not immediately obvious why they have chosen to insert Buffie into it. Regular viewers may hope that means that we will see more of Elizabeth Eis’ fine performance in this role, but she doesn’t turn up today.
Two weeks after the reenactment of the séance, Angelique rose from the dead, murdered Alexis, and took her place. She has been impersonating her ever since. Barnabas and Julia know that the “Alexis” who is staying in the great house as Quentin’s guest is really Angelique, though they do not know about the sororicide. The conversation between Julia and Carolyn is the first time it is confirmed that they have shared their information with the Loomises.
Angelique suspects that Quentin killed her, and has decided to get revenge on him by annihilating his family (except for her own son by him.) As part of that plan, she used witchcraft to finish strangling a man named Bruno whom Quentin had just been choking. When a policeman in whose presence Quentin had a few minutes before vowed to kill Bruno with his bare hands strolled in and found Quentin over the body, he arrested him. Yesterday, Angelique talked Quentin into assaulting that policeman and escaping from jail so that he could interfere with the investigation into Bruno’s death. Apparently Quentin thinks courts love it when you do those things.
Angelique keeps needling Quentin’s current wife, the former Maggie Evans, by alternately describing the evidence of Quentin’s guilt and urging her to have total faith in his innocence. Maggie is already close to a breakdown, and this doesn’t help. Julia finds her outside Angelique’s old bedroom, where she is convinced she heard the piano playing. They enter the room, and find it vacant. Longtime viewers will remember early 1969, when supernatural forces tormented the living by making a sickly little waltz resound throughout the house, and will assume that Angelique is using magic to make Maggie to hear the music.
Julia urges Maggie to get out of the house for her sanity’s sake. As Maggie is starting to think that might be a good idea, Angelique enters. Angelique looks askance at Julia. Hoffman the housekeeper had not only been dedicated to her, but was barely able to control her loathing for Maggie. So far Angelique has not suspected that Julia is not who she appears to be. When she sees Julia’s sincere concern and hears a suggestion that Maggie do something other than fall into a trap, she wonders what is going on.
Julia returns to the Loomis house in time to see Carolyn have a vision of the fateful séance. When Carolyn comes out of the trance, she declares that she knows who killed Angelique.
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