Mad scientist Julia Hoffman sews the severed head of warlock Judah Zachery back on its body, electrifies it with a bolt of lightning, and exclaims to her assistant, Cockney showgirl/ psychic Leticia Faye, that Judah “is alive!” Grayson Hall doesn’t take this line as far over the top as Colin Clive took the original line in the 1931 film Frankenstein, but she and Nancy Barrett are having so much fun with the whole preposterous situation that she doesn’t have to.
Unfortunately, another cast member is stuck with a less enjoyable set of chores today. That is James Storm as seagoing con man Gerard Stiles. Nothing Gerard does makes much sense, the dialogue he speaks while doing it is turgid and pointless, and he starts the episode already in a pose of extreme self-satisfaction that leaves the character nowhere to go emotionally. It’s no wonder he keeps stumbling over his lines. When we watched the episode, my wife, Mrs Acilius, described Gerard’s part as “crappy.” Enough of Mr Storm’s personal charm peeks through to make Gerard just about watchable, but it is no wonder the character did not take off with viewers as other villains had done.
In a mansion known as Rose Cottage, Gerard catches Leticia sneaking out of a room with a wooden box. He demands she tell him what is in the box. She refuses; they scuffle. She has a perfect opportunity to knee him in the groin. Leticia is the sort of downright personality whom one would expect to be used to defending herself in that manner. Moreover, she is under Judah’s power, and he is most insistent she bring him the contents of the box at once. The box itself looks quite sturdy and is admirably suited to banging Gerard on the head until he is unable to follow Leticia out of Rose Cottage. So it is quite disappointing that she leaves her feet on the floor and lets Gerard take the box. Leticia hasn’t had much sleep lately, maybe her reaction time is just down.
Gerard opens the box and finds what the show asks us to accept as a solid gold mask inlaid with precious jewels (it looks like part of a Halloween costume that cost $1.98, but let us put that to one side.) He exclaims that it must be worth a fortune. Leticia asks him to hand it over to her so that she can take it to Braithwaite’s shop in the village to be appraised. Inexplicably, he agrees.
Gerard goes to the great house of Collinwood, where he confronts newly hired governess Daphne Harridge with a demand for her real name. She denies having any other name, and he says there is no record of a Daphne Harridge in the town she told him she came from. She says she lied when she claimed to be from that town, since he is neither her employer nor a member of the Collins family and so it was impertinent of him to question her about her history. That leaves Gerard at a dead end.
The effective master of Collinwood, Quentin Collins, hears a tune being played on the piano in the drawing room. We haven’t heard it before, and we wonder what it could possibly be. The dramatic date is 1840, and the tune is in a post-impressionist style that would be unknown until the 1920s and not popular for decades after that. Quentin finds Gerard at the piano. Gerard points to the sheet music on the piano. Quentin says that the only copy of it belonged to his paramour Joanna Mills, and that other notes apparently from Joanna have turned up in odd places in the last few days. Since Joanna has been dead for almost a year, Quentin finds this troubling.
Gerard declares that “Well, there must be two reasons. Either somebody is deliberately trying to upset you, or Joanna is trying to communicate with you, beyond the grave.” He and Quentin then go on to bicker about Quentin’s reluctance to accept a supernatural explanation. As Mrs Acilius pointed out, the whole matter becomes quite simple once you set aside the supernatural option. Daphne, a woman about whom Quentin knows almost nothing, moved into the house at almost exactly the time the notes started appearing. Since Gerard was just telling Daphne that he suspects she is up to no good, we cannot understand why he does not bring this up to Quentin. I’ve heard actors talk about situations when they froze on stage because the character had no coherent attitude towards the words and actions; it’s a tribute to Mr Storm’s professionalism that he could deliver his dialogue at all today.
