In the previous episode of The Fall of the House of Usher, Leo Usher (Rahul Kohli) was spiraling out over how bleak it would be to have a double funeral for his siblings Perry (Sauriyan Sapkota) and Camille (Kate Siegel), so maybe it is a tiny (minuscule, really) silver lining that he didn’t live to see the triple funeral the Ushers throw to kick off Episode 5. It’s no wonder the remaining Ushers are beginning to really spin out — some faster than others. Let’s see what tragedy awaits the monstrous family in “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

Do Roderick and Madeline know why all the Usher kids are dying?

Roderick seems to have an idea, but he’s being coy about it. When Pym (Mark Hamill) shows the Usher twins the picture Leo took of Verna (Carla Gugino) with the cat, they realize it is the security guard from the night of Camille’s death and the woman in the red cloak at Perry’s party. Now they know for sure she is at the center of it all. But who is she? Madeline (Mary McDonnell) has a theory: She reminds her brother of New Year’s Eve, 1979, and wonders if the mystery woman is the bartender’s daughter — an unhinged heir to Roderick Usher’s fortune who wants what she believes is hers. Roderick, who looks scared to even talk about that night, swears he never slept with the bartender. 

With the memory of the bartender in his mind, Roderick heads back down to the basement in the Fortunato building — he’s back at that brick wall and yes, still hearing the jingling of bells. Aloud (or — to the wall, perhaps?) he wonders if he’s losing his mind or if the crazy explanation he has in his head could be true. He doesn’t elaborate on what that crazy explanation might be, but he does have a thought on how to stop these deaths from happening: he has to die. He contemplates several ways of killing himself, but can’t go through with any of them.

What does Madeline meet with Rufus Griswold about in the 1979 timeline?

Ostensibly, Madeline’s (here played by Willa Fitzgerald) meeting with the brutish Rufus Griswold (Michael Trucco) is about setting Fortunato up with an ahead-of-its-time computer system –– but, as she informs Annabel (Katie Parker) later, it is really about sizing the enemy up. The conversation turns bad once Rufus makes it clear he’s really only interested in sleeping with Madeline, and she makes it clear that is never going to happen. Rufus is angry and cruel in his attempts to humiliate her; this includes revealing that the twins are the illegitimate children of her mother, Eliza (Annabeth Gish) and Longfellow (Robert Longstreet). 

Madeline holds her ground. Back at Roderick’s, she tells him, Annabel, and, yes, Dupin (Malcolm Goodwin), that the meeting went well — now they know Rufus is an idiot, and that he underestimates the Ushers. Dupin points out the meeting gave them another piece of information: They know for sure that the documents that would incriminate Rufus and Fortunato (regarding the forged drug trial approvals resulting in patient deaths) still exist, and are sitting down in the Fortunato building basement.

How does Victorine Lafourcade die?

When Alessandra (Paola Núñez) finds out that Victorine (T’Nia Miller) is pushing the human trials for the heart mesh device along –– by not just scheduling her for surgery, but also forging Alessandra’s signature on data reports (does this scheme sound familiar at all?) the good doctor is furious. The two have it out at Victorine’s house. Alessandra refuses to do the surgery, breaks up with Victorine, calls the entire Usher family monsters, and makes it quite clear that she isn’t afraid of the Pym Reaper’s NDAs — she’s going to the authorities about the fraud. In anger, Victorine hurls a marble bookend at her as she walks toward the door.

The next time we see Victorine, she’s in her office repeatedly calling Alessandra to apologize. She wants them to work it out. She wants to figure out a way forward with the surgery. She wants her back. As her day continues, she begins to hear this chirping sound, but can’t figure out where it’s coming from and worse, no one else hears it. The sound consumes her. 

Later, Roderick shows up at Victorine’s house to do something surprising — offer his complete support, apologize for pitting his children against each other, and be honest about why he’s been on her case about the heart mesh device. But she’s distracted the entire time. Roderick can see how out of it she is. As she clearly slips in and out of reality, she asks her father to listen for the chirping. This time, he can hear it. He also smells something strange. While this is going on, she begins to remember what happened the last time she saw Alessandra: That bookend hit her right in the head and she slowly bled out on the floor. Victorine could’ve yelled for help or called someone, but instead, fearing what would happen to her, she lets her girlfriend die.

Roderick follows the sound into a back room and walks into a horrific scene: Alessandra is dead, propped up against the wall, and her chest is cut open. Now he knows exactly where that sound is coming from — Victorine sewed the heart mesh device onto her dead girlfriend’s lifeless heart and it has been pumping, pumping, pumping ever since. Roderick tries to calmly get Victorine out of there, but she stabs herself in the heart right there in front of him. That “Daddy?” she calls out as she realizes what she’s done is going to haunt Roderick for a long, long time.

How are Frederick and Tamerlane taking things?

Everyone is unwell! Tamerlane (Samantha Sloyan) is still not sleeping, and her hallucinations of Verna as the sex worker Candy are getting worse and worse. It eventually leads to her screaming at her husband Bill (Matt Biedel), insulting his very existence, and informing him that their relationship was all part of her business plan and she can easily replace him. He leaves her. 

Freddie (Henry Thomas) is growing angrier and more bitter by the hour about his wife, Morrie (Crystal Balint) lying to him and going to Perry’s party. She’s in no state to leave the hospital, but he wants her home immediately, regardless of what the doctors say and regardless of what Lenore (Kyliegh Curran) cautions. By the end of the episode, Freddie seems to move past angry husband into something sinister. When he tells Lenore, “We’ve almost got her,” it sounds much more ominous than simply getting her home to recover.