The following contains spoilers for Shadows House Season 2, Episode 4, "Potential Suspects", now streaming on Crunchyroll.
In Shadows House, there are a few specific rules that all Living Dolls must obey. The most important is to not think unnecessary thoughts -- which is code for pledge your body and mind to being the perfect Face for your Shadow master. The other rule is to always protect the coffee.
What happened in Season 2, Episode 3 when the Belle twins broke the coffee carafes caused a shocking ripple among the Living Dolls and rattled the Star Bearers significantly. For the latter, their positions as Star Bearers hang in the balance as they have to find someone to take the blame -- even if that someone is innocent.
Barbara and Barbie's alliances in Shadows House remain unclear; are they truly blindly loyal to the Shadows House or are they, similarly to Kate, hatching a secret rebellion? On one hand, Barbara is more concerned that the Star Bearers have betrayed Lord Grandfather's trust and love for them by breaking the coffee carafes, more than the fact that she may be killed. Yet giving Kate the responsibility of finding the coffee incident's true culprit is a rather curious thing to do.
Barbara doesn't like or trust Edward, which is why she wants the Star Bearers to deal with this incident themselves before he gets word of it. In her announcement to the Living Dolls, she pins the crime on the twins -- but she knows they're not the true criminals and confronts Kate, who sees through Barbara's ploy. She knows that as much as the Star Bearers like to act as though they have authority, they're merely being manipulated by Edward.
Kate purposefully hits a sore spot and remarks that the Star Bearers are scared they can't live up to Christopher's previous leadership. She then makes them a counter-offer: she'll find the real culprit of the coffee incident. But rather than getting angry, Barbara actually allows Kate to explore the grounds to get to the bottom of the mystery.
It's pretty safe to proceed as Benjamin points out: if Kate fails to find the real culprit, they can just let her take the fall. After all, it's not the first time she's been under suspicion in Shadows House. However, it's also possible that Barbara is trying to use this as a way to suss out Kate's true motives and see whether she's someone who can be trusted.
Meanwhile, Kate takes Emilico to visit Mia and Rosemary. While Mia recovered quickly, Rosemary is still undergoing treatment -- and her healing process looks disturbingly like waterboarding. She's strapped to a table and water gets forcefully injected into her mouth, forcing her to vomit the water and soot up. The twins, on the other hand, are put in charge of cleaning the soot pipes but can't stay in there long before contracting soot sickness. They get dragged off to vomit up the soot using water before being thrown into the soot pipes once more for their punishment. It's hard to say which is worse.
Although Kate and Emilico still do not know who was controlling the twins or who let the scorches into the manor in the first place, their exploration around the manor grounds has provided more insight about their surroundings. As predicted, the Star Bearers' residential wing is locked, though they do discover two things: while nobody except the adults are allowed up on the third floor, there is a way to enter from an external staircase. There's also an unmarked dilapidated cabin at the edge of the forest.
To their surprise, this cabin isn't abandoned; the entire research team has been living there. It seems odd that they aren't conducting their experiments within the manor itself and have chosen to sequester themselves in a separate area. Is this part of the research team's rebellious act, or are they perhaps operating under Lord Grandfather's orders? Season 2 of Shadows House continues to grow in intrigue and mystery.