The Old House

Let's put that issue aside for the moment and see what we can do at the old house.

You’ll find the door locked and may focus instead on the rickety stairs and newly-boarded second-floor window above. (Don’t bother: The lower stairs are broken.) It’s that right-click thing again. A close examination of the front door reveals the key's in the other side.

Odds & ends: Note that the “D. & J.B. Fraser” sign over the front door is similar (but not identical) to one at the pawn shop back in Willow Creek.

There’s an age-old trick to unlocking such doors. Insert a sheet of paper under the door to catch the key and then insert something stiff into the keyhole to poke the key out of the lock and onto the paper. Here, the mourning card serves as the paper and the ... well, actually, Samuel doesn’t have anything in inventory to poke the key out of the lock.

Backtrack to the side of the house. Just to the right of the bench is a water faucet and attached hose. On inspection, Samuel discovers the hose is fixed in place with a strong wire and pockets the wire. And that’s just the stiff item that’s required. Use the wire on the front door to poke the key out of the lock. Samuel automatically retrieves the card and you're in. (Note that you can collect this wire before you need it.)

Odds & ends: A word here about demos for The Black Mirror.

I’ve seen two. The demo from 2003 (version 1.2) includes two short excerpts from Chapter II and one each from chapters III and IV. These reflect something close to the final version of the game, though Samuel’s voice sounds less high-strung.

The original (1.0) demo from 2002 is of greater interest. It’s drawn largely from this “old house” segment. You need to find your way into the structure and then down to Richard’s hidden lab. The puzzles themselves are identical to those in the final game, but some elements of the setting and certain items are different. For instance, here, William’s mourning card is a lapsed promissory note signed by Black Mirror gardener Henry, the kettle is already steaming on the stove when you enter the old house and a broken bottle is already in your inventory (and it’s a wine bottle!)

The wrecked room shows no signs of recent occupancy or an obvious exit. You can now get a vague hint by going back to Eleanor, who responds to her new “Richard’s study” topic that hubby “tends to behave quite sneakily where his experiments are concerned” -- suggesting the lab entrance must be hidden.

Or you can try to have a meaningful conversation with the sleeping cat on the mantel of the wrecked room’s fireplace.

It'll jump down and vanish under the cabinet against the left wall, knocking down a wrench (here called a key) in its passage. You’ll find this on the floor between the table and the logs.

When you look inside the newly-interactive cabinet, you'll find only darkness -- though you can read Richard's early press clippings on the inside of the right door. (Do this; it gets you a "blood" topic with Richard later in the game.) Clearly, you'll have to shed some light on the interior.

And you can do that now. The wrench opens the little compartment to the right of the fireplace. Inside, you'll find a candle and a cigarette lighter without a wick. However, the candle visibly has a wick, so use your rook knife to remove it, use the wick on the lighter and then the lighter on the cabinet to discover a secret passage at the rear leading down to Richard's chemistry lab.

Samuel’s arrival takes Richard by surprise and he'll drop a bottle. After some give and take, you’ll strike a bargain. Richard will answer Samuel’s questions if Samuel retrieves a replacement for the bottle’s contents: a blue boron oxidant called “EX 52.” (If you take an evasive stance in conversation -- a "negative" reply -- you'll have to speak to Richard again for him to make this proposal.)

Success here gets you the info needed to summon the puzzle that gets you the second key into Dergham’s quadruple-locked tomb. (Yes, quadruple. The first key is carried by Louis. The third is hidden in the mansion and can’t be retrieved until after nightfall. The fourth is down in the tomb proper.)

Odds & ends: What’s the strange machine down in the lab? God knows. Samuel isn’t a scientist and, like Samuel’s uncle Robert, Richard evidently isn’t an explainer. But you can inspect the apparatus in some detail: the mechanism on the central table, the metal rings suspended above it, the flasks hanging from the rings and the technical specs on the wall above the little table where you found the bottle earlier. You and Richard will put it through its paces (with bad results) a little later in the game.

Samuel never explicitly objects to the oxidant errand or proposes a substitute, but he's not going to perform it as outlined by Richard (a time-consuming visit to a pharmacy in the nearby town of Leechdale). Try to send him out the front gate -- located to the right of the fork in the path and now open to accommodate Louis's doorbell repairs (if you've used the doorbell topic with him) -- and Samuel declares he won't leave the estate until he finds what he came to find.

However, you can cobble together an amazing simulation of the oxidant here and now. You’ll need a container, water, a dye, a label and glue. And since the label part requires steam, you’ll also need a second container with more water and some wood and kindling to start a fire.

The collection of these items is an open-ended process. We’ll perform the tasks according to what’s convenient. For starters, collect the remnant of the broken oxidant container from the lab floor. (The container is smashed, yes, but the label remains intact.) And get one of the small bottles from the table at the lab's right rear to hold the solution.

You’ll need water, and you know where to find it: Pick up the kettle from the table in the wrecked room, retreat to the nozzle beside the house and fill both the small bottle and the kettle.

The solution’s supposed to be blue, so you’ll need some coloring. It’s not far. Reenter the old house. You’ll see a little desk in the right near corner. Open the lower drawer to zoom in on the desktop and then open the little drawer in the upper left-hand corner. Collect the fountain pen within and use the pen on the bottle to turn the water blue.

Odds & ends: And the first drawer? It contains a pair of test tubes, playing cards, a variety of what appear to be ads and, not mentioned in the description, what looks like a journal. (An account of Richard’s experiments, possibly?)

You can't take any of these items, but the cursor remains a bewitching red even after you've elicited a full description -- typically a signal that a location or item has some future use.

Not this time. And why not? I’m guessing this interactivity is an artifact from some earlier stage of the design. (It’s also present in the demos.) Conceivably, the test tubes or journal may have been part of an earlier solution to the oxidant puzzle. When you return to the old house at night (see below), the little desk is no longer interactive.

And finally the label. A little hitch here: It’s still connected to the remains of the broken flask. That’d make your doppelganger a bit inauthentic, so you’ll want to separate the label from the glass.

Steam would help. But, as noted, making steam is a little operation in itself. You’ll need more water, so, if you haven’t already done so, grab the kettle from the table in the wrecked room and fill it up at the nozzle. You’ll want to build a fire, so grab the dirty newspaper from the floor beside the table and the logs from over near the fireplace. Use the newspaper, then the logs, then the lighter on the stove and plop the filled kettle on top. (As with the construction of a fake oxidant, this can be done in slightly different orders -- for instance, you can place the kettle first -- but the newspaper must come before the logs and the lighter after them.)

And then just clear out of the room and return. You'll find steam coming from the kettle. Use the shard of the oxidant bottle on the steam and you'll come up with the label.

Life is good ... but for a new hitch: Steamed-off labels aren’t especially sticky. How to apply the label to the small bottle?

That’s less obvious. So go do the one new thing you can do at this stage: Visit Louis at the front gate and ask him about the doorbell. (You already know the answer but you need to ask anyway to trigger a new topic for Eleanor.)

You’ll see he’s brought out his toolbox. There might be glue in a toolbox. But you can’t poke around in there with Louis standing right here.

Maybe you could make him stand somewhere else. Check in with Eleanor. She'll ask you to instruct Louis to put aside the buzzer for the moment and mow the lawn. (Do this. Do that. You have to feel a little sorry for the handyman.)

Trundle down to the gate again and pass along the message. Louis seems exasperated and says he’ll get to it. Report Louis's less-than-cooperative reply to Eleanor and she'll instruct you to repeat the message. She doesn't want to be bothered by the mower’s roar while she's playing her endless music-box song at the piano during the evening.

This time, Louis complies. Give him some space. By the time you return from either the front door of the main house or the side of the old house, he'll be mowing around the tree you saw him spraying earlier. His jacket hangs from the tree. Hmm.

As with the toolbox at the gate, you can't touch the jacket with Louis present. (Yes, you’re going to move him out of position again.) But, for now, note that the toolbox has not followed him. Evidently flustered at being bossed around by a stranger, he left it outside the gate. Get back there and click on it twice to come up with glue and then a wire. You can put ‘em both to use directly.

Use the glue on the label and slap the label on the bottle. If it refuses to stick to the bottle, you either haven’t yet filled the bottle with water or haven’t used the fountain pen on the water or both.

Odds & ends: A couple of subtle changes-of-state here: Leave the wrecked room again and reenter and you’ll find the kettle is no longer steaming. Do it again and you’ll see the fire in the stove has gone out.)

Your natural instinct will be the hustle back to the lab, surrender your placebo and talk to Richard. He’s promised to answer your questions. But you’d be getting a little ahead of events. At this stage, you'll be able to ask only about William, the key from Marcus Gordon's tomb and Dergham Gordon's tomb ... and you’ll be disappointed. Richard’s answers are useless! (Extreme example: He tells you the key liberated from Marcus Gordon’s tomb is silver. Seriously!)

You just don’t have the right topic yet. That one involves the inscriptions above the three statues inside the chapel. And to ask about them, you’ll have to get inside the tomb and read them first. So we’re going to skip over Richard for the moment and use the wire from the toolbox to enter the chapel.

Get back to the branch in the path. Louis has about mowed that patch of grass to death. Wait until his back is turned and then throw the wire on the grass. Anywhere to the right of the tree should do. It'll snarl the mower (which produces what’s either a vertical shower of grass or the most 16-bit-like simulation of smoke I’ve seen in ages) and Louis walks off to the left -- presumably to find tools for its repair.

Odds & ends: When you return to the fork later, you'll find Louis repairing the mower and can talk to him a bit about his bad day.

Look at Louis’s jacket and you'll come up with a bunch of keys. One of these is the first of the four tomb keys. Make for the chapel.

Other hotspots: At the side of the house: the left tower window (which comes into play later), the curved bench to the left of the water nozzle, the green bush at the corner of the old house (which gives you a peek at the deep ditch below) and the dry fountain at the left side of the screen. In front of the house: the leaky roof, the palette leaning against the wall to the left of the front door, the wooden staircase and the “nailed window” at the top of the stairs. In the wrecked room: the fireplace, the rope hanging to the left of the fireplace and the oil lamp, newspaper and ashtray on the little table beside the front door. (The ashtray and newspaper are more intriguing than your average non-essential hotspot, but there’s nothing more to them.) In Richard’s lab: just the bookshelf against the far wall and the freezer (which comes into play later).

The Chapel

Inside the chapel you’ll find two sarcophagi -- the right one with a strange stone lock. You don’t have the key, but examine the lock anyway, as this enables you to use the key when you do find it.

At the far end are three statues holding bowls that yield our traditional lingering red cursor. Clearly, something must be placed within each. Read the inscription above each statue. From left to right, they are "Veine," "Odire" and "Malite."

Odds & ends: Also look at the ceiling above the inscriptions. It should look familiar: These three pieces comprise the backdrop that is used behind the opening screen for each chapter.

Samuel suggests "Malite" is a proper name, but draws a blank on the other two. Maybe Richard would know.

Not right away. He says they sound like "ancient names," but needs "a bit of time" to look them up. You'll have to wait.

How long? If you do it right, not long at all. First make a round-trip to the neighboring wrecked room and then a second round trip to the chapel interior, checking in with Richard at the end of each run. (Note that you can’t reverse the order of the trips. If you visit the chapel first, you’ll have to go back a second time.)

After the second, Richard names Veine as the Irish god of strife, Odire as the druid goddess of the harvest and Malite as the old name for the god of the waters of the earth.

What should you offer the gods? All three donations are close by, any order will do, and one's downright easy. Malite is the god of water. You've collected water. Simply reclaim the kettle from atop the stove in the wrecked room and use the kettle on the bowl carried by the right statue. Green lights appear on each side of the niche.

There's no grain or food lying around to represent the bounty of the harvest. But you will find loose soil in an "stone flower-pot" (which doesn't look like a flower pot at all) on the far side of the path just outside Dergham's tomb. Place this in the bowl carried by the middle statue.

And what would represent strife? This has different meanings in different contexts -- domestic strife refers to quarrels -- but in this old-world context it surely means physical conflict. So ... blood, possibly?

Alas, there's no blood to be found here ... unless you read Richard’s press clippings (posted on the inside of the cabinet door in the wrecked room) about the acclaim he received for his work "on the methodology of mammal blood research." Then you'll be able to ask him about blood and he'll permit you to take a jar of it from the freezer just to the right of where he’s working.

When the last offering is poured into the proper bowl, an altar rises from the ground behind you.

Atop it, a maddening sliding-tile puzzle.

The Sliding Tile Puzzle

Sliding-tile puzzles can be frustrating even when you know where everything’s supposed to go. But this one’s based on the zodiac. Do you know the 12 zodiac signs? And can you arrange them by date?

Uh-oh.

It's easy enough to identify the destinations for three corner pieces, as they are engraved on the backdrop. (The upper left corner has no corresponding tile and so must be empty for you to complete the puzzle.) And the four featureless, odd-shaped pieces go in a square at the middle where they must surround (without obscuring) the central footprint-like space. The key to the right-hand sarcophagus appears here when the puzzle is complete.

But what about the other eight tiles? You haven't encountered any zodiac symbols in the game and neither Eleanor nor Louis can educate you on their meaning or relative positions. Only when you complete the puzzle does Samuel declare that “The zodiac is the right combination!”

The four corner symbols are hints. These signs are arranged clockwise by date: Aries the Ram in the upper left corner, Cancer the Crab in the upper right, Libra the Scales in the lower right and Capricorn the Goat (sometimes "Sea-Goat") in the lower left. Hence, you'll have to fill in the missing signs in sequence along the puzzle's border: Taurus (left) and Gemini (right) along the top row, Leo (top) and Virgo (bottom) along the right side, Scorpio (right) and Sagitarrius (left) along the bottom and Aquarius (bottom) and Pisces (top) along the left side.

If you can’t identify the symbols on sight, a nice chart can be found here: http://www.astrology-online.com/persn.htm. (Web-page addresses may lapse or change over time, so check here for another if the chart doesn't come up: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22zodiac+signs%22&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=)

A blow-by-blow solution isn’t possible, as the tiles appear in different positions each time you start the puzzle. And it shouldn’t be necessary. Once you know where everything goes, this is no tougher than any other 4 x 4 sliding-tile puzzle. (Indeed, it may be somewhat easier, as you don’t have the added complications of assembling an overall picture.) Here you should focus less on the final destination of any individual tile than its context -- making sure that, wherever an outer-ring tile may be located, it is adjacent to the two tiles beside which it will eventually wind up. (You can always rotate the outer-ring tiles to their proper positions later.)

A couple of general tips: Save your game right before you activate the puzzle. That way, if one roll of tiles gets under your skin, you can restore, activate the puzzle again and get a new one. They can be wildly different. I’ve rolled puzzles with as many as 10 of the 15 tiles already at their destinations.

And look carefully at the puzzle before you start moving tiles around. Untidy as your puzzle may first appear, you may well find that some pieces that are supposed to wind up together at the end already together at the start (albeit along a sinuous path). This can make your job a lot simpler.

Alas, the solution doesn’t get you farther into the tomb. It gets you kicked out of it entirely! Take the key from the center of the puzzle -- this is the second of the four -- and the scene changes to the chapel exterior. Louis appears, scolds you for breaking the rules, confiscates the key ring you stole from his jacket (but not the puzzle key you’ve just retrieved) and then returns to repairing the snarled lawnmower.

You won't be able to coax him out of position again. You have one option: Return to Richard and talk to him about the tomb. He agrees to help. You're to return to the old house after dark.

Get back to the main house. You'll automatically go to your room to rest and clamber out your window after everyone's settled in for the night.

Other hotspots: Outside the chapel: the shrub to the left of the chapel entrance, the flower pot in the foreground (here called “broken fence”), the monolith on the far side of the path and the swampy area just to the right of the tomb entrance (labeled “to the ruin of the church”).

Later that Night

Head for the old house. When you reach the fork in the path, Samuel notes how everything looks different at night.

Odds & ends: That’s partly informational. Certain scenes have changed in subtle ways. As mentioned earlier, the description of the fountain is a little different at night. The exterior lights have been turned on, and a new light burns on the table in the wrecked room. (Later on, you’ll even find candles lit inside the chapel! Who lit them?) Fireflies can be seen by the fountain, at the side of the old house and outside the chapel. And outside the chapel, you can now click on the ruined church in the background.

But this is also a subtle clue that certain items may be visible at night that you couldn’t recognize by day.

You'll arrive back at the old house to find the front door locked. Either a left or right-click will move things along here, but a left one gets you a hint on what to do next. You can't run your mourning card & stiff wire trick again, for the key is no longer in place. Somehow, you'll have to get Richard's attention.

Head back toward the side of the house. The archway along the path is now lit and, in the pool of light below, a handful of small stones can be seen on the right just before the turn. Grab 'em. Continue right to the water nozzle and you'll see a pair of lighted windows.

This is Richard’s lab. Use your rocks on the left window. It may take as few as two and as many as four attempts, but, eventually, a rock hits home, Samuel automatically walks around to the front door, Richard automatically appears and, in an uncharacteristic exterior point-of-view, Samuel automatically helps him with his experiment until the non-oxidant automatically blows things up.

Other hotspots: the upended container on the left side of the lab, the damaged machine, the chains from which the rings above were suspended (adjusted for nighttime) and, oddly enough, the flask of acid that was hanging in front of the left side of the bookcase. (“Oddly enough” because it’s now invisible. The description is the same as the one offered earlier.)

In return, Richard provides a flask of strong acid that'll eat through the lock on the chapel door. It's in the pale-green flask on the table where you found the little bottle earlier. Just use the flask on the door. Inside, look at the stone lock of the right-hand sarcophagus (if you haven’t already done so) and then use the key from the sliding-block puzzle on it. The left sarcophagus then draws back from the wall to reveal a hidden passage. At the bottom of the stairs, you'll be stopped by locked gate with a familiar symbol at its center.

Odds & ends: Familiar from where? Why, it looks just like the cross above the front door (interior side) back at Black Mirror!

Consult Richard again. He says a similar symbol can be found in Eleanor's jewelry box in the mansion's main hall. The house is locked, but the adoring husband gladly provides the key. It's "on the table over there" -- just left of the small square green flask on the right side of the same table where you found the acid and the small bottle. (The key is invisible to the eye, but easy enough to find by scouting with your cursor.)

Back to the main house. The box in question is just to the right of the mirror behind the piano. Naturally, it has an unconventional lock. The two-headed arrow at the center of the 3 x 3 chess board on top gives a good hint how it works: You have to exchange the positions of the two white chess knights at the bottom with the two black knights at the top. It’ll help a little if you know how to play chess, as the knights move like knights in that game: one space straight and one diagonally.

The Knights Puzzle

An easy puzzle, but also an artful one. It seems simpler than it is. To succeed, you'll want to see the big picture: You need to move the pieces in unison. Effectively, that just means waltzing the two sets of pieces around each other in three phases of four moves each until all four are simultaneously within striking distance of their destinations. (Don’t try to move individual pieces to their destinations, as you’ll just block the path in which other pieces must follow.)

1) For starters, move the four knights onto the four white squares. There are couple of ways to do this, but, for the purposes of our example, you should wind up with the white pieces on the upper and right squares and the black on the lower and left.

2) Now move the knights onto the corner squares -- different from the ones they occupied originally. You should wind up with the white pieces on the left side of the board and the black on the right.

3) Now move them onto the white squares again. The black knights should now occupy the upper and left squares and the white the lower and right.

4) Are you seeing it? All the knights can now move to their destination squares.

When the last knight drops into place, you'll hear a click and, when the scene pulls back, you'll have an amulet in your inventory. This is the third tomb key. Back in the chapel and down the stairs, use the amulet on the lock. The gate draws back and you're in.

Dergham Gordon’s Tomb

This wouldn’t be a bad spot to save your game. You can die here, as per the inscription on the central monolith: "Use a stranger's head, or your own will be shed." To stay alive, don't touch the sarcophagus in back until after you’ve turned off the decapitation trap in the alcove.

A stranger’s head? The only interactive heads here are the over-sized skulls atop the curved section of the wall between the tomb entrance and the sarcophagus. Run the cursor over them and the text at the top of the screen will read "skulls" ...

... except when it's over the third skull in from the tomb entrance. Then it reads simply "skull." Examine this skull to learn it’s cracked and looks different from the stone ones around it.

You’ll want to take a closer look and, as there’s no way of getting up to the skull, you’ll need to use one of Samuel’s left-over rocks to bring the skull down to you. It just takes one toss this time.

After the skull falls and shatters, take a look at the broken pieces and you'll get a zoomed-in view that shows the key it contained (the fourth and final tomb key) has slid behind a grate. Murphy’s Law in action. You can't reach it with your hands (though it appears altogether reachable) and don't have anything appropriate in inventory to snag it.

So what's a little more running around? A poker beside the hearth in the wrecked room of the old house is now take-able and that'll do. Use it in the close-up view to get the skull key and then use the key on the top of the "monolith" at the center of the tomb. You'll hear an ominous sound with a good result: It signals that the head-chopper gadget in the niche with the tomb has been disabled. Now you can safely push the lid off the sarcophagus and take the key within.

And there ends the chapter. The next morning, Samuel heads back to Black Mirror.

Other hotspots: the roots on the left side of the screen and the surrounding “abyss.”

Chapter IV: forgotten bound ...

... finds you back at Black Mirror and meeting with Victoria and Bates beside the fireplace in the main hall. You’re back from Wales earlier than expected, but Robert is overdue. He hasn't been seen since he left the Ashburry asylum. And Detective Collier has dropped by to report that the body of a young boy has been found in the woods -- apparently killed by wolves like the one that threatened you outside the Old Mine.

There's little more you can do at the castle. Samuel says he'll go to his room, but nothing significant has changed there. There's a fresh newspaper in the magazine rack beside Robert's study door -- sadly free of incriminating notes. You'll find the garden pool you flushed in Chapter II has been refilled. And Morris, still banging around in the stable, notes only that some "damned strange things" have been happening.

Amen to that, Morris.

Your map is back and you can use it now. (Also back are the black sphere and music box from William’s study. And note that the blood, acid and lighter have all been carried over from Chapter III.)

Willow Creek is more forlorn than usual. The dead boy in the woods was our ball-bouncing, rock-throwing, candy-requesting pal Vick. The fisherman's gone. The pawnshop is lit-up but closed. The grave-digger is Harry's only customer.

After Harry says his little spiel about the murder, talk to the grave-digger. He'll place Vick's death at an ancient druid site called Stonering (pronounced by Samuel as “Stoner-ring”). This writes the site to your map. (It’s just south of the mine Samuel exited at the end of Chapter II.) Travel there.

Stonering

You'll go straight into an interview with Detective Collier with as many as three positive/negative choices en route -- two in the initial exchange and a third, requesting your alibi for Vick’s murder, if you ask after Henry’s case.

Answer however you please. Samuel’s level of cooperation doesn't have an impact on what you learn here. To wit: Vick was probably killed by wolves. And Henry did not drown after all. It appears he was killed elsewhere and then dumped in the fountain. Dr. Hermann is still looking for the actual cause of death. (You already know the cause if you followed up the “footprint” topic from Chapter II, but can’t raise this point here. Dr. Hermann evidently is not yet secure enough in his conclusion to pass it along to Collier.)

Odds & ends: You’ll recall that, in his initial interview with Collier in Chapter II, Samuel told a pretty spectacular lie. Does he lie here, too?

Samuel might have felt inclined to lie. Right-click on the detective to learn “he’s asking too many questions for my taste.”

But Collier does Samuel a favor. He has the time of Vick’s murder wrong -- the killing wasn’t the previous day, but two nights earlier -- and thus frames the alibi question wrongly as well. He asks where Samuel was the previous day at this same time. Samuel says he was in Wales on a family visit.

And while we can’t measure time with precision -- partly because of the rain and partly because, heck, that’s just the way The Black Mirror is -- it’s more or less true. If Samuel hadn’t arrived in Wales by this time the previous day -- he told Eleanor he’d spent the whole day traveling -- he was surely in transit to Wales.

Also, make sure to save your game (or at least take a good look around) while you’re here. Stonering’s like the Old Mine from Chapter II. Once you leave, you won’t be able to return.

You’ll quickly sort out that the Big Bad Wolf hypothesis doesn’t work. On the uppermost of the three menhir stones around the site, you'll find another symbol like the ones from the castle and pool walls. Your camera was smashed when you fell in the mines, so Samuel proposes making a drawing of this one. No art supplies required: Simply use William's diary on the symbol and a neat little drawing will appear in the back across from the two photos.

And if you right-click on the green fern to the left of the altar, you'll find a piece of cloth under the leaves. Collier is unaware of it, but wouldn't remain so long if you collected the evidence in his presence. (Which in fact you can’t do.)

Can he be distracted? The close-minded detective already knows about the symbol on the menhir -- if you’ve looked at it, you can learn Collier doesn't think it important -- but maybe you could supply new “evidence” that would divert his attention.

Notice that Collier looks persistently to the left. He seems focused on the blood on the central altar. Hence, you’ll want to place your “evidence” to the right of him (so he’d have to turn his back on the little fern) and more blood would be a suitable distraction.

Hey, you have blood. You used up the kettle water and the soil in the chapel above Dergham Gordon’s tomb in Chapter III, but, as mentioned, the bottle of animal blood from Richard mini-fridge remains in your inventory. Where could it go?

See the rock directly to the right of the altar? The description makes it sound mundane, but after you examine it, it stays red when under the cursor. A dead giveaway. Spill the blood here and then call it to Collier's attention. Samuel’s voice fairly drips with insincerity, but the detective doesn’t seem to notice. While he’s occupied (once again, for exactly as long as required), right-click again on the fern to collect a handkerchief embroidered with the Gordon family symbol.

A family member has been here. This should not come as a huge surprise: Marcus Gordon’s chronicle made clear that, under the terms of the family curse, the killer must be a Gordon. That’s Samuel, the missing Robert or a Gordon to be revealed. (Soon to be revealed, as it happens.)

Odds & ends: Things seem a little out of order here. A nondescript bit of cloth is nothing to hide from police. A handkerchief bearing the Gordon name might be, but Samuel doesn’t learn it’s the latter until after he’s concealed it.

Other hotspots: the altar, the wind chimes hanging from the tree behind the altar and the tree itself. Samuel notes that the vine clinging to the tree appears to have been burnt -- a link back to the burns on William’s chest.