The Black Mirror Sewers

Again, your movements are limited. All you can do is return to the castle proper. Victoria remains in her room and unavailable to you, and, for the first time since the beginning of the game, Bates is nowhere to be found. Make your way back to the kitchen, take the cellar key from the hook beside the door and go downstairs.

In the cellar floor, you'll find three grates -- two in the front section and one in the back. You can't see through them, but you can test what's beneath by dropping coins from your wallet -- just keep right-clicking on the wallet to generate new coins -- and then listening for the result.

When you do this using the grates close to the cellar stairs and the pump, you'll hear a splash. Samuel won't descend where there's water. When you make a deposit in the grate just to the right of the grinder Bates used earlier, you'll hear ... nothing! This is the way down, and now you'll be able to use it as an exit.

Other hotspots: the grinder.

At the bottom of the stairs, you’ll see a fountain. Collect the cogwheel from its base. Move a little to right and you'll see a mechanism in the right wall. Samuel speculates this controls the pumps (i.e. the sewer pumps -- not the ones upstairs that you ran to drain the fountain in Chapter II).

The control wheel here is currently stuck, but there's a cogwheel like the one you have in your inventory already in place and a couple of empty spindles. You can install the gear you've just found, but will have to come up with a third gear to set the pump in motion.

It’s not hidden, but it is hard to reach. Make your way up the screen and, after a brief in-transit screen (the only such scene in the game), you'll find Samuel on a walkway above a waterlogged room. You'll see your missing cogwheel on the right side of the swampy pool below. In this position, it’s unreachable. You'll have to find a way to stir things up down there.

What about the hotspots on the upper wall? No dice right now. The opening on the left lacks a lever and the wheel on the right is chained and padlocked in place.

But just left of the room’s entrance is an elaborate railing. Examine it and you'll break off a loose rod. This looks as though it might fit in the small opening to the right of the entrance. Try and find it's too thick. But the attempt permits you to make it less thick. Retrace your steps to the cellar and use the rod on the grinder where Bates sharpened a knife for an eternity back in Chapter II. Then return to the waterlogged room. The sharpened rod now fits into the left opening in the upper wall. Samuel uses it automatically and a sluiceway into the pool below slides open.

Now to turn on the water. Turn your attention to the chained wheel to the right. No, you don’t need a key. Check your inventory: You still have the acid that the chemist Richard provided in Chapter III. Use it on the wheel and the chains and lock dissolve. Now turn the wheel -- you must have pulled the lever to the left first -- and something grayish and vaguely water-like flows into the pool. When it stops, you'll notice that the turbulence has moved the cog to a position near the drain on the left side of the room. It's still can’t be picked up by hand, but maybe you could reach it now with the proper item.

Did you grab the rope and hooks from the cellar earlier? If not, return there now. Use a hook with the rope and then the assembled rope-and-hook with the sharpened rod to create a makeshift fishing pole. Back in the sewer, use your tackle on the errant cogwheel and then backtrack and use the cogwheel on the mechanism to the right of the entry stairs. When all three cogs are in place, you can turn the wheel below and the mechanism kicks in. The pumps run. The swampy water drains from the waterlogged room.

Odds & ends: You can try to use the rope-and-hook (minus the rod) in an effort to snag the missing cogwheel in its starting position on the the right side of the pool. The apparatus glows encouragingly when placed over the cog, but with no good result: Samuel says “the rope is bending too much” -- whatever that means! If the tackle is already attached to the rod, you’ll get no response when you make this attempt.

And let’s suppose you’ve been thinking ahead of events and have put together the fishing rod before you’ve used the rod as a lever. It may seem as though you’re stuck. You can’t use the rod as a lever with the rope and hook attached.

But you can separate out the two parts out again. Simply right-click on the fishing rod in inventory and it’ll break back down into its two components -- the only point in the game at which you can disassemble an assembled object.

Finally, have a look at the beast head engraved high on the far wall. You’ll see this again in Chapter VI.

Back to the room where you found the third cogwheel. Now you can descend the stairs. Near the base, you'll find a small case. Right-click on it in your inventory to collect James's key. That’s three.

Finally, look at the stone relief on the left wall. It's an odd arrangement of circles and symbols around a central pentagram. Samuel speculates that the castle's underground wasn't simply used to keep away the water. He’s right. This gadget opens up the catacombs. But that's for Chapter VI. You’ll need an item from Robert’s study to activate this puzzle and symbols from two more murder scenes to solve it.

Once Samuel’s looked at the relief and claimed James’s key, he’ll get a headache from the bad air, take a pill and head for his bedroom with a plan to return in a few hours.

He won’t be ready quite so quickly.

Other hotspots: the fountain at the base of the entry stairs, the water to the left of the fountain, the stagnant water in the pool room, the stairs down into the pool and the drain on the pool’s left side (but only before the water is drained), and, after the water drains, the dark corner under the arch at the base of the stairs.

Chapter V: confession of the truth ...

Now they start dropping like flies.

Again, a horrifying dream -- this one set in Dr. Hermann's morgue and ending with that doctor's rolling head. In another near-admission, Samuel offers that it seems like deja vu. He wakes to find Bates knocking at his door to report a call from Ashburry on an unspecified but "very serious” matter.

Odds & ends: There are two curiosities in this intro sequence.

One is the narrator’s point of view. Up to this point, we’ve been accompanying Samuel step by step through the story. But here, suddenly, our protagonist is looking back on the story from a point two days in the future.

Why? <shrug> It doesn’t really add anything -- except the implication that Samuel survives (which he does and doesn’t). I suspect it’s just another artifact from some earlier stage of the design.

The other: Bates makes a great point of informing Samuel about an in-bound thunderstorm. Again, I don’t see much purpose, save to explain why it still appears to be nighttime when Samuel arrives at Ashburry in the morning. I suppose the designers wanted to punctuate the climax of Samuel's investigation, but there’s no novelty factor here, being that we’ve seen thunderstorms in The Black Mirror before. (Remember Vick counting thunderclaps in Chapter II?)

Ashburry

Samuel automatically heads for Ashburry. Hit the buzzer and he’ll automatically enter and then automatically talk to the nurse. (Gee, why make us bother with the buzzer?)

Robert is dead. His body was discovered at the Sharp Edge lighthouse. James was found sitting beside the corpse, evidently humming the tune from the music box, and has been returned to the asylum. You can then talk to the nurse about visiting James. With a rather knowing line about Samuel being “so well informed,” she'll walk you down the corridor to the cell and discover James has hanged himself from the light fixture.

Off she goes to fetch a doctor, and you're free to enter the cell on your own. A right-click on his body pulls out Robert's keys. That’s your way into Robert’s study.

Odds & ends: A word here about your starting inventory. James’s picture is gone. (Make sense, as you identified him conclusively in Chapter IV.) Samuel’s headache pills have also vanished. (Makes sense, as you never do get to select them yourself. Why’d they bother to include them at all?) And the black sphere from William’s study has disappeared for a second time. (Doesn’t make sense, but it’ll reappear in Chapter VI.)

Someone has plastered over the hole in the left wall. Use your rook knife to clear it out. You'll break the blade in the process -- this is your last use for this item -- and now you can talk to Ralph one last time. He'll disclose that Samuel claimed he hadn't killed Robert and said he knew who did.

Ralph doesn’t identify the killer. But perhaps James did. You'll find Samuel’s name written on the cell’s left wall.

Odds & ends: But for that dying declaration and Samuel’s murderous dreams, it may appear a serial killer has finally turned on himself.

It’s not an implausible inference. Consider: James could escape from the asylum almost at will. He bushwhacked Samuel at the lighthouse and tried to bury him. James hated Robert, and we’ll learn later in this chapter that Robert was conspiring to kill James. James was found beside Robert’s body and must have searched it. (You just found Robert’s keys on James’s body.) He had apparently fallen victim to a strain of madness in the Gordon family. And if you buy into the business about the family curse, the killer has to be a Gordon. It all fits. (Yes, Samuel has to be a suspect as well, but his dreams are open to interpretation -- they might be premonitions -- and a name scrawled on an asylum cell wall hardly amounts to evidence.)

But why did James kill himself? (And he did kill himself; this isn’t another murder.) James did tell Samuel he'd rather die than return to the asylum. But the exit under his bed is still functional -- indeed, you're going to use it four times in this chapter -- so why didn't he simply escape again? (We can guess that, with William dead, he no longer felt he had a safe haven.)

Once you have Robert's keys and have talked to Ralph, Dr. Smith appears (evidently this asylum was a two-doctor operation) and boots you out and you'll automatically reappear at the lighthouse. “Automatic” is the watchword in this chapter.

Odds & ends: You can explore the asylum exterior freely on this first of the three visits in this chapter. Just break off your chat with the nurse before asking about James. Then you can hop around to the side of hospital and, once you’ve clicked on the side door, chat with the furnace man (who is shoveling coal to the left of the door) about why it’s locked. But you can’t get the hair sample from James’s body without first consulting with the nurse ... and, of course, you can get identical info from the furnace guy on your next visit.

Sharp Edge

There's just one thing to examine here: the "hole in the masonry" on the left side of the lighthouse’s facing wall. The interior is too dark for Samuel to see in there, so bring out the lighter you found in the old house in Wales. Use it on on the interior to expose another symbol. Then click on the symbol and use William's diary to record it.

Back out of the scene, try to use your map and Samuel says he's done here. You'll automatically be taken to Dr. Hermann's house.

Hermann's House

You already know the doctor is elaborately dead, but you nevertheless need to go through the pro-forma business of ringing of the bell. The door then turns out to be open. Drop down to the darkened morgue and peel back the cover on the body atop the slab to discover it's Dr. Hermann and that his head's in the nearby pail. Evidently the killer used the circular saw on the right-end of the autopsy table. (Previously clean, it’s now covered with blood.)

Didn’t see that coming, did you?

Samuel retches into the left basin against the upper wall. And something’s changed here, too: You'll find a symbol on the right basin. (Curiously, in the close-up there’s a suggestion of a second symbol on the basin’s left side.)

Again, record the symbol using William's diary. You'll be treated to a sinister vision: a circular platform rising above a well of glimmering green liquid as a dark voice whispers.

This can only be the Black Mirror. That’s why Mordred appears to be bathed in green light in his portrait in Black Mirror castle’s main hall. This is the backdrop for that painting.

A vision or a premonition? Hard to say. In any case, it’s a preview of the setting for the game's final sequence. The game doesn’t interpret this event. But it’s safe to say that completion of the cycle forecast in Mordred Gordon’s age-old curse -- Robert’s was the fourth and Hermann’s the fifth soul -- has fueled his return. The Mirror has opened again, or will soon, and presumably Mordred is preparing to step back into the mortal world.

Odds & ends: Hence, you may be expecting something dreadful to come -- a monster behind the monster behind the murders. And, in truth, a more extensive vision -- say, a dark silhouette emerging from the castle’s front door, a la the end of John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness -- might have worked well here.

But Mordred never shows his face.

Finally, inspect the body on the slab. Hermann is grasping something tightly in his right hand. Rigor mortus prevents you from loosening his fingers. But you may recall seeing some medical implements over on the desk against the rear wall during an earlier visit. Now you can take one of them.

Turn on the light on the left side of the desk, click on the top drawer for a closeup of the area and take the forceps from the right side of the desk and the plastic bags from under the book in the drawer. Use the forceps on Hermann's right hand to force the fingers apart to reveal a few strands of black hair and then use the bags on the hair to preserve the evidence.

Samuel notes that James hair was "black as coal." (So is Samuel’s own hair, I might add.) Samuel plans to return to Ashburry to retrieve a sample of James hair for analysis.

When you've finished your business, you'll hear the buzzer and return upstairs. Here you'll run into Collier and tell him about Hermann. Despite the incriminating circumstances and Samuel’s habit of turning up at murder scenes, he's all too ready to blame it on the escaped lunatic. Lucky Samuel.

Odds & ends: There’s been another significant change in the morgue scenery. Hermann has suspended a clothesline between the shelf above the sinks and a coat stand (which seems not entirely solid; Samuel can walk through it) and hung up some of his autopsy photos to dry. The close-up of the symbol includes three of them.

Nothing revealing crops up here. The left photo features the astonished face of former Black Mirror gardener Henry. The right is little more than a skeleton. And the third picture, on the floor, is too indistinct to make out clearly -- are those teeth or fingernails? -- as are others visible only in a pulled-back view.

Given the state of the body, you’d expect a lot of blood at the crime scene. But there’s virtually none. It appears only on the blade of the circular saw Dr. Hermann used for autopsies. Samuel doesn’t comment on this state of affairs, but an observant player may wonder whether Dr. Hermann was visited by the same creature as late Black Mirror gardener Henry.

Other hotspots: Hermann’s detached head, the brain on Hermann’s desk (again) and the microscope (ditto). The microscope comes into play later in this chapter.

Ashburry

Samuel returns automatically to Ashburry. Ring the buzzer. The nurse lets you in. Again. It's amazing that, after all your little stunts, you're not persona non grata here.

Talk to the nurse and she'll reveal that, given difficulties in contacting Dr. Hermann -- they’d need a seance -- James’s body has been temporarily placed in a chapel in the adjoining graveyard.

Make your way around to the graveyard. The chapel's the structure on the left as you enter the first section. Naturally, it is locked. The maintenance man, who's still shoveling coal beside the side door, has the key. He will not give it to you nor take a bribe to look the other way.

But, if you first click on the hospital’s side door, you’ll get a “boiler room” topic and the furnace guy will reveal it is also locked.

In other words, he’ll have to produce his keys to come back inside.

Perhaps you could make him come back inside in a hurry. Once again, the trick lies with the heating system.

Return to the front of building and drop down the manhole. You’ll arrive back in James’s old cell to find the body has been cut down. You've already extracted what was useful here and Ralph has no more to offer, so make your way down the hall to the duty officer's desk. It's unattended and you can make your way left into the rear of the furnace room. You cleaned out this section on your last visit as well, so head for the front section.

Let what is less than fully interactive serve as your guide. Notably, the furnace door is too hot to touch -- meaning it might be made less hot. The same schtick you ran here earlier with the hanky and regulator and with the rag and the steaming pipe in the Old Mine will work here as well. There's a rag over on the railing by the coal pile, and you can wet it in the lobby fountain and get back to the furnace room with no one the wiser. Use the wet rag on the furnace door to open it.

Rag or no rag, you can also use the small wheel above that door to open a damper on top of the furnace.

To what purpose? If you were to burn the appropriate item, this would let smoke into the furnace room and the maintenance man would presumably come running.

Alas, nothing in your inventory is suitable to this task. But remember last time: The maintenance man was leaning back against the left-hand of the two lockers at the right side of the screen. This time, he's outside and you can open that locker to expose ...

... well, nothing at first glance. Samuel says he'll leave things as they are.

What does he know? Take the rubber boots at the bottom and then pop the boots into the furnace. Samuel then automatically makes himself scarce and reappears near the doctor’s station out in the cell block.

Make your way back to James’s old cell and drop down into the sewer line. By the time you get around to the side of the hospital again, you'll find smoke pouring from the open door and window and the furnace attendant's keys still in the lock. Take 'em, hustle out to the graveyard and use the keys on the chapel door.

That’s James’s body on the left. Apparently it is icky. Samuel doesn’t want to touch it. So pulling out the sample isn’t an option.

Nor is your rook knife, it having broken when you cleared the plaster from the patched hole to Ralph’s cell on your last visit to the hospital. You'll need something new to cut off a bit of James’s hair and you'll find it on the floor beside the table to the right: a glass shard from a broken bottle. Use it on the body. Samuel automatically inserts the sample in a plastic bag. He'll suggest using Dr. Hermann's microscope and, throwing interactivity utterly to the winds, magically appears back at the morgue.

Collier seems to have concluded his work here. The body and head are gone. The microscope's on the desk at the far end of the room. Just use each of the two bagged hair samples on it. Samuel then automatically peers into the eyepiece and realizes they don't match.

Sorry, I missed the bit of dialogue where Samuel told us about his degree in the forensic sciences.

Now his suspicion falls again on Morris for no reason other than the color of his hair.

Other hotspots: the interior side of the asylum’s lobby gate (adjusted for circumstances), the furnace (with the door open), the little window and open side door (once you’ve put the boots in the furnace) and, in the chapel, the crate on the floor near James’s head. (This last one is used later in the chapter.)

Black Mirror

Your travel options open up a bit here, but the only meaningful destination is Black Mirror. (Willow Creek is almost empty. Harry's on his own and complains about the weather and the fact that you never buy anything!)

You have two tasks at the castle. Get a hair sample from Morris and use Robert’s keys to finally open up his study.

Odds & ends: You’d think reporting Robert’s death also would be high on Samuel’s to-do list, but it’s optional.

Victoria doesn’t have the topic. Bates does. Talk to him in the kitchen. In his "positive" answer, Samuel urges discretion in giving his elderly grandmother the bad news, and Bates agrees. In the "negative" one, Samuel's pretty much out of control, angrily ordering the old retainer to stay quiet on the subject without giving a reason.

Bates then tells Samuel he has changed. You don't know the half of it, Bates. (Actually, as we’ll soon learn, Bates knows it all.)

Check the stable. Morris is gone. You'll find a note in the vise on the work table. He's sure he's being framed for Henry's murder and has skipped town.

His absence doesn't prevent you from getting the sample. Do you see another small change in the decor? There’s something hanging on the right wall of the dark alcove at the back. Turn on the light, using the switch on the left pillar of the right stall, and you’ll see it’s a cap. Right-click on it in your inventory to find a hair and then use the plastic bags on the cap. One more trip to the morgue, one more sample under the microscope and one more dead end: Morris is cleared.

That leaves Robert's study. Use the keys you found on James's body to get inside.

Lots to do here. Look in the Cacao box on the small table to the left of the door for a small key. This unlocks the drawers below.

The top one contains what Samuel describes as a “security code,” but closer examination of this slip of greenish paper reveals no writing. (The “D3212-80115-25884” at the bottom is just a serial number.) Possibly the code is written in invisible ink? More on this in a moment.

Look also at the portrait above the small table. An unknown man with a black beard glares out at you. From his necklace hangs a key like the three you’ve collected. This is the missing key -- the one that wasn’t accounted for in William’s diary -- and it’s next in line. (The fifth key will be found in William’s coffin. Presumably Samuel has guessed this and is saving this most distasteful task for last.)

Then there’s the grandfather clock to the right of the door. You may have gotten used to ignoring the clocks in The Black Mirror. (They’re mostly broken or non-interactive.) This one appears broken, too. It’s set to 12 o’clock.

But note that you can reset the hands and that the compass at the top is click-able. Pretty good signs it’s part of a puzzle.

You won’t have to look far to find the rest. Notice the Roman numerals above each of the three bookcases set into the right wall? Click on the middle one (MCXX) and Samuel notes that date is a year prior to the construction of the castle. That would be 1120. And that could be a time as well as a date. Rotate the hands backward or forward to 11:20 and then click on the compass needle. It revolves, the clock chimes and the scene shifts to reveal the middle bookcase sliding back and to the side. (Note that the other construction date -- the 1206 from the “monolith” down in the main hall -- has no effect here.)

Behind the bookcase is a safe with a five-number combination. The combination is the invisible security code from the top drawer in the small table. You just need the right lamp to read it, and it figures that lamp would be in Robert’s office.

Note that the three lamps along the right side of the room are interactive. (You’ll find non-interactive versions of the same lights in the kitchen flanking the cellar door, in the cellar to the right of the stairs door and the flanking the gap in the low wall around the central globe in the main hall.) Click on one to learn it casts a strange green light and that the cursor remains red after you’ve elicited the description.

The security code paper was also a pale green. Drag the code over a lamp and you'll get the code: 6-3-0-8-1. (This foreshadows a similar solution to a puzzle in Chapter VI.) Then simply select each of the five panels at the bottom of the safe door and use the dial at the top to adjust each number.

Robert's diary is on the safe’s top shelf. Most of this document is devoted to details of his experiments and manages against all odds to avoid saying exactly what they’re about! It also articulates what you already know of the conspiracy between Robert and Dr. Hermann -- Robert using asylum inmates as unwilling experiment subjects, Hermann quietly disposing of the casualties -- and substantiates James's worse fears. Robert meant to kill James with an overdose of the serum to keep him quiet.

Odds & ends: In the study, we finally get a look at Robert’s formula. There are some samples of it on the small table to the left of the door and more on the safe’s top shelf. (The dated flasks at the back of the safe presumably contain older incarnations of the core components.)

But all we really learn is that it smells bad. True, the illustrations in the diary and the presence of a particular book on Robert’s desk make it clear enough that his research has to do with the human brain. And given that the subjects were all inmates of an asylum, one might assume Robert was trying to cure mental illness.

But why not just say so?

On the bottom shelf is William's will, the letter William was writing to you when he died (just as William recited it in the intro) and the ring he meant to enclose.

Why were these taken? The will’s obvious. First, it cuts out Robert almost entirely in Samuel’s favor. William’s explanation is of a vague, Robert-will-know variety, but guess-able from the first entry in William’s diary (“the guilt that I bear in my heart for the fate on my dear James -- the fate that I didn’t have the courage to change.”) William had somehow become aware of Robert’s effective imprisonment of his half-brother.

Second, James is bequeathed therein the right to live at Black Mirror for the rest of his life.

Odds & ends: The small print under the date and signature lines at the bottom of William’s will are the only remains of the original Czech I’ve found in the game. (The Black Mirror was first published in Czech in 2002 as “Posel Smrti,” which translates as “Death’s Messenger.”)

No hidden surprises. As you’d expect, it’s all just standard contractual language. The part under the “date” line, “vykonána dne,” means “executed upon this day.” The part under William’s signature, “s výsledkem,” translates as “with a result” (or score or accomplishment), but in this context could be read as “as resolved by.” (Thanks to Štepánka Rocková for help with the translations.)

Why would Robert conceal William’s letter to Samuel? Perhaps just vindictiveness. But it’s a fair bet that between being cut out of his father’s will, Robert’s preexisting worries about exposure of his experiments and vagueness of William’s note (“the truth about our family”) combined to freak him out . Robert may have thought that William was preparing to come clean about James’s parentage (rather than the whole Gordon curse thing) and blow the whistle on Robert. This would also explain why it was that, back in Chapter I, Robert seemed so oddly nonchalant about William’s death. He was probably relieved! Problem solved!

Other hotspots: the sofa on the left side of the room, the three bookcases on the right, Robert’s medical-school diploma (to the right of the door), the open book and the stack of books on Robert’s desk and the anatomy book and jar of pills on the small table below the picture. With the small key from the cacao can, you can also unlock the bottom drawer in the table to the left of the door and examine a picture of Robert’s former wife, Sophie. And once you’ve opened the safe, you can have a look at the bullets and flasks on the lower shelf.

Bates can’t make anything of all this, but talk to Victoria. She's still in her room.

This is tricky. If you’ve only explored Robert’s study, you’ll only be able to ask after the asylum’s history and learn it was once a hospital for cholera patients. (This explains why Ashburry is called a sanatorium while actually serving as an asylum.)

However, if you’ve both looked at the painting in Robert’s study and at the sample of Morris’s hair under Dr. Hermann’s microscope, you can ask her about the man in the picture in Robert's study. He is Lothar Gordon, who founded the Ashburry asylum 200 years ago, went mad there, died there and was buried in the graveyard there. And it’s in that graveyard that we’ll look for the next key.

Odds & ends: Lothar doesn’t get much ink in The Black Mirror, but what he does get is significant. Note that Victoria places Lothar in the same context as William’s diary did James: another mad Gordon from the last 200 years.

Another victim of the curse? That’s surely the implication. Is that important?

Just in terms of the backstory. Lothar is the “old Warden” who delivered James’s letter to Black Mirror.

That’s right. The letter was delivered by a ghost or spirit.

Am I reaching here? Nah! Lothar is the only person mentioned who meets the “old Warden” description and we already have a good deal of evidence that supernatural forces have been at work in and around Black Mirror castle. Judging from James’s experiences (as outlined in his diary), it’s a fair inference that the Gordon “madness” amounts to opening up the sufferer to the voices of his ancestors and that, when the voices in James’s head spoke up, the increasingly anxious James sometimes spoke back.

But that’s about as far as we can take this.

Then again, if you believe James to be stark raving mad, you might fairly argue that he believed he’d sent the letter via the old Warden, but that it was in fact delivered conventionally (which Robert wouldn’t have permitted) or by some sympathetic person at the asylum (our friendly nurse).

But as mentioned, James always sounded remarkably sane. And the nurse has been up front with us about everything else. Why would she leave out a detail about delivering James’s letter -- pertinent as it is to the story she told in Chapter IV about James’s desperate desire to leave Ashburry and Robert’s desperate desire to keep him there?