Version: This is version 1.0. It’s based of the US edition of the game.

Contact: Mistakes? Lingering questions? Something unclear? You can write to me at peternolafson@yahoo.com.

Copyright: This document is copyright 2012 by Peter Olafson. You may not post it, distribute it, edit it, excerpt it (except for “fair use” purposes in news coverage), sell it or publish it in any fashion without my prior written consent. At this time, the only site with permission to post the guide is JustAdventure.com.

Introduction

This is essentially the second half of Black Mirror II (BM2) and begins very like that game: a Gordon running wildly through the woods. Only this one gets caught. After the events in the summoning chamber at the close of BM2, Darren arrives back at Black Mirror Castle to find it in flames and  police on the scene. He is quickly taken in custody on prima-facie evidence for other people’s crimes: Angelina’s murder of Order leader Amanda Valley and Louis’s attempt to burn down the castle. (The smoldering torch in Darren’s hand and his wild story about  the Order and Angelina can’t have helped.) 

Cut to earlier scenes — discovery by police of Miss Valley’s burned body at the lighthouse, the inspector’s cursory interview with pub-owner Tom, a search of Miss Valley’s  house — and finally back to the present: a session with psychiatrist Dr. Winterbottom and a rather abusive interview with Inspector Spooner in which the principal revelations are that police have not found any support for Darren’s assertions … and that Darren has been released on bail. 

Odds & ends: Our protagonist will be called both Darren and Adrian in the early going and Adrian thereafter. To keep things simple and consistent, I’m just going to call him Darren throughout.

Chapter I

Police Station

To get out of here, you have to collect your belongings in the cells through the door to the left. There’s just Darren’s diary and pencil — but the diary is missing from the locker in the left cell. 

Darren’s neighbor has gotten hold of it. Talk to him. Skinhead Matt Newcastle then reads choice passages before tearing out pages, balling them up and tossing them onto the floor. (If you can’t trigger this sequence, you haven’t yet looked at Darren’s locker.) 

A haunted-looking Darren then imagines himself jabbing the pencil in Matt’s eye — the first of what we’ll call “Mordred Moments”– and automatically retrieves the remains of the book. You’ll be able to read this — there’s not much in there right now — once you’re out of the police station. 

Leave the cells by the exit to the left. Darren automatically signs a raft of documents for the constable, learns he is to check in daily with local psychiatrist Dr. Winterbottom (not something you need to remember; this meeting will always occur automatically), receives his lawyer’s business card and finds himself in a new location: the village square. 

Odds & ends: The vision is a signal that Darren is now seeing through two sets of eyes: his own and, as a result of events in the  BM2 endgame, the embedded spirit of the evil Mordred Gordon. (More about Mordred in Chapter II.)

You’ll note afterward the appearance of a flashing golden padlock in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. This indicates that access to the video of the stabbing sequence has been unlocked (as #4: “Vision 1”) in the “Extras” menu. (You’ll also see there that the rendered portions of the intro (#1) and the sequence at Dr. Winterbottom’s office (#2) are already available.)    

Twenty-nine of the 33 video segments become available in due course by simply playing through the game as designed. I won’t make note of the unlocking of these common-to-everyone segments, but will note availability of the four optional videos as well as all 24 pictures and two of the four mini-games. (The pictures start becoming available as soon as Darren is released — see below for details on the first two — and the first of the mini-games in Chapter II.) 

– You won’t be able to return to the cells once you’re out — this is the first of several one-visit locations — so either save your game here or get your fill of the many location descriptions now.

– Oddly, Darren says he found his locker open — but he didn’t. (You have to open it to find the diary missing.) 

– Spooner has more to say. Most of it is just chatter or variations on his traditional hostility. But ask about “Gordon family” and you’ll learn that Adrian Gordon is buried in the Gordon family crypt and that, according to a death certificate signed by Dr. Heinz Hermann — the corrupt coroner from the original The Black Mirror (hereafter TBM) — Adrian died of fifth-degree burns. (In Chapter II, you’ll get a different account of Adrian’s death from Father Frederick.) 
     
 – Note that the cursor remains red when placed over the photocopier even after Darren has fully examined it. This is a signal that an item or location has some further role to play, will change its state later in the game or has some supplementary interactivity. (For instance, you may be able to try to use another item on it.)  For the copier, a further role is just a little down the road. See “Fix the Copier” below. 

– An example of that “supplementary interactivity:” In inventory, you can try to use the pencil on the diary throughout the first five chapters — the pencil vanishes in the sixth — without noticeable effect. (The implicit point being, I guess, that anything important is already being written down for you automatically.) 

– Note also the picture on the side of the evidence locker outside the entrance to the cells. That’s Darren’s father Samuel — the protagonist in TBM — and he’s currently being used as a dart board! 

Free at Last

Call the lawyer in the phone booth outside by either using the business card on the booth in the full view of the square or on the phone in the closeup. 

You don’t have to use any of the sub-topics to get the basic thrust of Darren’s exuberant attorney: You’re stuck in Willow Creek while the American embassy and British authorities hash out your case. Jones suggests you do some investigating on your own to identify soft spots in the allegations against you. To start on this task, you’ll need your police file. (Once you have read it, you’ll be able to move through the game world with relative freedom.)

Odds & ends: The lawyer is “Mr. Jones” on the phone but “Dr. Jones” on the business card. Was he the psychiatrist at some stage in development — or is this just an Indiana Jones gag? (I’m betting the latter, given that another Indy reference can be found deep in the game.) 

– A business card for Tarot reader Madame Fortuna can be found just below the cracked pane in the phone booth’s door. It’s non-essential, but use it on any phone in each of the six chapters for a preview of potentially deadly upcoming events. Here, it yields a prediction that Darren will be “ripped apart by wild beasts” and rather obvious-sounding solution: “Stay away from beasts!”

– While Darren is on the phone with Jones, you’ll see a blonde woman walk by in the background. This is Denise, who works at the cafe. It’s closed when you leave the police station, but open once you’ve completed the call to the lawyer. You can put in here and, irrespective of not having yet asked Spooner for your file, get a jump on the next puzzle: getting Spooner out of the station for a while. (See “Time to Freeze the Donuts” below for details.) 

– Between the cafe and police station is an “Old fashioned shop.” Enter this little grocery store to automatically scare off elderly customer Dorothy. 

Talk to proprietor Abaya to break the ice — you don’t have to select a topic — and when you’re done chatting click on the “walking maps” (on the counter between candy and baguettes). The terrified young woman will give you one for free. This won’t become an essential item until you need to visit Warmhill later in the chapter, and you can’t yet use it in a meaningful way — being that you haven’t yet visited any other locations.

But once you -have- visited a location, you’ll often be able to use the map to travel back there directly, saving a lot of intermediate clicks in the process. (Summoning the map with a right-click also makes at least one minor adjustment to a descriptions. Via the hotspot below the right of the two bridges, Darren can now identify as the “Glanceriver” [sic] the canal that flows through the village. ) 

A potential disadvantage: These instant trips usually skip over the intervening countryside (a feature new to BM3) and potentially interesting side roads and sidelights therein. You’ll learn the lay of the land more quickly and completely if you just do the traditional adventure-game thing and walk from place to place.  

If Darren looks at  the knives in the left foreground of the shop, there’s another “Mordred Moment” like the one from the jail. Darren spends a little too much time balancing a knife in his hand and savoring its sharpness. Leave the shop and return and you’ll find the knives have vanished. (Click on the block again.“Sold out,” declares Abaya.)

– You can cross the bridge and pay another visit to Dr. Winterbottom. She lives to the left of the currently-closed museum — this reopens in Chapter III — and can shed light on Spooner’s issues: He’s a “bit of a trigger-happy cowboy” whose botching of a case in London led to his banishment to the provinces. Via the “Dr. Winterbottom” topic, she’ll also reveal her connection to Dr.Hermann from the original game.. (Remember this, as it’ll prove meaningful in Chapter II.) 

Note that, like the copy machine, the waste basket beside the doctor’s desk never loses its interactivity. Sometimes this just means you can have some nonessential fun with it in the future. (Here, the future is Chapter II.)

– You’ll never get inside the Three Kegs Inn (located to the left of the square) — even though the interior was modeled for Spooner’s exchange with proprietor Tom in the introduction. But note that its door and menu board display the same lingering interactivity as Dr. Winterbottom’s waste basket and the police station’s copy machine. Tom’s status will change a couple of times in the later stages of the game and the door descriptions change to reflect it. (I’ll reference the menu board below in a different context.)

– Same story with the hotspot just below the right of the two bridges. This may come into play in Chapter III. (“May” because the game also offers two other water sources.) 

– In the village square, left-click on the hard-to-see raven in the shadows between the old pretzel stand and the table just to the left.

Welcome to a little hidden-object sub-game. Yes, the raven appears non-interactive — there is no accompanying hotspot and the cursor doesn’t go red when placed over it — but the bird will nevertheless fly away with a “caw” and the unlocked-padlock icon will flash in the upper-left corner of the screen. 

Save your game, exit to the main menu and click on “Extras.” Under “Pictures,” you’ll find you’ve unlocked picture #4 — an artist’s rendering of the police-station interior — this one with an apparently working digital clock and no cell access pictured. 

It’s not the only raven here. In front of the Three Kegs Inn, click on the one up on the roof. (It’s located to the right of the hole above the door.) This one unlocks picture #5 — an artist’s rendering of Amanda Valley’s parlor. (You saw this cluttered location in the intro and will visit it in Chapter IV.)

You can unlock 24 such pictures in the course of the game. Thirteen are tied to ravens. The other 11  can be unlocked by ordinary game interactions: when you make a particular phone call or right-click on a particular inventory item (both in Chapter II), complete an optional sequence (Chapter III), read twice certain documents (chapters III, IV and V), talk to a particular character on a particular topic (Chapter IV), click on a given location, try to use an item on a particular location or examine a location as a particular character (all in Chapter VI). (One also unlocks automatically in Chapter VI just before the endgame.)

While it’s tempting to interpret the raven as something like a witch’s “familiar” haunting Darren’s footsteps, the birds have no stated part in the story. Darren never comments on their presence and takes note of it  only once — and that in a scene in which the raven itself isn’t interactive.
 
– The village square is one of two locations — the other is the hotel — with incidental, non-speaking characters. (Shades of Biddeford, ME from BM2.) Right now, there are just the two ladies on the bench at the lower left — the only incidentals whose presence Darren can note — but later in the chapter you’ll find a man in front of the veggie table outside Abaya’s grocery and, in Chapter IV, a man and woman having an animated discussion in the nook in the square’s upper right corner.

An oddity: On rare occasions in Chapter I, a man in a dark suit and hat and blue tie will appear around the corner of the phone booth and make his way across the bridge in the lower-left corner. (See pictures.) 

This may be a bug. Restoring the automatic save the game makes after Darren leaves the police station, I’ve found this same man on the bridge — poised in a sitting position with nothing for him to sit upon. My guess is that, after the two women vanish (as they do once Darren delivers a picture to hotelier Murray), this fellow was supposed to take their place on the bench.

Time to Freeze the Donuts

You can now return to the police station and ask Inspector Spooner for a look at your file (via the “Police file” topic). The flattery Jones proposed is not an option, and that’s a big “no.” Did you expect something different? Constable Zak might help were Darren allowed to actually talk to him but Darren can’t with the inspector in attendance. So your next task is making Spooner go away for a while.

Odds & ends: After the chat with Jones, you can also ask Spooner and Dr. Winterbottom about “Castle fire” and the doctor about the additional sub-topics “Vision” and “Therapy session.” (She’ll suggest hypnotherapy, which will be the foundation of your sessions with her for the rest of the  game.)

Not difficult. After your phone call, the cafe two doors to the right of the station is open for business. Enter and look at the pastries in the display case to note that the donuts are missing and then talk to cashier Denise about them. It turns out she’s saving them for the “nice inspector.”

Perhaps you could make the donuts harder to get at. 

Order a coffee. Evidently Denise hand-picks the beans before she grinds them, for this process takes about 40 seconds. While she is thus distracted, enter the back room through the “employees only” door to the right, take the donuts from the lowest shelf and put them in the freezer below the window.

And maybe you could also make the freezer difficult to open. The first time Darren opens it, he’ll light on an idea: Wet the damaged seal and, once closed, the freezer will effectively lock itself shut. 

There’s some water in a mop pail just to the left. What you lack is something with which to apply it. Just wander by the Three Kegs Inn and confiscate the sponge hanging from the menu to the left of the door. Use it on the pail (or on the river hotspot just below the inaccessible right-hand bridge in the village square) and then on the open freezer and you’re golden. Leave the storage room, sit through a brief cut-scene — this makes clear there’s something going on between these two (Denise worries a certain “Edward” might appear) — and Spooner is now occupied. Not entirely with the freezer, I would venture.  

Odds & ends: You can also try to use the sponge (wet or dry) on the menu board outside the Three Kegs Inn. (Hence it’s lingering interactivity.) And, having taken the donuts from the shelf, you can replace them and try to use them on the wash bucket.

– Edward’s the fellow approaching the cafe when Darren leaves. If you return to the cafe, you’ll find Denise and Spooner  nowhere to be found and Edward on-station. Talk to him. He seems to have an inkling that Denise might be fooling around. And if you look first at the photos behind the counter or to the right of the storage-room door, he’ll have an additional “Photos” topic.

Fix the Copier

You can now return to the cop shop and strike a deal with solitary Constable Zak via the “Police file” topic: You’ll repair the copy machine and he’ll copy your file.

The repair may seem complicated at a glance, but it’s actually quite simple and logical. You want to manipulate the orange wires to direct power through the copier and turn on six lights in the close-up display: two in the controls (for the black and green buttons) and all four in the inner circuitry. 

1) For starters, drag the four blown (i.e. exposed) wires off to the side. They have no place in the puzzle.

2) See where the power cord comes in from the right? We need to connect the internal end of this same line to the rest of the copier circuitry. 

The best candidate for this task is the vertical wire coming down from the #3 button at the top left of the display. (This button doesn’t need to be lighted, so you’re not breaking something you’ll need to fix later.) 

Right-click on the wire twice to rotate it to a horizontal position, drag it over to this new spot and use it to connect the interior end of the power line to the rightmost of the three wires leading up to the black power button. 

Now you can turn the machine on with the black button. A pale green light should come on beside that button (accompanied by a thrumming sound) as should a white light in the lower right corner of the central circuit board. (This has already been connected to the on/off switch by two diagonal orange wires leading down and to the left.)

3) Where do you go from here? See the diagrams on the board in the lower left-hand corner? This shows that the wires bridging the gap to the central circuit board are currently in the #3 setup. 

#3 supports the leftmost (“-“) button in the controls, which needs to be off, and so doesn’t help us at all. We want the #1 setup, which lights the green button. Hence, you’ll need to move up by one slot the lower of the two horizontal wires bridging the gap between the circuit board and the diagram piece to its left. 

4) One last step. See the horizontal wire connected at its left end to the node below the #1 button and at its right to the uppermost of the wires coming down from the black switch? Drag it down and to the left to link the nodes beneath the #3 and #2 buttons. 

Here’s how the wiring should look in the end:

Press the green button. There’s a beep, the machine begins to warm up and the view shifts back to the police station. “That should do it,” says Darren. Talk to the constable about “Photocopier” to report your success. 

Odds & ends: Once on his own, Zak can also brief you on the status of the investigation. As Mr. Jones suggested on the phone, it does look as though the police aren’t trying very hard. (They’ve made little more than pro-forma attempts to verify Darren’s story.) 

– Darren can try to use diary pages, walking map and the menu board (see the next section) on the broken copier.

Blocking an Address

Now, the constable is not just going to just give Darren the file. He intends to send it to Darren’s solicitor  — as per Darren’s duplicitous request. And you can tell from Darren’s response that he is already thinking ahead: He’s planning to intercept the envelope before it gets into the mail.

How? Leave the station and have a look at the mailbox just outside. It’s an informal small-town setup — arranged in such a way that Darren could simply place an item on top of the bag to prevent the envelope from slipping down inside. 

The menu board on the table in front of the old pretzel stand across the way, for instance.  

Once this is placed in the box, you’ve only to wait a few seconds for the constable to drop off the envelope. Then you can claim it, open the envelope in inventory with a right-click and read it with another.

The file gives Darren two new tasks — see the Murray and Victoria headings below — and then is automatically combined with the remains of the destroyed BM2 diary to become a new one. 

The new tasks can be performed in either order, but it’s more efficient to visit Murray first, as an item acquired at the hotel can be used immediately after you leave the castle.

Odds & ends: If you collect the menu board earlier — you can pick it up as soon as you leave the police station — you can try to use it on Spooner.

– You may want to look at the police file yourself rather than just accepting Darren’s summary. It’s back at the beginning of the diary and it includes a lot of interesting minutiae. You’ll learn that grocer Abaya (full name: Abaya Abhineeta Goyal) reported Miss Valley missing (which goes far to explain why she’s freaked out by Darren’s appearance in her shop); that Constable Zak’s last name is “Hitchins” and pub operator Tom’s and brother Bobby’s is “Ackland”; that Angelina henchman Louis must have lured Miss Valley out to the lighthouse where she was killed (he’s not identified, but BM2 grads will understand he’s the only person Tom could have seen with Miss Valley); that the police case against Darren is unbelievably sketchy; and that Darren appears to have lied to police. He claims in the interview transcript that he wasn’t in the castle on the evening of the fire. In BM2, he escapes the fire just before the endgame. (It also supplies an incorrect cause of death for castle maid Sally. She was scalded, not burned.) 

“Let Murray Know What I Think”

Hotel proprietor Murray told police he had not seen Darren at the Gordon’s Palace hotel the night of Miss Valley’s murder. But he did see him: Murray chucked Darren out for stinking up the place by opening the sewer access in Angelina’s room. Why did he lie?

Cross the bridge to Dr. Winterbottom’s side of the river and head right to reach the hotel. Enter the building and Darren automatically gets into it with Murray. 

The result? No real satisfaction, but more stuff: a Polaroid camera, a room key and a Samuel Gordon backpack containing a Samuel Gordon cigarette lighter, a bloody plastic knife and a plastic Soul Key.  

Some of this is just junk, but the lighter and camera will come in handy on a semi-regular basis for the rest of the game. And, right now, the camera is part of a proposed quid pro quo: Darren is to take a snapshot of himself, posed as the Black Mirror Slasher, in exchange for Murray’s correcting his erroneous statement to the authorities. (In most jurisdictions, this would be known as “witness tampering.”)

Odds & ends: The camera functions differently here than in BM2. In the earlier game, it could be used on certain locations to unlock concept art in the “Extras” menu — a la the ubiquitous raven in BM3. Here, its use in that fashion unlocks just one mini-game in Chapter III. It is used more generally to take a handful of pictures that either push the story forward (as in the case with the shot Murray has requested) or that have a role in solving puzzles. 

– The path at the right in the exterior view of the hotel can’t be used until Chapter III.

– You can also check out Darren’s nondescript hotel room — though it’s not required right now. Provided you’ve already unloaded the new backpack with a right-click, you’ll automatically dump it and the soul key here.

No, you’re not missing anything. These items have no further role in the game. I suspect the backpack was included just to provide a level of concealment for the knife and the soul key simply as a connection back to the original TBM (in which Darren’s father Samuel collected soul keys) and BM2 (in which  one of these replicas lit Darren’s way through the sewer maze). 

– The TV in Darren’s room can be turned on.

– Talk to Murray again after the initial exchange to establish 1) what’s become of your belongings from BM2; 2) get a tip to the reopening of the museum and 3); via “Photo for Murray,” a clear hint about how he wants that shot set up. (Darren is to “swing a knife about.”)  

– You can try to use your business cards on the phone at the front desk. and try the left door to Murray’s office. (You’ll get in here in Chapter II.) 

– Once you’ve visited the hotel, you can return to the cafe and scare off Dorothy a second time and talk to would-be busboy Bobby about her via the “Old woman” topic. (She’s evidently something of an eccentric.)  Via “Tom,” he’ll also let on that his brother has it in for you — anticipating an encounter at the end of Chapter III. 

“Visit Victoria and See How She’s Doing”

The other task is looking in on great-grandmother Victoria, the only survivor of the castle fire. In Willow Creek, use the “Road to woods” exit (to the left on the Dr. Winterbottom/museum side of the bridge). Just stay on the road proper until it forks and then follow the right fork to Black Mirror Castle.  

Odds & ends: A word about the intervening countryside.

En route to the castle, you’ll pass three side roads. Map or no map, two can’t be explored yet. The “unmade road” extending left from the fork outside the castle gates goes live later in this chapter and the left “path” at the “Crossing in the woods” east of the village opens up in Chapter III.

However, one side path is open to you — the “gravel path” leading right at that same crossing. This leads to the lighthouse and, via a click on the ruins faintly visible just left of the top of the tree, to the ruins of the Academy. 

It’s a logical stop — the closest you can get for now to the site of the BM2 endgame that presumably holds potentially exculpatory evidence  — but, being that an impassable rubble pile now blocks the Academy entrance from BM2, you can’t do anything meaningful here beyond scaring off a couple of additional ravens. (These are covered in the “Portal, Portal …” section in Chapter III.) 

However, if you do pay a visit to the Academy, you will get credit for having visited when it briefly becomes a significant location in Chapter III. 

(Along this route, you’ll also find two more side paths — both no-goes for now. The one with the barbed wire opens up in Chapter II and the “beaten track” just beyond it in Chapter III and then is extended is Chapter IV.)  

– Once you’ve reached the crossing, you can return to Murray and ask about “White Wood.” He’ll mention local legends of ghosts in the forest — foreshadowing of an event later in the chapter. 

– At the fork just short of the castle, a hard-to-see raven can be found in the upper right corner of the screen (harder to see because, when you move the mouse to click on it, it is obscured by the “diary” icon).. Click on it on unlock picture #19 — a conceptual shot  of an artist’s studio that does not appear in the game. No clue where this might have fit in. The paintings on display are abstracts that don’t attach themselves to any known BM character past or present. 

– Outside the castle gate, you’ll find some garbage on the ground below the mailbox. Left-click on it and, after his return to the police station, you’ll be able to ask Spooner about “Young people.” 

You’ll find the side gate has been repaired and fitted with an intercom since your visits in BM2. Left-click on the latter and you’ll be admitted and jump straight to a meeting with Victoria’s nurse, Sister Antolini, under the portico. After a brief chat, she’ll usher you inside and you’ll stop outside Victoria’s bedroom where you can put (or not put) a couple of questions.  (The main thrust is that Victoria isn’t talking and you’ll figure that out quickly enough on your own.) 

Odds & ends: You’ll learn a bit more about the not-talking if you click on the monitor to the left of the bed. The nurse then reappears and discloses that she’s overheard Victoria pray and curse while she’s alone — and that a lot of the cursing seems to be about Darren.

– An odd line surfaces if you ask the sister about “Renovations.” She tells Darren that Victoria said she was born here and wanted to die here. 

But it’s extremely unlikely Victoria was born here. She is not a “Gordon” save by virtue of her marriage to the late William Gordon. 

– Note that the upstairs layout is wholly different than in BM2 — recentered as it is on the family rooms.  

The old lady won’t respond to any of the initial four topics, but you’ll have to work your way through them anyway to reach “Castle fire.” 

Here she finally speaks up — saying Darren sounds like a “coward,” asserting that Mordred’s ghost “rides you like a child rides a rocking horse,” blaming Darren for the deaths of castle residents in BM2 and wishing he’d just stayed in the US. 

Darren here has another “Mordred Moment” (he imagines himself smothering Victoria with a pillow), the nurse shows up and shoos him out and Darren finds myself outside the gate again.  The upshot to all this: a diary entry that ends: “Victoria doesn’t believe a word I say. If I only had some kind of evidence I could show her.” You won’t be able to do so until the end of Chapter II.

Odds & ends: Note the lingering interactivity of the standing stone (“menhir”) and mailbox outside the castle gate, the picture above Victoria’s bed and the jewel box on the table at the right. You’ll sort these issues out in chapters III and VI.

A Photo

That leaves only the picture for Murray  — for which purpose you now happen to be in just the right spot. 

Nevertheless, you may find your efforts to snap the shot are unavailing. You need one of the props Murray provided. Open the backpack in inventory with a right-click — liberating lighter, plastic knife and Soul Key — and then use the camera on the distant castle (as seen through upper part of the main gate). Darren will automatically strike a pose with the plastic knife.

Return to the hotel, talk to Murray about “Photo in front of the castle” or just drag the photo onto him and, after some back and forth, he suggests you take a nap in your room — promising that Darren’s issues with his statement will be addressed. (For some reason, Darren hangs onto the photo.)

Odds & ends: The instant-travel map temporarily stops working at this point. Try it and Darren says he’s tired and wants to lie down. Evidently the game -really- wants you in your hotel room to collect the first of what turns out to be a series of anonymous “Guardian” notes. 

But you can still travel the old-fashioned way — albeit to no useful purpose. You’ll find Denise back on duty at the cafe. Run her topics to learn she and Edward are engaged. (From the identically glassy portraits, they also appear to be twins!) And that in turn will enable you to question Edward a bit more. You’ll learn he was up for late maid Sally’s job at the castle — another bit of foreshadowing of events in Chapter IV. 

In addition, Spooner is back in the police station with a new “Murder of Miss Valley” topic and “Angelina” and “academy” sub-topics.
      
– The broken doors in the hotel hallway outside Darren’s room foreshadow the appearance of a toolbox here in Chapter II. 

– The folks sitting in and wandering through the lounge down the hall from Darren’s room include the German tourists and background characters from Biddeford in BM2! The fellow reading the paper is the one who was sitting by the sea in the exterior shot of the post office/souvenir shop. (You’ll also note that the hotel layout here doesn’t quite gibe with the one in BM2.) 

Anyway, On to the Note

Use the double doors at the left and double-click (or use the room key) on the first door on the left. After automatically dumping the backpack and soul key, Darren can pick up the note someone’s shoved under the door. 

This anonymous letter purports to be from someone believing in Darren’s innocence and reports that “you’ll find the first lead at your father’s grave.” 

This is the first of five such notes. The last three can be disregarded entirely. (You don’t even need to pick them up unless you’re determined to unlock all the “extras” pictures.) ) But this one and its successor in Chapter II lead Darren into new territory and you’ll need to seek them out and then follow-up on their contents.

You may recall the graveyard at the Warmhill church from the original TBM. But Darren doesn’t — you controlled his father, Samuel, in that first game — and hence can’t travel there until 1) someone locates Warmhill for you and 2) you find it on the walking map. If you haven’t already collected the map from Abaya at the little grocery store, Dr. Winterbottom (now at the cafe) will nudge you in this direction.   

You can ask Murray, Spooner or Dr. Winterbottom about “graveyard” and be pointed  to the church.  Head for the castle. At the fork just short of the gates, head left. (If you can’t, first open your new map and then try again.) Darren enters a section of woods with a “beaten track” leading off into the forest at its left end. (You won’t be able to use this path until the Warmhill segment is complete.) The exit to the church is at the far end.

Odds & ends: There’s a lot of empty real-estate in this unusual scrolling screen — the others are the lobby of the Gordon’s Palace and the castle cellar — and nothing much to do. Darren can identify the stream below the central bridge and speculate about “undead ghouls” roaming the thicket to the right. But that’s the end of it until you complete the day’s business at the church.   

Warmhill

This should look familiar. Warmhill was an important location in the original TBM and, in BM2, a picture of the church was used in the sliding-block puzzle that unlocked a roll-top desk.

Enter the church and talk to gravedigger Mark, who is sleeping in the confessional over to the left. Via the topic “Samuel’s grave,” he’ll refer you to Father Frederick, who, much as in the original TBM, is away and due back the next day. 

Odds & ends: Scare away the raven just right of the small cross at the near end of the church roof to unlock picture #7. 

– If you first examine the fresh grave at the far right in the front view of the church, and then ask Mark about it, he can give you a hint at a likely location for Samuel’s grave: one of the anonymous graves in the foreground of the graveyard proper. However, you can’t act on the information at this time. (This also changes the fresh grave’s description.)

In addition, via “White Wood,” Mark expands slightly on what you may have heard earlier from Murray about local legends — including a reference to “Mordred’s voracious hellhounds” and not inconceivably the same traps you’ll come across in Chapter III– and, via “Church,” reference the collapse of Marcus Gordon’s crypt beneath the church (which likewise comes into play in Chapter III).  

– Note that Miss Valley’s grave to the left of the church door does not lose its interactivity after you’ve elicited a description. That’s because the description will change in Chapter II.

– You can  also explore the dilapidated graveyard to the left of the church. (The vicarage’s rough-and-ready front yard is locked up for now. You’ll get in there in Chapter II.) Visit the graveyard at night, after leaving the church, and you can scare away the raven atop the left pillar at the rear — unlocking picture #6.

Devil Dogs 

You won’t be able to use your map to get back to the hotel. 

And, yeah, that’s a bad sign.

Head back toward the castle. Just short of the entrance to the “beaten track,” Darren gets an inkling of something out in the woods. Just past the path, this inkling gets more specific: the hell hounds of local legend. And as Darren approaches the right end of the logs on the near side of the main path, the same savage face that often precedes a “Mordred Moment” flashes onscreen and Darren is confronted front and back by giant black dogs. 

Are these hounds (like the earlier “Mordred moments”) just figments of Darren’s imagination? Hard to say — a later scene will give you reason to wonder —  but they can kill him. There’s no scaring them away or fighting them off. As Madame Zora suggested if you consulted her oracle earlier, the key is distance. You have about 15 seconds to run. Use the “beaten path” (just left of Darren’s location) that leads away into the forest. Our boy will automatically hole up in a little shack at its end and hold the door shut until the hounds give up the pursuit.

Odds & ends: Or what the heck, just let the hell hounds kill Darren. This unlocks video #7 — the first of the four optional video sequences — and gives the hounds a name: “Barghests.” (You can read more about barghests at (among other places): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barghest.)

– This sequence and another at the end of Chapter IV may give pause to folks who played the original TBM. Do you remember the animal-like first-person view of the creature climbing the castle tower in the intro of that first game?Was it one of these dogs? 

And, in retrospect, I have to add that this scene lacks a reason-for-being. At the end of Chapter IV, you’ll learn these giant dogs are allied with Mordred. Given  Mordred’s plan (revealed in Chapter VI) the last thing the dead sorcerer would want is to kill off Darren.  

– Note that the dogs become “wild boars” in the walkthrough that accompanies the US release.  

The Shack

Now Darren can’t open the door. Depending which description you believe, it’s either barred or jammed. In any case, you must find another potential exit, a means to open it and bang said means into working order.

Exit: The obvious one would seem to be the door in back. But that’s just a shed for storing lumber and offers no escape or supplies. 

However, you’ll notice that the floorboards on the near side of that door seem to call attention to themselves. Perhaps Darren could find a way through?

Odds & ends: Note the lingering interactivity of the door, window and entrance to the woodshed. This just means you can try to use the chainsaw or file on the rear wall on them. (You can also try the file and lighter on the floorboards.)

Tool: The only visible tool is the file hanging on the rear wall. It comes into play in Chapter II. Right now, you need a saw.

As you would imagine, it’s in the padlocked trunk beside the door. There is a key, but it won’t become visible until you turn on the lights, so use your authentic Samuel Gordon lighter on the oil lamp at the head of the bed. 

A couple of things happen — one obvious, one not. You’ll hear what sounds like a rap at the door and, when Darren automatically looks out the window, you’ll see the ghostly form of a woman not dissimilar to Darren’s late twin sister Angelina moving through the trees. You’ll learn more about this “White Lady” in Chapter II.

Odds & ends: Alternate cut-scene trigger: Without first lighting the lantern, just look out the window. 

– Darren can also claim that  file. But it’s not strictly necessary. If Darren doesn’t take it, he’ll find a replacement on-site when the time comes. (The cigarettes in Chapter II work in a similar fashion.)

The other: A new hotspot has appeared — a “Peculiar shadow” on the wall behind the lamp. Left-click on the shadow and then on the oil lamp to find its source: a key. Use this on the padlock on the trunk beside the door. 

And there’s Darren potentially exculpatory evidence: the costume of an Order member with a scrap of a note in the pocket that Darren interprets as a request to conceal the organization’s existence. (You’ll find an explanation for this concealment in Chapter III and  longer version of the note in Chapter IV.)  Also, a corkscrew, a folding ruler … and a chainsaw. 

Alas, a chainsaw not yet ready for prime time. It needs:

Fuel: There’s a bottle of gas on the shelf on the rear wall. Use this on the chainsaw to fill it up. 

A gas-tank cap: Use the rake just left of the shredder on the bed to retrieve a box marked “Ralph.” 

Apparently this is where the former Ashburry asylum inmate took refuge after the events of BM2. (If you’ve already visited the Academy ruins, you’ve noticed that Ralph’s corrugated-metal shelter has been closed up with debris.) Open the box in inventory with a right-click to extract Ralph’s doll/imaginary friend Mr. Bubby, a luminous happy-face sticker (the first of three) and a cork. Use the cork on the chainsaw.

Odds & ends: There’s something dead inside the shredder. 

This is an artifact from the original TBM and seems to have been included as an oblique kind of foreshadowing. In that game, bloody one moment and pristine the next, the shredder seemed connected to the murder of castle gardener Henry Stanton, whose blood-drained corpse was found in a fountain. (The fountain doesn’t appear in BM3, but references to Stanton turn up in chapters II and III.)      

Proof of concept: For the want of a better word. 

Try a corked and fueled saw on the floorboards and Darren still insists on first knowing what’s beneath — i.e. that the proposed exit is actually an exit. The ruler will do here. It reveals that this part of the structure seems to be on stilts.

Then try the chainsaw. Success! Drop through the hole — Darren automatically dumps the saw on his way out, but it becomes a tacit reference point late in the game — and he’ll surface in front of the shack, notice that the departed hounds did not leave any tracks and, after a “Mordred Moment” flash, promptly collapse. (When you don’t have an exit strategy, have your protagonist faint.)

Odds & ends: Note the crow atop the oil can to the right of the shack. There’s no opportunity to scare it away in this non-interactive scene, but you’ll be able to return here in Chapter II.

Chapter II

The chapter begins with a childhood memory elicited under hypnosis — Darren and Angelina in the woods near the castle and Angelina falling into a deep hole. Dr. Winterbottom encourages Darren to locate this hole in the real world.

Odds & ends: The man who enters the scene briefly is the late Black Mirror butler Bates — foreshadowing a disclosure in Chapter VI.

– Afterward, Darren can ask  Dr. Winterbottom about a variety of topics taking off from the previous night’s incident. The main revelations are that 1) Murray apparently found Darren outside the shack in the middle of the night — does this sound plausible? — and brought him back to the hotel, 2) that there’s a local legend of a white lady who wanders the woods in search of her child and 3) that the doctor is a colossal bore who offers tiresome psychological explanations for everything. Can Mordred just kill her now, please?  

– Note that the Order costume from the shack is now missing. (The diary comments on this rather dismissively.)

– You can try to use both the smiley-face sticker and the prescription on the wastebasket and Dr. Bubby on Dr. Winterbottom.

Outside the doctor’s house, Darren sums up the day’s agenda: fill the prescription, see whether Murray has corrected his statement, try to locate the place he saw while under hypnosis and meet with Father Frederick. You have a some flexibility in the order in which these are performed, but the visit with the clergyman has to come last and the Murray segment must come after the prescription one.
 
– Prescription: The shop is closed — it reopens in Chapter IV — but that needn’t stop you. Look in the barrel beside the entrance to recover a package of tea for hotelier Murray and Darren’s medicine. (Lest you wonder why Murray is getting his tea through the mail, Abaya indicates in Chapter IV that she’ll place special orders.)

Odds & ends: Having found the  shop closed, you can return to Dr. Winterbottom and learn Abaya is attending a self-defense course in Ipswich — hence the business about her whistle in Chapter I — and that the delivery is probably in the barrel. (Constable Zak can also comment on the closure.)

– The drug, Haloperidox, is clearly a variation on the anti-psychotic Haloperidol. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haloperidol  

– In the village square, you’ll note that Matt Newcastle has been sprung. You can exchange sour words with him and try to use the pencil and corkscrew on him.

– You can place another call to the psychic. Again, Madame Fortuna sees death. Her advice: “Stay away from shootings!” This call unlocks picture #21 — an artist’s conception of a rejiggered cafe.  (Lawyer Jones has nothing new to say until Chapter III.)

– Murray’s statement: An optional chat with Constable Zak establishes that Murray dropped by to talk to the inspector about “an urgent matter,” but that the inspector hasn’t been in all day. The constable thinks he’s at the cafe, but cafe waiter Edward will tell you he hasn’t appeared … and that Denise is also missing.   

Odds & ends: If you talked to Dr. Winterbottom about “White Lady,” you’ll be able to take up this legend with Zak as well.

To complete this task, you’ll need to talk to Murray directly and that’s not going to happen until you’ve picked up your prescription. (That is, you can try — but Murray will be absent from the hotel and his office inaccessible until Darren brings the tea.)

With Murray’s parcel in inventory, visit the Gordon’s Palace and knock on the office door at the left end of the lobby. No answer. Darren decides to leave the package on Murray’s desk … where he notices a receipt for his bail! 

Murray now enters and, after initially claiming to believe in Darren’s innocence, reveals it’s just the other way around — he’s counting on Darren’s guilt — and that this was essentially a business decision. A jailed homicidal maniac just isn’t going to deliver the river of blood that brings in the tourists. 

An incensed Darren decides to check out. You can’t — there’s no place to leave the key — so this really just amounts to a decision to have nothing more to do with Murray. 

Nevertheless, you’re not done with Murray’s excesses and will have to visit with him again in the chapter. (You’ll also have the option to do so in Chapter III.) No statement, true, but this closes the book on this task. (You’ll learn from Spooner in Chapter IV that Murray has finally amended his statement.) 

Odds & ends: You can use the telephone on the front desk to call Madame Zora before or after your encounter with Murray.

– Locate the “ominous spot” from the hypnotherapy session: Darren recalled seeing the castle in the background. But Black Mirror’s front gate is as closed and its intercom as silent as before. You’ll have to try a different route. 

In fact, a different location entirely.

There’s just one suitable side road. At the “Crossing in the woods” east of Willow Creek, follow the gravel path to the right. Darren has a quick flashback that recalls his dream — except this one is sited outside a morgue. Now try to exit (“Road”) to the left and Darren says the location reminds him of his “hypnotised dream.” 

You’re not going to find a way past the gate without first clearing the barbed wire. 

Yeah, it’s an item hunt. Only one item will do and it’s not one you’ve seen before. 

Happily, a new area has opened up. Remember the locked gates to the Warmhill vicarage? Return to Warmhill, use either the gate to the right of the church or at the rear of the graveyard to enter the vicarage’s front yard and take the tree lopper that’s leaning against the facing wall to the left. 

Odds & ends:  At this stage, the father still isn’t back from his conference and the church is locked up. However, you can consult gravedigger Mark, now working at the rear of the vicarage yard, who tells you the priest planned to start back to Warmhill after breakfast. 

– The old door atop the woodpile beside the right exit from the vicarage yard remains interactive after you’ve pulled the description because you’ll be using its inset glass window in Chapter III. 

However, the door to the vicarage itself is one of the game’s longest-lingering mysteries. As at the pub in town, it’s natural to assume from the persistent red cursor that you’ll be admitted at some stage of the game. You’re even given a tacit inducement to keep trying: A look through the window beside the door reveals a “greenhouse” full of flowers and a click on Amanda Valley’s grave at the front of the church yields a suggestion that Darren bring flowers on his next visit. But the flowers never do materialize and the description doesn’t evolve …until the very end of Chapter V.

Back at the gate, use the lopper on the barbed wire and climb over the barrier to find yourself in front of Heinz Hermann’s old house — unseen since the original TBM. (In TBM, this doubled as the morgue — the remaining letters now rearranged to spell out “GORE.”) 

You’ll find four locations around the house: “Place behind fence” (at the far left), “Place in the bushes” (at the left-front corner of the house), “Dark place” (beneath the bush just left of the entrance) and “Place on the edge of woods” (the tree to the right of the house). Left-click on each to satisfy the demands of this  search. None suggest the hole into which the young Angelina fell — though the “Dark place” does contain a second luminous happy-face sticker, which suggests to Darren that Ralph lives here now.

Odds & ends: In a manner of speaking, yes. More on this a little later. 

– If you first collect the sticker, you’ll get a much different response when Darren left-clicks on the morgue’s front door.

– Look at the green station wagon out front for a vision of what appears to be a woman’s blood-streaked body. This unlocks video #15. The optional sequence seems to look forward to the events later in the chapter, but the body in the car looks nothing like the one you’ll later find in the morgue.

– You can try to use the lopper on the padlock on the rubbish bin to the left of the house. (No dice: You can’t open this until you find the key later in the chapter.)

– The visit to the morgue allows you to chat again with Dr. Winterbottom, Spooner (now back in the police station) and Denise. (Beyond reiterating that  Dr. Winterbottom knew coroner Hermann, none of these conversations rise above small talk.)

– Father Frederick: Once you’ve completed the three other tasks, he’s back. Head for Warmhill, enter the church via the front door — the side one doesn’t become usable until Chapter V — and advance to the altar to meet the priest.

If you just ask straightaway for the location of Samuel’s grave, the father won’t be able to help you. (He doesn’t know who you are.) But back into the topic via “Church” (which permits Darren to introduce himself) and then “Samuel’s grave” and he is more forthcoming — providing a list of burials from August 1981. 

Read it with a right-click and Darren will tick off as many as seven and as few as five names: Sir William Gordon, Henry Stanton, Dr. Heinz Hermann, Dr. Robert Gordon, James, Victor Sebastian Valley and Samuel Gordon. If it’s five or six, you have already inspected William Gordon’s large gravestone at the rear of the cemetery and/or the Valley family plot to the left of the church’s front door and hence know old William and young Vic are not in the anonymous graves. If seven, you’ll first have to rule out William Gordon and Vic Valley as described above. (Not exactly conclusive detective work in Vic’s case — Darren is just speculating here — but it’s enough.) 

From here, Darren can make directly for the tangle of anonymous stones in the foreground of the graveyard. He’ll go over what you’ve learned so far and jump into a mini-game: You need to drag the correct name onto each stone.

Odds & ends: Once you’ve talked to the priest, you can bounce the tale of Marcus and Mordred Gordon off  Dr. Winterbottom and, once he’s alone again, off Constable Zak. 

-Once you’ve read the burials list, you’ll be able to collect intelligence on the five occupants from Father Frederick — even if William Gordon and Vic Valley haven’t yet been ruled out. 

– Via “Church,” the father attributes Adrian Gordon’s death to a fall down the castle stairs — a demise notably different from the fiery one Inspector Spooner mentioned in Chapter I. (Perhaps the Gordons were having trouble keeping track of their lies.) 

  Stoned

1) An observant player should be able to connect one name with a stone right off the bat. The one in the near left corner must be Hermann’s. There’s a dreamcatcher here. You may have seen one earlier in Dr. Winterbottom’s office window — and you’ll recall that Dr. Winterbottom and Hermann were students together. An ephemeral link, but it’s enough.

2) And having done that, you’ll be able to place a second name. There’s a “caduceus” symbol (a winged staff) on the right near stone that is often used (mistakenly, as it is here) as an emblem for the medical profession. There are two doctors among the five names and as we’ve already assigned a stone to Hermann, this stone can only belong to Robert Gordon. 

You can also place this name by noting the inscription and flowers and then questioning Mark and Father Frederick. Via the “Rotted flowers” topic, Mark will clarify that the flowers were left by Victoria (Robert’s mother) shortly before the castle fire and the priest, via “Robert Gordon,” the mother’s disappointment over her oldest son’s participation in experiments at the asylum.  

3) The back three are a trickier affair, but you need just one of them to reduce the remaining unassigned names to two. You can then simply flip-flop the remaining two names as needed to solve the puzzle. 

The ones at left and right have Latin inscriptions while the one in the middle has no distinguishing characteristics at all.
 
The one at the left is the easiest if you’ve played the original TBM. Read the inscription and talk to Father Frederick. He’ll attribute the Bible verse to Paul, who was a prisoner at the time. That’s the key word. James was effectively a prisoner at the Ashburry asylum, so the stone must be his.

4) The middle stone seems a general statement of anonymity: no inscription and no upkeep. Of all the folks here, that best matches the condition in life of former Black Mirror gardener Stanton (who will stroll into our sights in Chapter III). The priest doesn’t know anything about him and refers you to gravedigger Mark doesn’t know much except that Henry fairly guzzled beer at the Three Kegs Inn. Mark suggests you talk to proprietor Tom — a confrontation Darren is aching to avoid. But that’s just a red herring. The middle stone is indeed Stanton’s.

5) That by means by process of elimination that the upper-right stone belongs to Samuel. 

But you can also sort this out by the inscription. Father Frederick can help — albeit at such length that the point is rather obscured. The Latin “Ecce Agnus Dei qui tollit peccatum mundi” translates as: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world” — a reference by John the Baptist to Jesus. Samuel certainly wasn’t a Lamb of God, but the focus here is on his sacrifice (his suicide at the end of TBM). This can only be Samuel’s grave. 

Once the five names are placed, Darren focuses his attention on this last stone. 

And doesn’t find anything.  

You’ll have to left-click on Samuel’s grave three times for him to suggest talking to the priest again about the Latin inscription. (However, you can just do this on your own without having clicked on the stone first.) 

Talk to Father Frederick about “Samuel’s grave” again. The priest tells him the verse can be found in the Bible … and within this church. Quit the conversation to drop back to a full view and have a look at the column in the church’s near right corner. The “Lamb of God” quotation is here. Behind it, a secret compartment and a note in the same hand as the note under Samuel’s hotel-room door. This one seems to urge Darren to good works — pressing him to “look out for people who need help.”

Odds & ends: Initially, Darren seems to think this is still Murray messing with him. But that doesn’t make sense. Murray has already made it plain he does not believe in Darren’s innocence.

– Read the note again after the next sequence for an expanded take. 

Stranded Motorist

Darren’s resolve on this issue will quickly be put to the test. Head back toward Willow Creek. If you’re using the map, Darren will stop automatically at the “Crossing in the woods” just east of town. A motorist named Phil is fiddling with the engine of the same pale green station wagon that set off a vision outside Heinz Hermann’s old house. 

And, yeah, that’s bad news.

You can continue on to Willow Creek and chat with folks on the new topics noted above. But you’re not going to find additional tasks until you address this one. And didn’t the second note say to help people? 

Alas, Darren turns out to be the one who needs help. Phil turns out to be a psychopath. Either talk to him or try to exit down the gravel path toward the lighthouse (which forces Phil to talk to Darren), run through the conversation topics and watch as Darren is knocked unconscious with the car hood and winds up a prisoner in a coffin-like container.

Happily, the top is rusted out and two left-clicks on this thin “ceiling” will break through and allow Darren to identify his location: a drawer in the “cold room” of a morgue. Another click and he’ll begin to speculate that, with a better purchase on the stretcher above, he might be able to ram it through the door to the right. Use the corkscrew on the stretcher (and discover that it has tapped into something noxious) and then activate the corkscrew to free yourself. 

Odds & ends: You can also try to use the camera, lighter and smiley-face sticker on the stretcher.

You’re in Dr. Hermann’s old autopsy room — last seen in the original TBM. Click on the red light at the left to simultaneously try the broken intercom and turn on the lights. 

You need to perform three tasks here: Lure back and then ambush your captor, free and wake a second kidnap victim and get a broader sense of what Phil’s about. 

– Ambush. As hinted by the diary, you need to repair the broken intercom beside the door. Alas, its brokenness is not described sufficiently to make logical associations about what might be done to repair it. 

At the desk over to the left, open the left drawer, remove the chemistry book — Darren keeps this — and take the scalpel beneath. Back out of the closeup, use the scalpel on the cassette player on the shelf to the left to liberate some wires and then use the wire on the intercom. 

(If you haven’t independently detected the presence of another victim by clicking on on the refrigerated compartments, Darren then notices from a snore that another is occupied. See the “second guest” section below for details.)  

You can’t use the intercom straightaway. Try and Darren suggests formulating a plan. Try again and he’s more specific: You need a weapon. That would be the loose thigh bone on the floor below the skeleton at the right. Try a third time with the bone in inventory and Darren mentions the need for a distraction. Redirect the projector on the dissecting table so its beam shines on the door — i.e. in the eyes of whoever enters the room. (If you can’t redirect the projector, you haven’t repaired the intercom yet.) 

If you haven’t already done so, check out the cold storage as described under “second guest” below. (You won’t be able to proceed further without having done so.) Once you learn the compartment is locked, you’ll be able to return to this task.  

Use the intercom. Almost immediately, Darren hears approaching footsteps. When the cut-scene ends, use the thigh bone on Phil as he walks toward the projector. (If he turns off the projector, Darren is dead.) Click on his unconscious form to take his shotgun and keys. 

Odds & ends: There’s kind of a leap of faith here. Why assume Phil is just hanging around outside to hear the intercom? When Darren was still in the compartment, Phil said he had some things to do. Maybe there should have been a basement window through which Darren could see the front of the house and watch for Phil’s return?

You can try to use the shotgun, scalpel and camera on the unconscious Phil.

– The second guest: You can do this one on your own or wait until prompted during “Ambush.” But you’ll have to complete “Ambush” before you can finish it.    

Look at “refrigerated compartments” at the right rear, then at “Body bag” on the left for a gross gray corpse and finally on “Middle compartment” to the lower right. Darren establishes this is padlocked — and occupied by someone in a deep sleep. 

Odds & ends: You can try to use the file on the padlock. (If you don’t have the one from Ralph’s shack, there’s one among the tools in the box in the foreground.)

Who is the dead person? I think it’s just an anonymous body thrown in for shock value — and as exculpatory evidence. (All we’ll learn is that Darren was behind bars when this man died.)  

The key? Phil has it. Complete the “Ambush” section above and then return here.

Use the keys on the padlock to the middle compartment to find a cut-up Ralph. Try to talk to him and Darren realizes he’s been drugged.

You may already have seen something over on the desk that could jumpstart Ralph’s recovery — that little bottle of smelling salts to the left. 

Alas, empty. 

But you do have the old chemistry book Darren claimed en route to the scalpel. In inventory, use bottle on book and he’ll look up the formula: deer antlers ground down to ammonium powder and then heated. 

Head upstairs and left-click on the stag’s head to the left of the exit. Darren breaks off an antler. You can use the file from Ralph’s shack to grind it into powder. (If you left the file behind in Ralph’s shack, return to the cellar and look in the box of tools in the foreground. You’ll find one there.)

Now you just need a container in which to heat the powder. That’s upstairs, too. Just left-click on the display case to the right of the TV and Darren takes a glass flask. In inventory, use the antler powder on flask. Back downstairs, head for the desk, place the flask atop the Bunsen burner,  left-click once on the burner to start the flow of gas, use the lighter on the burner and use the automatically-refilled salts bottle on Ralph. (Darren leaves the chemistry book behind here.) 

Ralph wakes in hysterics. Sadly, you can’t cobble together anti-psychotics from the residue in the pizza boxes upstairs and, oddly, use of Darren’s own supply is not an option. Just use the Mr. Bubby doll on him and he’ll run away.      

Odds & ends: You can also take the cigarettes from the desk — they’ll serve as a fuse later in the chapter — but don’t freak if you forget them. Another pack will turn up.

– You can try to use the smelling salts on Phil.

– What’s Phil’s story? 

You can start in on this three-part task as soon as you’re free of the drawer. You’ll need to finish up #1 first to lock Phil into the cellar, but can do #2 and #3 in either order.

1) The most elaborate involves the locked box over on the desk. Click on it and the diary suggests  a memory-aid for the combination must be written down somewhere. 

Not in a conventional way.  But note the lingering interactivity of the movie projector — and that it only has only one reel. Is there a film hidden somewhere?

You bet. Left-click on the skeleton to the left of the desk. The skull comes loose and Darren keeps it. Right-click on it in inventory to liberate a rattling film reel. You can use this on the projector and then the projector on the screen to watch a single-shot film of a Gibraltar-like outcropping of rock … 

… in which nothing happens. 

Well, virtually nothing. 

There is one frame that’s darker and out-of-sync with those around it. That’s gotta be worth a look. But not until you have a second aid to interpret this one. 

Raise the projection screen, left-click on the invisible “camera accessories” beneath — among them a set of colored filters, which you’ll keep — and lower the screen again. Use the filters on the projector. Set the speed at the slowest setting (the left setting on the left dial), play the film and pause it (center setting on the right dial) at the darkened frame. 

And this is where things get interesting. The six circular buttons along the top of the projector controls now find a use: They determine the filter or filters through which the film is displayed. Experiment a bit. For instance, use the blue filter and a “218” pops up. You may think you’ve nailed it. 

Not quite. The combination has four digits. And in fact you’ll need to use simultaneously two filters (neither of them blue) to see the full “2180”: red (at the far right) and yellow (second from the left). And simply glimpsing the combination isn’t enough. If you’re playing the film (rather than pausing it at this frame first), you’ll have to stop it — pausing it with the center setting on the right knob — with the digits on the screen for it to register with Darren. (This becomes reliably doable with the film set at its slowest speed.) 

Then just try the metal box again. Darren opens it automatically to find a letter to Phil. The writer refers first to a photo of someone who has left the village (the meaning of this becomes clearer later in the chapter), then to pictures of the castle fire and finally to Darren (“the fire fiend”) being “a ticking time bomb that could blow up again at any time. Perhaps we could encourage him a little.” 

It’s signed “M.” Murray? Darren thinks so, and certainly it’s not inconsistent with Murray’s stated aim of getting the blood flowing again.

Odds & ends: While this isn’t especially pertinent to the Phil situation, the file cabinet on the right near corner will be of interest to graduates of the original TBM. It contains Hermann’s fake death certificates for asylum inmates — including some for the same Ralph Thompson you just freed. Evidently the plan  back in TBM was to silence Ralph and make it look like a suicide. This suggests that fellow inmate James was also murdered. But it also sets up a disclosure by Victoria at the end of the chapter. 

– You can try to use the lighter on the cigarettes.

2) Then there’s that computer on the desk upstairs.

On the entry floor, use Phil’s keys on the cellar door (i.e. the left side of the portal in the left wall) to lock in the recovered psycho.  

Once that’s done, you can turn on the computer. You’ll find you need a password. A post-it note  to the right of the screen offers a hint about leaving and reentering the building, but since the remains of the sign over the door have been anagramed to “GORE” and the one in the cellar entrance has faded to “RGUE,” you may just get it wrong anyway. 

Remember Darren’s flashback earlier in the chapter? There was a “MORGUE” sign in the background. Plug this in on the keyboard below, hit return and Darren automatically unlocks a “storage room.” Check out the drawers at the bottom of the display case where you earlier found the glass flask and then the secret compartment beneath them and to the left.

Within, a list of three names, each with attached sums (evidently payments to Phil for his surveillance) with the first and last apparently connected to Murray by virtue of an attached “M.” You’ll also find Betamax videos of former asylum inmates Ralph and James. Darren automatically takes one of Ralph. Use the cassette on the TV to see Ralph being tortured in the cellar. 

Odds & ends: Darren figures correctly that he’s “the Yank” mentioned on the list, but who are “the foreign woman” and “the library tart”? 

This is one of BM3’s looser loose ends. 

The “library tart” can only be the late Amanda Valley, who served as Willow Creek’s librarian. But why would Murray want Phil to follow her? Possibly because her comings and goings as operational head of The Order suggested a life more complicated than your average librarian’s and ignited suspicion that she was up to something. And why the “tart” — unless that’s just a gratuitous slur by Phil? (A guess: Phil observed her halting interactions with Darren in BM2 and interpreted them as signals of attraction or flirtation. Which, who knows, they may indeed have been.)

And “the foreign woman”? Abaya at the grocery store has an Indian name — that might constitute “foreign”  to an unsophisticated fellow like Phil — but she’s too insubstantial a character. (Her purpose here is just to be scared of Darren and distribute the odd item.) 

Which leaves just Victoria’s Italian nurse Sister Antolini. You’ll learn later in the game that she’d have been a promising target. (There’s significantly more to her than simply caregiver and castle gatekeeper.) 

But who in the game would enlist Phil to shadow the sister? And more to the point, who would enlist the brutal PHIL to shadow her? Not Murray. There’s no “M” beside this listing — and that omission is brought to our attention so we know it’s not just carelessness. 

You can’t sort this out at this stage of the game — and it’s never made entirely clear even at the end — but I do have a theory. We’ll come back to this in Chapter VI.

3) Use Phil’s keys to unlock the right drawer of the desk. Mordred moment! You’ll come up with a pistol, ammo and an apparently stolen necklace. 

Which raises a new issue: Murder and arson suspect Darren can’t wander around armed to the teeth. You’ll need to dump the shotgun and pistol. The refuse bin at the left side of the building seems a good bet. Use Phil’s keys to unlock it — Darren automatically takes a paper tube and the cast-off letter “M” from the “MORGUE” sign  — and use either gun on the dumpster to drop in both. (If circumstances permit, you can also drop them in separately.)

Odds & ends: You can take the plastic bottle on the table to the left of the exit to the cellar. You can fill this up with water  once you leave, but it won’t find a use until Chapter III. 

– Take the disc to the left of the PC and use it on the computer to play a game of Space Attack — a Centipede clone. Not a bad little game, though of necessity a short one as you have only one life. Use the direction keys to move your craft and the spacebar to fire. (Playing it unlocks mini-game #1.)  

– Outside, click on the raven at the left side of the roof to unlock picture #11. 

– Look at the movie screen for the first of three references to the TV series Lost: the logo for the Dharma Initiative. (Another will turn up before the end of the chapter and the third in Chapter VI.)

– A poster on German publisher dtp’s forum reports that an old Award BIOS master password “LKWpeter” works on the computer as well. (I’ve confirmed. And it seems to be the only such alternate password.)

– You can try to use the “M” on the “GORE” sign above the morgue entrance, the gun on the ammo and Phil’s keys on the car. (Can you find the missing “U”? It’s the horseshoe supporting the cable above the broken mirror.)  

– You can sabotage the exterior intercom — albeit to no meaningful effect.

– The pile of electronic junk in front of the TV set remains interactive after you elicit a description. That’s because you’ll be back here in Chapter III to borrow a bit of gear.

– When you leave the morgue after completing #1, you’ll find night has fallen. Once this segment is complete, you’ll have your first opportunity to wander Willow Creek and its environs in darkness. You can go to all inhabited areas. Darren balks only at the dark road down to the lighthouse and Academy. (Later in the game, the same rules will apply to the eastern swamp and the altar stone in the southwestern woods.)

Wonder what became of Ralph? He returns to the shack where Darren took refuge from the barghests. Knock on the door and you can talk to him about the white lady, Ralph himself and the old morgue. (Still freaked out, he won’t say anything particularly useful.)

The raven has returned to its position on the oil barrel to the right. Shoo it away to unlock picture #13.

And click on the raven on the pillar to the left of the castle gate to unlock picture #3 — a post-fire shot of the bedroom of former Black Mirror butler Bates that, though apparently modeled, doesn’t appear in the game. (An intact version of this room appears in BM2.) 

Constable Zak is on his own at the police station and you can finally have a word with him on accumulated topics. (None of it rises above the level of chit-chat.)

Finally, note that Matt Newcastle is no longer hanging out in the village square. (Darren won’t take formal note of his absence until the next day.)

Confronting Murray

None of the info about Phil can be presented to the police at this stage. (You can try, but the constable doesn’t take Darren seriously.) 

In fact, its only effective use is with Murray. In the hotel lobby, Darren automatically takes him on. Here we seem to learn the meaning of the reference to pictures in the letter in Phil’s metal box: Murray claims to have photos that show Darren running from the castle on the day of the fire. Threats are exchanged, Mordred asserts himself (for real this time) and Murray maces Darren-as-Mordred and flees the scene.  Darren mopes (much in the fashion parodied by Matt Newcastle at the beginning of Chapter I) and settles on collapsing Murray’s “house of cards” by destroying the pictures. 

Odds & ends: Odd that Darren doesn’t recognize Murray’s I-have-photos-of-you gambit as a bluff. He should know that he didn’t run from the castle. He was kidnapped at gunpoint right under the portico by gardener Louis.

– Note the new stand-up cardboard character beside the front desk — based on the photo Darren snapped outside the castle in Chapter I. Murray’s added a few flying bats for good measure. Use the pencil on it to add a mustache! (You can also try the lighter.)

Murray’s office is unlocked. That heavy steel cabinet against the back wall is a likely repository for any pictures. Look in the desk drawer to collect a user manual. The gist: You can get the combination automatically by phone if you know the cabinet’s serial number and the year of the owner’s birth. 

That last part is simple: Just look at the hotelier diploma on the wall beside the window. A weird place for a DOB, but it’s there.

The serial number on the back is a whole other matter. Even if the thing wasn’t bolted to the floor, Darren could never move it on his own. 

But note  the floor plan on the wall across from Darren’s room. Murray’s office and Darren’s room share a common wall. Break through in the right spot and you’d presumably be able to read the serial number off the back with a minimum of heavy lifting. 

The key is finding that “right spot.” Darren can’t just break down the wall indiscriminately. You’ll want to make your hole precisely where the locker stands. 

You can take the measure of the room. First use the ruler from Ralph’s shack on the wall of Murray’s office between the columns to the right of the cabinet to determine its position relative to the right wall and then do it again on the wall of Darren’s room. (If you discover you can’t do this in Darren’s room, you haven’t yet checked Murray’s desk drawer for the user manual.) Then you can attack the wall — first using the scalpel to remove the wallpaper and expose a crumbling brick wall.

How to get through the bricks? You’re probably thinking of the contents of the newly-minted toolbox outside the door. But, oddly enough, the appropriate tool here is the cast-iron “M” you found in the morgue dumpster. (The toolbox contains a pair of pliers that come into play later in the chapter.) The big letter scratches out the mortar between the bricks and you can look into the hole to get the serial number. (Good thing the hole happens to be at exactly the right height!) Use the phone in Murray’s office to get the combination — the phone out at the front desk won’t work for this purpose — and activate the locker to have Darren automatically plug in the long combo without your help.

Inside, a folder of compromising photos — Denise and Spooner getting it on, Matt Newcastle urinating in public and Angelina preparing to burn Miss Valley at the lighthouse! Darren suspects the cops won’t find it exculpatory — you can’t see the body — but that it might help persuade Victoria of Darren’s innocence. 

Odds & ends: Does the combination seem familiar? The same six numbers (4, 8, 15,16, 23 and 42) appear on the “hatch” in the first season of the TV series Lost and, back in the 1960s, in the Valenzetti equation. (http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Valenzetti_Equation)

– Right-click on the folder in inventory and Darren examines a newspaper clipping within. It’s unclear whether Murray is interested in a piece on Spooner’s relegation to the provinces or a burglary at a retirement home in Ipswich. (This also unlocks picture #12. )

Victoria

You can’t turn the blackmail material over to the police, either.

Odds & ends: But you can try. Return to the village square and click the door of the police station to trigger an appearance by two of Darren’s favorite people: Three Kegs Inn proprietor Tom and Matt Newcastle. They seem to be having a quarrel over Matt staying at Tom’s place. (You may see this argument in a new light come Chapter III.) Darren escapes across the bridge to the museum side of the river before they see him.

This isn’t a puzzle to be outflanked; it’s a barricade. You won’t be able to revisit the village square until Chapter III — when, naturally, the Angelina photo has vanished from inventory. 

Instead, make for the castle. At the fork just short of the gates, Darren encounters the White Lady again. She’ll head toward the castle and beckon for Darren to follow. Do so. Evidently she has smoothed a path for you: You’ll find the side gate open. 

You can’t go in the front door, as workers are boozing it up in the main hall. Make your way around to the right side of the castle — a garden unavailable to the player since the original TBM — and enter the double doors to find yourself in the ruined kitchen. 

You want to get back up to Victoria’s bedroom on the upper floor. But the staircase is in the main hall. You need to distract the workers — luring them out front way so you can sneak in the back. 

There’s a clue on the ground outside the kitchen door: a bit of fireworks-related trash. You’re going to cobble together a firecracker. The cardboard tube from the morgue’s trash bin will do for the vessel and the ammo from Phil’s desk would make a nice bang — if only you could get the gunpowder out of the bullets. 

The scalpel won’t do the trick — but it does elicit a suggestion that pliers would work. Did you wind up taking the pliers from the toolbox outside Darren’s hotel room? If so, you’re all set: Use it on the bullets to collect a little pile of black powder and then use the gunpowder on the paper tube. (In fact, you can do this at any point after you take the pliers.) In the castle kitchen, take the candle from beside the cupboard at the right, light it with the lighter and use the lit candle on the leaky tube to seal the ends with wax. (Open flame + gunpowder = something else not to try at home.) 

Now you’re missing only a fuse.Use the pack of dried-out cigarettes from the desk in the morgue on your little bomb. (If you didn’t collect that pack, you’ll find another on the kitchen floor to the right of the cellar door.)

Odds & ends: You can also try to use the candle on the evidence from Murray’s safe, the ammo and the cigarettes. (The last one produces a bizarre line from Darren.) 

A number of potential targets for your little bomb will turn red under the cursor, but only one is suitable: the right-hand lamp in the closeup view of the portico out front. Use the device there, scoot around to the kitchen again, click on the exit to the main hall and wait for the bang. (Darren says you have about two minutes, but in fact you have all the time you need; the firecracker won’t go off until Darren is in position.) 

The cracker fires, the workmen leave (eventually) and Darren automatically finds his way up to the upper floor. Try the door at the near left. Darren hides in Robert Gordon’s old study from TBM as the nurse heads downstairs and then automatically lets himself into Victoria’s bedroom

Talk to Victoria and run all the topics. You’ll cover a lot of ground here. Short form: She’s sold. She acknowledges Darren’s innocence and declares him her heir; lays out the legend of the White Lady (Mordred’s wife, Maria, looking for her lost child); speculates that the twin children (Darren and Angelina) jumbled-up the curse; and reveals that things are not quite lost and that there may be a way short of suicide to destroy Mordred. It involves the menhir stones around the castle grounds, a location “where everything began” and a book in an underground room. 

But Victoria is fading even as she describes this process — the diary entry “The Curse” puts it together for you — and she passes away before she can make herself clear.

Chapter III …

… opens with Victoria’s funeral service at the Warmhill church. The priest invites Darren to return if he needs help, Dr. Winterbottom sets up an appointment and Darren must endure a minor war of words with Inspector Spooner at the churchyard exit. For the moment, you can travel only back to the church, to Ralph’s shack and to the castle. (You won’t be able to venture south under your own power until after an accident at the castle.)  

Odds & ends: Father Frederick, still at the altar, can discuss the limits of Darren’s inheritance and establish that he doesn’t know anything about Miss Antolini (who, you will soon discover, has stepped off-stage). 

– You can try to combine Phil’s keys and your new set of castle keys in inventory. 

Head for the castle. Outside the gate, you’ll meet workers Greg and Steve — the same gents you decoyed out of the castle hall at the end of Chapter II. Apparently Victoria’s nurse, who was overseeing the restoration, has taken off without leaving instructions for them. They seem a little uncertain where their next paycheck is coming from. Darren assures them he’ll look into it. That’s your first task as new owner of Black Mirror.

Newly equipped with a castle key ring, you have pretty much the run of the place now and can visit most locations. The core is much as you found it in BM2 with several notable additions: the “tea room” (reached via the lower right corner of the main hall), the storage room at the top of the cellar stairs and the greenhouse out back. (The cellar itself will have to wait until Chapter VI.) 

However, as noted earlier, the upstairs is wholly different. You have free access to Victoria’s bedroom and her late son Robert’s former study — now a storage room for items rescued from the fire. (However, you won’t be able to get into the nurse’s bedroom — formerly father Samuel’s bedroom — until Chapter V.)  

And a couple of locations from the earlier games are missing. The stables area is pictured on the slip of paper that has been overlaid on the castle section of the walking map, but has no role in BM3. And access to the “old wing” from BM2 is now impassably blocked by renovation debris.

Odds & ends: The game offers confusing accounts on this part of the castle. In the lower left corner of the main hall, click on the “Rubble-filled passage” to learn that “The left wing of the castle has really collapsed now.” But in the full-frontal view of the castle, a click on the upper half of the left tower elicits the comment that, “You can hardly see any signs of the fire on the west wing.”

Show Greg the Money

Money-wise, things don’t look good on the surface. Jones isn’t up on UK estate law — though he does now know, two chapters late, who paid your bail — but Darren now has a business card from the notary, Dukes, who read Victoria’s will. You can call him using the phone at the right side of the castle library to learn (among other things) that there’s just 100 pounds in the family accounts. You can’t operate a castle, much less renovate a damaged one, on a shoestring. Something’s clearly missing.

Odds & ends: You can get the same basic financial info by asking Greg about “Miss Antolini.” To do so, you’ll have to first check out either the mess in the library (clicking either the pulled-out drawer or the piled-up books to the left) or try your new keyring on the locked upstairs bedroom, then ask Greg either about “Books” (for the library) or “Locked room” (for the bedroom) and finally about the sister. 

This route includes some speculation by Darren  how a purportedly silent Victoria could have authorized the castle renovation — and also permits you to ask Greg about “Treasure vault,” which topic you can then bounce off the notary. Dukes lightheartedly suggests cutting open mattresses. (There are indeed mattresses against the back wall of the upstairs storage room, but, alas, no mattress-cutting materials.) It’s actually the right idea — just the wrong location.

However, you can establish that large sums of money  have been floating around. The financial records are in the tea room. Search the desk and you’ll come up with bank statements and an empty envelope from the Vatican.  (More on this later.) The former reveals cash payments of 6,000 pounds every three months and that the account was virtually emptied recently by the nurse with Victoria’s agreement.
 
So where is it? The ruined castle seems rife with possibilities. Blocked wing. Locked room. Dark cellar. But in fact, the money is right under your nose in the tea room. (Note that the horse sculpture and the marble plinth below do not lose their interactivity.) However, it requires an ornate key to access and the trailhead for the path to the key is reasonably well hidden.

Odds & ends: A few things you can do while you explore the castle:

– After you’ve read the bank statements, you can check in with the notary again on that same topic. (He doesn’t tell you much.) 

– And don’t forget Madame Fortuna. She now urges Darren to “clear the way for the bear.” 

– The moldy stain on the wall above the desk remains interactive because it’s not addressed until Chapter VI. Two other mold issues will crop up before the end of this chapter. I’ll take up their meaning at that time.   
 
– In the upstairs storage room, click on the weapons high on the right wall to bring on a “Mordred moment.”

– In Victoria’s bedroom, Darren can open the jewelry box on the table at the right. He won’t detect anything unusual about it, and you won’t be able to take the box until Chapter VI.

– Click on the armchairs at the left side of the library and Darren will settle into the right one and briefly nod off.

– In the close-up view of the portico, click on the lamp where you set off the makeshift firecracker in Chapter II and Greg ventures it was broken by “those damn long-haired hippies from the next village.” 

– Look into the mailbox to the left of the small gate. You’ll extract a newspaper with a story about Darren’s inheritance — this vanishes after you’ve read it — and an envelope containing a third note. 

This note mentions “Guardian” for the first time (more on this in Chapter V), stresses the third virtue of mercifulness (the first two were apparently innocence and charity) and, unlike the first two, more mission-oriented notes, seems too nebulous to be useful. Mercy to whom? Phil? (Hasn’t that train already left the station?) The workmen? Madame Fortuna’s bears? This won’t become clear until the very end of the chapter.

Read the note a second time to unlock picture #18 — a promotional shot of Darren, Spooner and and Constable Zak.

– Darren says the grandfather clock in the tea room has stopped — but it’s visibly (and audibly) operating. (Once you’ve visited the tea room, you’ll be able to hear the tick-tock even out in the greenhouse!)

The Greenhouse

Nothing points you to the greenhouse at the rear of the castle, but once you’re there, it’s hard to ignore the incongruity of the Persian carpet in the middle. Peel it back to reveal a section of loose tiles. Remove the tiles to reveal a trapdoor. Open the trapdoor and Darren automatically looks down into what appears to be an old well. On a ledge, you’ll see a briefcase.

The ladder leaning against the “garden” side of the castle may seem the perfect instrument, but it isn’t appropriate to the task. (It comes into play in Chapter IV.) You’ll need to lower some kind of grapple. 

Odds & ends: The greenhouse has been moved from its location in TBM. There, it was down an alley on lower ground at the right side of the castle. Here, it’s just around back. In the castle garden — reached via the kitchen door or the right side of the frontal view — you’ll find the exit to the greenhouse exterior just right of the “strange tree.”

– You’ll find uses for the hose and bucket beside the greenhouse exit and the statue at the rear later in the chapter.

– Scare off the raven in the strange tree outside the kitchen door to unlock picture #2 and the one in the tree to the right of the greenhouse (close to the trunk about two-thirds of the way up) to unlock picture #1: an artist’s conception of a remodeled main hall. (Note the big-screen TV in the place of the central globe.) 

The wooden shaft leaning against the greenhouse’s left interior wall is long enough, but lacks a hook to snag the case. The “M” from the “Morgue” sign seems to be suitable for this purpose, but you haven’t a connector to fasten it to the shaft. The ideal item for this purpose — hose clips — can be found on the shelves at the top of the cellar stairs. Just use your new keys on the scorched door at the left side of the kitchen and enter. Use the clips on the wooden shaft and then the “M” on the shaft + clips. Back at the well, use your grapple on the case and it’s yours. 

Open it in inventory with a right-click. Within, a notebook kept by Henry Stanton — castle gardener and murder victim in the original TBM. Folks who played that game may recall that Henry had a penchant for creeping around the castle. This was explained at the time by thefts of wine from the cellar. (Hence, the wine bottle and presumably the 10-pound note in the briefcase.) 

But the notebook suggests a different motive. Apparently Henry was monitoring family activity in the tea room where you found the financial records. On this particular day, he notes that “Victoria forgets to close the horse again” and, later, “The key is hidden at old Dergham Gordon.”

Pay another visit to the tea room. There is indeed a horse over by the windows in the pose pictured in Stanton’s notebook. You’ll now be able to zoom in on the base by clicking on the marble plinth below. 

Interesting. Note the apparent L-shaped button at the near corner, the scuff marks to the left (which seem to suggest the statue has been moved) and the seven small holes along the right side. Evidently the statue slides to the left when the appropriate key is inserted in the holes and the button pushed.  

Now to the key. Who’s this Dergham fellow Henry mentions? Graduates of TBM will recall that Dergham was buried in a trapped tomb at the Wales estate of Eleanor and Richard Gordon. However, a return visit to that TBM/BM2 location is not in the offing. You’ll have to locate a reference to Dergham at Black Mirror.

A suitable starting point is the Gordon family tree at the right side of the library. Here you’ll establish that Dergham was married to Lillian. 

Darren doesn’t offer any suggestions for possible uses of this info. But check out Robert Gordon’s old study at the top of the stairs and click on the assembled paintings and you’ll find a portrait of Lillian dated 1662 and one from 1659 that Darren supposes might be Dergham. (The game is more conclusive. The front picture is now labeled “Dergham Gordon.”) 

Inspect this portrait for a closeup of the right side of the frame.  Left-click on the middle portion (“part of the frame”) to remove a loose piece with two metal pins sticking out. Then click on the cavity. Darren then establishes this piece wasn’t broken off, but deliberately sawed off, and that the cavity has seven small holes just like the base of the horse statue. 

In other words, the frame piece is the key.

Alas, an incomplete key. You can fit frame piece to statue base right now, but with only two pins for the seven holes, don’t expect much. 

You need additional pins. They’re all in one spot: the lunchbox beneath the scaffold at the front-right exterior corner of the castle. Click on it to take a package of toothpicks. 

And here’s a tricky part. You don’t use them on the frame piece or the statue holes, but on the seven holes in the frame cavity. Darren then notes that they can be inserted to different depths. Now use the frame piece on the toothpick-filled holes and Darren comes away with a copy of this odd key. 

Back at the close-up view of the statue, use “home-made key” on the seven holes, press the button (“suspicious spot”)  and the statue slides back to reveal a pantload of money … and, at the back, a letter. Take both. 

The money is enough to satisfy Greg. The letter is the Vatican connection suggested by the empty envelope found earlier. Drafted by Pope Innocent III in 1213, it’s a set of instructions for dealing with  five small and one large “shade” portals.  There’s also a reference to a menhir (standing stone) in the castle hall being hidden. Darren here mentally connects the portals with the menhir and proposes to map their locations. We’ll get to them in a moment.  

You can pay off the workmen now. Just head for the closeup of the portico and either talk to Greg about “money” or drag and drop the wad on him to turn over the cash. 

Odds & ends: Greg is lazy, but he’s a font of information about the state of the castle. 

For instance, if Darren has tried to descend the cellar stairs, Greg can explain (but not remedy) the lack of light therein. (You’ll deal with that issue yourself in Chapter VI.) 

If you’ve unsuccessfully used the castle keys on the passage at the rear of the upstairs hall, Greg will  reveal that was the nurse’s room. He has no idea where she’s gotten to and suggests you check with Father Frederick. (The priest has no real info about the missing lady — but he can speak to the Vatican letter. However, this is going to be a topic of interest in the near future, so no need for a special trip now.) 

In the library, if you click on either the pulled-out drawer or the books on the table, Greg can lay the mess at the nurse’s door. 

And if you click on the left-behind medical gear beside Victoria’s bed, he’ll venture (via “Medical equipment”) that the diocese will eventually turn up to claim it. 

More to come below.

– You can talk to Steve as well. He’ll explain his work and allude in the process to two items you’ll need to use later in the chapter. 

Putting Greg to Work …

Inevitably, you’ll notice Greg’s not working. Can you find something for him to do? Pull back to the full view of the front of the castle and left-click on the “Facade” hotspot around the two second-story windows to the right of the portico. Once you’ve paid off Greg, you can put this task forward in conversation (via “Renovate the facade”) and he won’t be able to nay-say it …

Odds & ends: … as he will the three other potential work sites. These include renovations to the kitchen (“Collapsed ceiling”), main hall (the “construction site” at the missing second-floor balustrade) and the tea room (the“Black stain” above the desk). You just have to have clicked on these (parenthetical) locations before taking them up with Greg. 

Once you’ve made the assignment, pull back to the full view of the castle and you’ll find Greg working near the portico’s right pillar. 

And now the phone should ring — Dr. Winterbottom summoning Darren to his hypnotherapy appointment — or the game will hit one of those odd lulls. 

If the latter, it’s waiting on you to interact with one particular location: the portrait of the White Lady above Victoria’s bed.  In a cut-scene, Darren touches it, a specter emerges from the canvas, a bloody patch blossoms above the lady’s left breast and Darren notes that there’s a black stain where his finger touched the portrait. (This event doesn’t have to wait for the lull. You can do this at any earlier point in the chapter.) 

Odds & ends: If you first touch the “White Lady” painting and then pay off Greg, Darren hears the phone ring in the library from outside the castle — despite the roar of Steve’s drill!

The therapy session elicits the previous memory of Angelina falling down a hole — but this time Darren peers in after her and seems to see a constellation in the darkness. He’ll draw it for the doctor — she doesn’t recognize it — and then take the paper with him. 

Odds & ends: Note that, though he’s running late, Darren nevertheless takes the time to change out of his funeral suit and back into his traditional jacket and boots before keeping his appointment.

… Apparently Means Putting Greg to Death

Leaving the office, you’ll run into Constable Zak, who reports a death on castle grounds. You’ll remove directly to the portico. Evidently the big stone skull fell off and killed Greg. A superstitious Steve quits, Darren heads into the main hall to answer Spooner’s questions, the inspector tries to pull his usual sarcastic number and this time Mordred emerges and scares him off.  

Odds & ends: At the end of Mordred’s second rant, the doorbell rings out at the gate. You’ve got still more mail: a letter from Murray. 

Despite his earlier offer of free lodging in perpetuity, Murray reminds Darren that he hasn’t turned in his hotel key and will be charged 100 pounds a day until he does. In other words, Murray has either had an attack of mercenary practicality — why offer anything for free to someone who can now pay for it? — or he’s discovered the hole in the wall of Darren’s hotel room. 

This sets up an optional return visit to the hotel — worth it only for Murray’s revelation that it was actually Phil who rescued Darren at Ralph’s shack, an extended rant from Mordred that ends with him debating whether to terrorize Tom, Matt Newcastle or poor Dorothy and the unlocking of picture #23. (Darren also surrenders his room key.) 

– Examine the fallen skull and Darren finds black mildew — i.e. the same stain from the “White Lady” painting and the tea-room wall. 

The game provides an official explanation for the stain deep in Chapter VI. I’ll speak to it at that time. For now, suffice to say I don’t find the answer particularly logical and prefer the one in Steve’s exit interview. (You can either voluntarily talk to Steve about “Accident” or he’ll speak to Darren automatically when he tries to enter the main hall.) 

He says the castle has a life of its own — that holes drilled one day would reappear the next. Admittedly, there’s been little independent support for this idea so far — then again, there’s been little opportunity — but this is the only one that covers all three mold-related incidents. The mold here would represent the “fingerprints” of a cursed house.

– You can take the cleaning supplies at the base of the right lamp as soon as you arrive at the portico — you’ll need them in the next segment — and the gas can  beside the drill after Steve leaves. (This comes into play toward the end of the chapter.)  

Mapping the Menhir

Your key task now is mapping the six standing stones around the Black Mirror property. In fact, you can start this task as soon as Darren returns to the castle following Victoria’s service, but you can’t map the fifth until Darren finds the pope’s letter and the sixth until after Greg has been killed. If you’ve waited until now to get started, you can map them in any order.

For starters, simply use the walking map on the four visible stones: the two in the garden at the right side of the castle; the one at the far left in the full view of the front; the one to the left of the front gate. 

Odds & ends: If you want to see what you’re doing,  use the pencil on the map.

You also know from the back of the Pope’s letter that a stone is hidden in the main hall. That can only be the foundation stone beneath the globe. Use the map there (on the the stone itself or the globe) as well.

And the sixth? Provided you’ve already mapped the first five sites, you can right-click on the “constellation” map from the hypnotherapy session and be pointed to the greenhouse as the likely site. The statue there is the only thing like a stone that remains. You just have to strip away its faux-marble disguise. 

In the close-up view of the portico, you’ll find the cleaner and brush that Greg was using on the castle facade before the falling skull bashed in his own. (It’s at the base of the same right-hand lamp you blew up earlier to get the workers’ attention.) Use the cleanser and then the walking map on the statue. 

If you’re playing with “Additional game help” enabled, the game now will give you a leg-up. If not, you may feel a bit stymied. 

Look at the diary. On the last page of the “The Menhirs” entry, Darren suggests the foundation stone is just the starting location. Use the pencil on the walking map to call up the non-travel version — i.e. the one with Darren’s annotations — and, with the foundation stone (the big cross mark) as the point of origin, draw five radiating lines, each passing through one of the other five menhir locations and typically extending to (or close to) the edge of the map.

Going clockwise around the compass, you’ll wind up with prospective portal sites in the swamp east-southeast of the castle, at the Academy, near the hotel, deep in the southwest woods and at the Warmhill church. 

Odds & ends: The mechanics of the line-drawing seem to elude some folks, so here are the details.

The game gives you on-screen targets for the first three sites — the black diamond inside a yellow square at the Academy and the pink icons for the Gordon’s Palace Hotel and the Warmhill church. End the lines on these locations.   

The other two — eastern swamp and southwestern woods — have no such targets and so are a bit trickier. End the swamp line on the tape at the right corner of the castle overlay and the woods line just above the words “White Woods” in the map’s southwest corner. 

– You can also connect the five menhir sites around the castle — omitting the foundation stone — and Darren will note that the shape matches that of the “constellation.” 

Portal, Portal … 

Initially, you can visit only three of the sites: at the Academy ruins, the Warmhill church and the hotel. These can be handled in any order.

Academy: From the castle, head south to “Crossing in the wood” and then head right onto the gravel path. Follow this to the lighthouse and then exit to the Academy via the icon near the top of the tree. (You can see the ruins in the distance.) 

Yikes. I wouldn’t have thought there was enough of the above-ground Academy still intact to collapse into a rubble pile this large. In any case, there is clearly no direct route to the portal Darren used in the BM2 endgame, but the visit to the surface site is nevertheless necessary — unless you already visited it earlier in the game, in which case you’ll automatically get credit after Darren draws the line to the Academy. On the map-with-pencil version of the walking map, Darren will mark it with a  “+.”

Odds & ends: At the lighthouse, shoo away the raven beneath the tree to unlock picture #22 (a conceptual drawing of a location we won’t visit until Chapter IV). And at the Academy, scare away the hard-to-spot one atop the broken pillar nearest the rubble heap at the right to unlock picture #20 — an artist’s rendering of the Dr. Winterbottom side of the village. (In this version, the cafe replaces the museum.)

– Since you’re down this way, you may feel inspired to look in on Phil. You can. (If you enter the morgue, you won’t have a choice.) 

Nasty surprise. That’s two deaths in just this chapter. What happened here? Darren can’t tell how Phil died. You only know from the open door (and possibly the intercom — now sabotaged if you didn’t do so yourself earlier) that someone  has been here.

Warmhill:  Enter the church, talk to Father Frederick about “Letter from the Vatican” and then ask about portals. He suspects there is one below the church. (This is what caused the collapse of Marcus Gordon’s tomb in TBM.) But that’s as far as you can take the issue. Presumably access to the portal was sealed off by the same collapse.

Odds & ends: If you’ve already visited the morgue, you can stop by Ralph’s shack in the woods en route to report Phil’s death — and learn that Phil had an as-yet unidentified accomplice. 

Hotel: Darren made clear when you plotted this line that the hotel itself wasn’t a serious candidate, but the path down to the river to the right proves more availing. You’ll find four menhir arranged in a rough square … in the middle of the river. Darren apparently doesn’t want to get his fatigues wet for he won’t get any closer.

Bobby has no such inhibitions. Then again, he appears to be wearing waders. Talk to him (or cut to the chase and just use Phil’s necklace on him). Seems he’s searching for pearls to make a necklace for Denise’s birthday. And you happen to have the nice necklace from the morgue. Offer it to him and he’ll take it and split — slipping back briefly to leave his waders on the bench.

Odds & ends: Or don’t offer the necklace, initially. Quit the conversation instead and you’ll get some unique (and funny) dialog.

– Try to use Murray’s camera on Bobby. Darren won’t take the shot, but the attempt does unlock mini-game #4: the Big Head Mode from BM2. Call it up in the “Extras” menus, click on “Start Mini-Game” and you’ll learn it’s been added to the game options. You can now turn the characters into giant-headed cartoon-like characters or pinheads.

Take the waders. Alas, they are no longer quite suitable as river wear, having a large rip at the crotch. You’ll have to close the hole before you can check out the stones.

Zap back to Willow Creek. The constable’s bicycle is right along the river where he left it when he escorted Darren back to the castle following Greg’s death. Activate it to swipe his repair kit — you can do this before you visit the river, too — and use the kit on the waders. Back at the river, right-click on the waders in inventory to put them on — other locations won’t work — and you’re ready for the water.

Click on the menhir. Approaching the stones, Darren spots something dark beneath the water, but can’t make it out clearly. Is there a diving mask around?

No, but you can cobble together its equivalent. (However, the components are at the far ends of the map and you’ll have to exit to the front of the hotel before you can activate the walking map.) 

Just left of the exit from the castle greenhouse is a ruined bucket with a rusted-out bottom. And just left of the right exit from the Warmhill vicarage garden is a pile of firewood — covered against the rain  by a door with a glass window. Remove the glass — it looks like the metal ball from the mirror puzzle in BM2 — and use it on the bucket to create a glass-bottomed bucket. Return to the riverside, install your waders and use the bucket on the “Dark place” just short of the menhirs. Darren sees steps leading down into the riverbed — blocked steps, as it happens, as the river’s natural turbulence has swept gravel into the hole.

Head back toward the hotel and Darren automatically leaves the waders and bucket behind.

Odds & ends: The “flotsam?” out in the river is the body of former cellmate Matt Newcastle. Click on it  to unlock video #21. 

Initially, you may be a little confused by this scene. Is it real or not? Initially, Darren reacts to the body with revulsion, but on a subsequent click it doesn’t seem to register at all. Then it’s just “flotsam!”

Note that this is called “Vision 4” in the “Extras” menu — an indication that what Darren is seeing isn’t in the here-and-now. 

– Then again, the game does give you reason to wonder about Matt’s fate. If you pass through the village square en route, Darren notices that Matt has made himself scarce. (You can ask the constable about him and learn he was in the pub the previous night.) That would presumably put him in close proximity to pub-owner Tom, whose dispute with Matt over living arrangements was revealed in Chapter II.

The grocery store remains closed. At the cafe, you’ll find Edward and Denise in unusual locations — the former behind the counter, the latter cleaning a table. And Dr. Winterbottom has a range of new topics in which she manages to contradict herself in the space of a few seconds. Darren’s medicine is working (“Vision”). No, it isn’t (“Portals”). 

Finally, you’ll notice that the museum to the right of the doctor’s office has finally reopened. 

This was a key location in BM2. Here, you don’t have to visit it at all. It’s just a monument to Murray’s tastelessness. You’ll note that: 

1) The Gordon Chronicle so instrumental in BM2 is now missing from its display case.

2) The broken display case at the left that once housed the black ball that Angelina used to open a portal in the BM2 endgame has been repaired. The ball has been replaced by a “diary of a murderer.” (Presumably, this is Samuel’s diary from The Black Mirror.) 

3) The “Black Museum” portion at the rear has been walled off — presumably to channel access through the front door after Darren’s rear-window escape in BM2 — and the vaguely animatronic displays moved into the main body of the museum. 

The console permits a minimal level of interactivity with the display. The rightmost button produces a geyser of blood from the Dr. Hermann figure, the second from the right makes Hermann struggle ineffectually as a saw descends on his neck, the third makes the Vic Valley figure fidget and the leftmost makes the flames flicker in the Black Mirror Castle display.

4) If you click on the donation box to the left of the door, Darren waves to an unseen camera.

5) And the security guard (replacing Bobby) is a clone of Constable Zak. You won’t know this until you see Zak’s face — he’s the Wilson of BM3 — and that won’t happen until Spooner suggests in Chapter IV that Zak take a little walk.

… Where’s the Portal?

The failure to find portals at the first three sites now opens up the last two locations: woods and swamp. This is where those two previously off-limits paths come into play.     

Swamp: From the “Crossing in the wood” east of Willow Creek, follow the right path toward the lighthouse and then the “beaten track” just beyond the barred entrance to the morgue road. You’ll find yourself in a low-lying marshy area. Any portal here would have been swallowed up long ago. But do take the metal detector just upscreen from Darren. You’ll need it soon enough and this will save you a trip.

Odds & ends: And do scare the raven out of the tree at the upper left to unlock picture #16 — an unusual double shot of Darren. 

– The animal bones at the right and the marsh at the upper left remain interactive after examination because you’re not done with them: These are clues for a sequence in Chapter IV, when clicking on these locations elicits different descriptions. 

Woods: This is the place.

From that same “crossing,” follow the left path. I know, it doesn’t seem like a logical location for this particular turn off — one along the road to the hotel would have been a more logical fit — but it is.  

You’ll quickly run into signs of trouble: The area’s posted for hunting, a bear trap is visible right in the middle of the path (you’ll recall Madame Fortuna’s admonition to “clear the way for the bears”) and, if you try to advance left to the next screen, Darren gives you a chance to change your mind. 

Odds & ends: Good idea: Darren will die if you persevere. Note that this unique death cut-scene does not appear among the “Extras” videos.

Constable Zak can offer some commentary on the bear trap. And you’ll notice that the darts have been temporarily taken out of Samuel’s picture on the side of the evidence cabinet — a (brief) harbinger of a newly respectful Spooner. 

Are these the boar traps to which gravedigger Mark alluded earlier in the game? (There’s just one letter difference between boar and bear.)

The aforementioned metal detector would be ideal. If you haven’t already collected it from the swamp, return to the crossing, follow the right path toward the lighthouse and, on the next screen, the “beaten track” that begins just above and to the right of the gate. Right in the middle of the depression is a metal detector. 

A broken metal detector, naturally. It needs a fresh battery and “something that you can use to receive electrical signals.”

You haven’t seen a battery, either. But remember Phil’s car back at the morgue? The hood has remained red under the cursor ever since it was used to bonk Darren on the head. Use his keys on the car to pop the hood (collecting in the process a third happy-face sticker), activate the “car bonnet” to take the battery and use the battery on the metal detector.

The electronics sounds as though it could be a dicier business, but you’ll recall that the morgue’s ground floor is kind of a one-stop-shop for electronic gear. Click on the “electrical junk” in front of the TV and Darren comes up with a transistor radio. Use this on the detector..

Naturally, returning to the morgue interior raises an additional issue: Phil has been locked in the cellar for awhile now. Try to leave and Darren proposes to check in on him. Head downstairs.

The cellar door is open and Phil lies dead on the dissecting table. You can’t do anything else for now — you don’t even have to confirm he’s dead — so make your way back to the woods. (The Phil issue will come up again in Chapter IV.) 

Odds & ends: Even if you didn’t sabotage the exterior intercom before you left the morgue in Chapter II, you’ll find it’s been sabotaged now — presumably by whoever did in Phil.

Use the refurbished detector on the left exit from the bear-trap screen and Darren tests the gadget on the visible trap (unless you’ve already done so on your own) and then automatically makes his way to the end of the path — marking traps with the three luminous stickers, which now vanish from inventory. (Was this a mini-game at some point in development? There’s not much purpose to an inventory item that you’re not permitted to use yourself!) 

Here you’ll find  a large central stone and more menhirs. This is where Darren’s father Samuel killed Vic Valley in the original TBM. 

You need to get through that rock. And where you seen a rock drill? Back at the castle: Steve was using one on the Black Mirror foundations to get at the water used to extinguish the fire. You’ll find it just left of the portico in the close-up view of the castle entrance. Out of gas, (of course), so take the empty gas can beside it.

If you inspected Phil’s car earlier, you know it still has some gas. You just need a suitable siphon. And, again, you’ve probably seen one: Right next to the busted bucket you found in the castle greenhouse is a hose. Take it and, returning to the old morgue, use either the can or hose on the “tank cap” at the rear of the car. You’ll be rewarded with a half-full container of gas. Return to the Black Mirror portico, use the tank on the drill, grab the drill and make for “stone circle in woods.” Use the drill on the stone and, over the next three hours, Darren will drill a row of holes across the center of the great stone — running out of gas three hours later with no clear progress to breaking down the rock. 

Odds & ends: Actually, you can fuel up and then take the rock driller almost as soon as Steve abandons it. Alas, there seems to be nowhere else you can use it — not even the rubble pile at the Academy.  

– Up until the drilling, Darren can insert the branch found at the base of the tree on the bear-trap screen into the hole beneath the left side of the rock. Your reward: a torrent of bats! This unlocks video #20. (The branch can also be used to test the left exit from the bear-trap screen and the trap itself.) 

A new diary entry appeals to Darren’s physics training. It’s not difficult to translate. It’s already cold — notice Darren’s frosty breath on this screen? — and water poured into the holes would freeze and, expanding, fracture the rock. You’ll need a vessel, the water itself and, looking ahead, something to plug the holes to channel the expansion in the most useful directions.

– Vessel: If you cleared out the old morgue earlier, you may already have this item: one of the clear plastic bottles to the left of the computer. (No, the pot on the stove in Black Mirror’s ruined kitchen won’t work. That’s drinkable water, and the game has other plans for the lingering interactivity of this item.) 

– Water: This can come from three locations. It’s night right now, so you can get it only from the fountain in front of the hotel and the “River” hotspot just right of the old pretzel stand in the village square. (However, if you collected the bottle earlier in the game, you can also fill it up during Chapter III’s daylight hours at the river landing below the hotel.) 

– Plug: A couple of things will work here: the aforementioned branch or the can of construction foam on the top shelf of the supply closet at the top of the castle’s cellar stairs. Use the water bottle and then the branch or can on the holes. You’ll have to wait for morning to see the results, so return to the castle.

Darren stops automatically at the gates. Bobby is resting here. He’s been beaten and kicked out by Tom — presumably (as it will develop) over the necklace Darren so charitably bestowed on him. You’ll have to offer him shelter in the castle and the hotel — the “mercy” in the Guardian note — to get a “Give Tom some straight talking” topic. Mordred then takes over and the scene shifts to the exterior of the Three Kegs Inn, with a drunk Tom talking to Denise and Spooner about the necklace.  (He claims he “lent it to a friend as a deposit.”) Tom accuses Darren of having killed Phil, Darren threatens Tom, Tom throws a punch and chapter ends.

Odds & ends: Is it possible that Tom is telling the truth? Was the necklace a deposit against Phil’s surveillance of  “the foreign woman”? Not likely. There’s no demonstrated link between the two. We’ll come back to this issue in Chapter VI.

Chapter IV

Darren’s recollection of young Angelina’s fall into the hole keeps evolving. In this recovered memory, he rejoins his twin sister at the bottom of a brick shaft to find her standing before what appears to be a portal — her face corrupted by evil. When he wakes in Dr. Winterbottom’s office, he’ll suggest Angelina must have been taken over by Mordred at an early age.

Spooning

You can’t just run off to check on the rock in the woods. The doctor receives a phone call summoning you to a meeting with Spooner at the cafe. You won’t be able to leave Willow Creek until you attend …

Odds & ends: … and there really aren’t any detailed distractions in other locations. You can visit the police station and find the constable over by the copy machine and the darts back in Samuel Gordon’s photo. The grocery is open for the first time since Chapter I — the better to serve Darren later in the chapter. (Abaya is still scared witless.) And two tourists are checking out the lighthouse display in the museum. (A little down the road, you’ll be able to talk to them.) 

Enter the cafe as Denise leaves with a rather forlorn “Hi, Adrian.” (We’ll sort out the forlornness later in the chapter.) Spooner’s at the back. Talk to him. He’ll fill in the gap after Tom’s punch. And he seems to be softening: Spooner asks for Darren’s help on the Phil situation and the two remove automatically to the old morgue. 

The Morgue

The house is now locked — it wasn’t if Darren visited earlier on his own — so use Phil’s keyring on the front door and the two automatically enter to find the secret stash of torture videos has been cleaned out, but that the one Darren played in Chapter II remains in the VCR. 

Odds & ends: In the morgue interior, use the “Space Attack” disc on the computer to elicit a unique line from Spooner.

Lead Spooner downstairs to find that Phil’s body is now missing — and that the inspector as a result is more suspicious of Darren. Happily, the corpse Darren had to climb over earlier is still on a stretcher in the cold compartments in the rear wall. Pull out the  “Chilled compartment with corpse” drawer to show Spooner and he’s convinced. The two automatically return upstairs en route to the police station and walk straight into Tom. Spooked, Tom flees the building — they call that “consciousness of guilt” — with the inspector in hot pursuit and you can finally head to the southwestern woods to inspect Darren’s handiwork at the stone circle.

Odds & ends:But you don’t have to go there directly. You can also:

– place your Chapter IV phone call to Madame Fortuna , who advises Darren to “stay away from heights.”
    
– revisit the swamp. Something’s changed. Right in the middle of the scene is a little pile of stones where there were no stones before. Wedged between the stones, an envelope addressed to“Adrian Gordon.” Within, another nebulous note — this one on the virtue of hope — with no clues (beyond its location, which will soon blossom).

Read the note twice to unlock picture #17 — a promotional shot of Darren being dragged into the Black Mirror. 

– Finally, the whole business with Phil and Tom invites some reflection. It would seem that the two used the old Hermann place as a hub for various criminal activities.

On Ralph: Check the diary. Phil found the videos of the sadistic experiments conducted at the asylum by Hermann and Robert Gordon and, unlikely as it sounds, decided to keep it going — making poor Ralph a victim all over again.    

On the necklace: No hard info until Chapter VI. But in context with BM2, it appears Tom was behind the Ipswich burglary referenced in the newspaper article in Murray’s cache of blackmail material. (In BM2, Tom was revealed as a burglar.) If the claimed “deposit” does’t hold water, a logical inference is that Phil was holding the necklace either to fence or simply for protection should Tom get nabbed.

On the mouldering body in the morgue drawer: It’s never made clear what was going on here — beyond producing convenient exculpatory evidence for Darren. (The body dates from the period when he was behind bars.)     

Phil’s body: Ditto. 

Who killed Phil? Is this Mordred’s work? No. Mordred rants and raves a lot in BM3 but, compared to his antics in the original TBM, he’s short on action. It’s far more likely that Tom went looking for his necklace, got into a dispute with the recovered Phil and did Phil in himself. (Tom has rage issues.)   

And Matt? Inconclusive. He’s probably just off-stage at the moment. That “flotsam?” scene in the river was a vision. These seem to have little connection to reality and fall more into the category of “dark imaginings.” (Then again, Matt was staying with Tom, Tom wasn’t happy about it and Tom has a demonstrated tendency to fall back on violence when he’s unhappy.)    

Following Up

You’ll arrive at the stone circle to find the rock split in two. Beneath, stairs leading down to a portal. However, a deep chasm prevents Darren from getting close enough to inspect in detail this gateway or the stone tablet and pedestal nearby.  

Odds & ends: This chasm is the “heights” that Madame Fortuna foresaw. In other words, don’t try to jump it. If Darren left-clicks on the chasm five times, he’ll try — and die.

– If you’ve already collected the extension cord from the storage room at the top of the castle’s cellar stairs, you can also try to use it (a la Indiana Jones’s whip) on the roots above the chasm.

Look at the chasm. This allows you to take the folding ladder behind the near menhir at the right side of the castle. Do so and you’ll automatically reappear in the portal chamber with the ladder now serving as bridge. 

Odds & ends: You can also try to use the one in the storage room at the top of the cellar stairs and learn it’s too short. 

You’ll quickly identify a couple of issues: You can’t interpret the hieroglyphics on the tablet (though Darren’s uneducated guess seems pretty on-target). And you don’t have a black ball required to open the portal. Angelina stole one from the museum in Willow Creek and quietly picked up another in the summoning chamber in the BM2 endgame, but it went into the firepit with her and Darren’s mother.

As you may have guessed, the one leads to the other. Click on the tablet a couple of times and Darren suggests making a copy. Use either the camera or the pencil on the tablet and it’s done. 

Translations

You can now ask far and wide about the symbols. Father Frederick, Mark (now in the graveyard), Spooner (back in the police station after failing to catch Tom), Dr. Winterbottom, Edward and even the two tourists at the museum have the “Hieroglyphics” topic (and the “Black ball” one, if you also clicked on the pedestal beside the tablet).

Odds & ends: The museum tourists, now talking, think Darren is a “Darren Michaels lookalike.” They speak mostly English, but their dialog is inter-cut with Russian. 

“Spasiba” means “thank you,” “otlichno” means “great,” “otschen krasiwui” “very nice” and “Junosha” “young man.” “Vot taka ja chuin ja” should appear as “Wot takaja chuinja,” which translates as “This is such garbage.”

I couldn’t find a translation for “Gosslodi,” but, after online consultation with the husband of a fluent Russian speaker, I’m betting they meant to use“Gospodi,” which means roughly “Oh, lord.” 

– If you visit the museum before you talk to Dr. Winterbottom about “Black ball,” Darren will have some additional dialog.

Edward’s your man here. Once he’s done telling you about his split with Denise, ask him about the hieroglyphics. He’ll link them to a local burial mound that was excavated some years back with the late Miss Valley’s help and eventually suggest that more black balls like the one that vanished with Angelina might be found within. (Per Dr. Winterbottom’s suggestion, he’ll also volunteer to serve as your butler, and will pay a visit to the castle the next day to discuss the matter.)

Odds & ends: You can also get a nudge toward Edward from Dr. Winterbottom (who turns over a book on Egyptian hieroglyphics) and from Edward’s museum pamphlets — found on the counter just inside the door. (You’ll have to use the book on the copy of the hieroglyphics or vice-versa to discover a note from Edward at the back.) 

Burial Mound

So where is this mound? You can run around talking to everyone but the Russian tourists on this same subject, but it’s the wrong approach. 

Odds & ends: However, it does have benefits. Talk to gravedigger Mark about “Burial mounds” to unlock picture #14 — the splash screen (also used as the scrolling backdrop for the credits) of a torch-bearing Darren standing before the Black Mirror.

Edward fleetingly mentioned Miss Valley’s involvement in the excavation. She’s the key. Our only connection to her in BM3 has been through Spooner. In the introduction, we saw him examining the murder location and then searching her house.

Can you get in there? You can. While apparently off-screen across the right of the two bridges in the full view of the village square (judging from Darren’s location on exit), the house has no existence within the broader game world. You can get to it only at this particular juncture and only by talking first to Spooner and then the constable about “Miss Valley’s house.” Zak then lets you into the parlor and watches while you search.

Look at the bookcase at the left and Darren extracts a folder. Right-click on it in inventory to read two pages of Miss Valley’s report. You’re supposed to underline three words or phrases that hint at the tomb’s location: “sector I3” in the second line of the first paragraph on the left page; “small animal bones” in the second-to-last line on the right page; and “marsh land.” on the last line. 

But something in the underlining scheme seems to be boned. The game won’t recognize a correct answer for the sector, adds an extra word on bones (“from”) and accepts a wrong answer (“land”) for marsh .
 
No patch to date, but the game does permit an easy workaround. If you’re playing with “Additional game help” enabled, just right-click on the document in inventory to open it and wait about two minutes. A little lever then appears in the right page’s lower right corner. Click on it to skip the puzzle. If playing without this option, call up the main menu, select “Options,” then “Game” at the top of the screen and then “Additional game help.” Save this new configuration, return to the game, open the document, wait for the lever to appear and click on it. Darren then reads back the three clues. 

You’ll need to clear up a loose end before you can leave. Miss Valley was the Order’s operations chief and as such the likely author of the scrap of a note you found in Ralph’s shack back in Chapter I. Was it written here? 

Yup. Take a page from the notebook at the foot of the stairs and use the pencil on it. The result is a somewhat longer version that confirms Darren’s earlier supposition about the Order disbanding if something went amiss. 

When done, talk to the constable or click on the door. Zak tells you to return the folder to its place, Darren automatically does so and you’ll find yourself back in the village square.

Odds & ends: The original tattered slip of paper vanished with the Order cowl between chapters I and II, so I’ve included screenshots of each above. 

While each version fills in blanks in the other (and they’re clearly from the same loose-leaf binder), they don’t fit together that well. Lines from Version 2 are missing entirely from Version 1. 

Conceivably the line-by-line correspondence is better in the original German. Or maybe they weren’t supposed to sync.  I suspect that, being that the terser Version 1 was found with a locked-up Order cowl, that’s the one that went out to members and that Version 2  from Miss Valley’s place is a longer rough draft. 

Here’s my take on an unexpurgated Version 2. Words in brackets [ ] are guesses at the empty stretches.

“In case we are unable to stop 
[the progress of] the evil [spirit,]
we fail in our goal and the Order never existed. 
[Though we fed the beast with the one life]
already sacrificed, that was never my intention.
If the cursed one [should achieve] his objective or
something happens to me, then 
[hide your cowls and this note. The authorities] 
can’t be allowed to find any trace that 
might lead to us!”

Line 3 should really read something like, “we must act as though the Order never existed.”

– You can use the lump of coal you’ll find over on the hearth in lieu of the pencil.

Now you’re ready to find the burial mound. Conveniently, the “I3” referenced in Miss Valley’s folder is the coordinate for a location on your walking map and you’ve already been there. The marshy section can be found just right of the “bridge” in the upper-left corner and the bones are over to the right. And the “beaten track” now extends farther to the right. Follow it and there’s your burial mound. 

Enter the tomb and click on any three of the five hotspots (not counting the small stones to the left) and Darren laments his inability to bring out Mordred on cue — attributing this to his medication and suggesting a cautious approach to Dr. Winterbottom on ways to mitigate its effects. Return to Willow Creek and talk to her about “Effect of the medication” and Darren spins an artful lie. Turns out antacids, coffee and certain teas diminish the impact of Haloperidox. You’ll need to collect all three.

Odds & ends: From the actual evidence, Mordred’s appearances and non-appearances don’t have much to do with the Haloperidox. After all, he’s not a true mental imbalance but a second soul — surfacing whenever his host feels strong emotions or deals with potential weapons.

Antacid: You can get one from Abaya at the little grocery store in the square — she’s still so scared that she’ll let Darren skate on the prescription — by simply asking about “Heartburn.”

Coffee: Edward at the cafe will sell you a packet of a strong Colombian blend. 

Tea: You may have noticed earlier that the shop sells tea. Abaya doesn’t have either of these two teas in stock. But bounce back to the castle greenhouse and collect the dried-out “Tumulus Valerian” plant to the left of the well. (Note Darren mentions burning it rather than brewing.) 

Odds & ends: Apparently a made-up name. (A “tumulus” is a burial mound.) However, Valeriana Wallrothii (how the plant is referred to earlier in the game) is an actual plant.
 
You’ll need to make one more stop. You can’t make coffee without a vessel of some kind, so drop into the castle kitchen to collect the pot from the stove — water is added automatically — and, if you don’t have issues with taking items before they’re strictly needed, the roll of plastic sheeting in the main hall. (It’s above and right of the central globe.) This’ll save you an extra trip.

You’ll have to build a campfire in the tomb. Return to the marsh, reenter the mound, activate the small stones to the left to build a “Fireplace” and use the dry twigs to the left of the tomb entrance in the exterior view on the ring of stones. Use the lighter on the twigs to get a fire going and place the kitchen pot on the flame. 

And the rest can be done in any order: coffee on pot, antacid on pot and Valerian plant on the fire beneath. Only the last of these doesn’t work: The smoke doesn’t gather in the enclosure as intended but escapes out the exit. You’ll need to seal this. Once again, the work-in-progress castle proves the source of appropriate supplies: the aforementioned plastic sheeting in the main hall. Use this on the tomb entrance in the exterior view, then enter, use the Valerian on the fire (not the pot) and activate the pot to drink up your antacid-laced coffee. 

A Mordred moment and vision of a burial ceremony quickly follow and  Darren comes out of it knowing that a black ball was buried in a wall: the new hotspot (“Black mould”) between the left burial alcove and the exit. Just reach into it to claim the black ball.

Odds & ends: There’s no clear relationship to the appearances of mould back at the castle.   

Darren Plays Portal

Back at the portal, use the ball on the holder and step through the fiery circle to reach the “slab” chamber under the Academy — the site of much of BM2’s endgame. 

The portal vanishes. For the moment, Darren is stuck here. 

A click on the portal establishes that this is your way out, so there has to be another black ball here somewhere. Click twice on the rocks blocking the stairs downscreen to ascertain that the body of an Order member is entombed here. This adds two hotspots (“Gaps”) to the left and right. Efforts to reach into these will establish it’s too dark to see inside, so cut to the chase. The lighter won’t work here, but use Murray’s camera on either gap to take a picture of a dead hand holding a black ball. 

Darren wants a stick to poke the ball out the other gap. There’s nothing like that down here. But keep poking Louis’s body after Darren asks for the stick and he’ll, uh, improvise — breaking off Louis’s dead arm. The gardener finally makes himself useful. Use this on either gap and the ball becomes accessible from the other. Use the ball on the holder beside the portal and step through into the ritual chamber.

There’s little to do save read twice from the book on the central lectern for Mordred to take over Darren entirely. 

He’ll take the book, adjust a black ball in the five holders at the left to engineer an exit via the portal under the southwestern woods and, followed by two hell hounds, march toward the castle. At the fork just short of the gates, Mordred is intercepted by the ghost of murdered spouse Maria, who accuses him of having killed their son Damian. (What else would he be called?) She enters Darren’s body … 

Odds & ends: The two phrases spoken in the ritual chamber — “Zodocare Busadire” and “Amena Vei Busadire” — appear to be from the so-called “Enochian” language that appeared in the journals of Welch scholar John Dee in the 16th century. Operating under the assumption that this isn’t just sinister-sounding gibberish, I tried to piece together a rough translation from online dictionaries. 

“Zodocare” is related to movement and change and “Busadire” means “glory.” Hence, being that this is a summoning chamber, “Zodocare Busadire” could mean something like “Assume your rightful place.” 

“Amena  Vei Busadire” is trickier. As far as I can tell, “Amena” and “Vei” aren’t Enochian words. However, the former is close to “Amema” which means “curse” or “cursed” and as such would fit well into the Gordon mythology. Possibly, “Their curse is your glory”?  

Chapter V

… and must somehow diminish Mordred’s influence, for when Darren comes around in the castle, he’s himself again — save for those black eyes.

Honestly, this sequence didn’t deserve to be broken out into its own chapter. It’s essentially a long cut-scene with only the most nominal adventure-game elements and the environment here is so pared-down that solving these is beyond easy. 

Darren finds himself in an unfamiliar bedroom — the one he was unable to unlock earlier in the game. (Someone has purportedly kicked in the door — though it actually appears to have been kicked out.)

Odds & ends: It’s never established exactly how Darren returned to the castle. Being that she unlocked an electronic gate for Darren back in Chapter II, kicking in doors doesn’t seem a likely activity for ghostly Maria.  

On the plus side, Darren now has Mordred’s book from the ritual chamber. (It’s on the desk.) Have a look at it to ignite a brief Mordred moment and discover it’s blank. Recalling his experiences at the end of BM2, Darren now proposes to bleed onto the book to expose the text. You can either left-click on the book twice or do so once and then collect one of the glass shards on the floor beside the chair. Darren then automatically uses one to cut his hand. 

When this doesn’t work to his satisfaction — it allows him to read only one ritual — Darren decides to follow father Samuel in suicide. He’s already atop the tower — how did he get up there, anyway? — when interrupted by the ultra-timely return of the nurse, now revealed to be a Vatican agent. 

Automatic and then effectively automatic conversation with same, explaining the relationship of the Gordons to the Black Mirror and the “Guardian” role alluded to in the anonymous notes; transfer to Darren’s inventory of the “Book of the Guardians” Valentina found in castle library; removal to Warmhill; chat with exorcism-novice Father Frederick; and a new mission. Darren is to find some of Mordred’s belongings and some information about one of his sins.  

Not much of a challenge. For starters, you’re locked out of Ralph’s shack and the whole southern part of the map — it wouldn’t do to show up in Willow Creek with black eyes (though it might have been fun; imagine Dorothy’s reaction to Darren-as-hellspawn) — and you just need one item (Mordred’s book) of which you already know the location and some info from another (Book of the Guardians) that you now have in inventory.

Return to the castle to be stopped at the gate by prospective butler Edward. Talk to him about “Edward” to have him deliver to Spooner the Louis-Angelina correspondence found in the ruined Academy.  

In the castle, head up to the nurse’s old bedroom, take Mordred’s book from the desk at the left and right-click on the “Book of the Guardians” in inventory to learn about the circumstances of Maria’s death. 

Back at the Warmhill church, enter by the side door. If you’ve done everything required, you’ll find Father Frederick and Valentina have moved to the altar. Either use Mordred’s book on the priest or talk to him about it to pass it along and use the “Mordred’s wife” topic to pass along what you’ve learned about Maria’s death. 

Now the ritual can proceed. It does not go well. Father Frederick winds up dead. But before the father dies, he tells Valentina, “It’s … it’s the wrong place. There’s nowhere for him to go here.”

Odds & ends: The note on the desk is the last of the five anonymous ones. Focusing on the virtue of faith, it’s about as useless as its two predecessors in terms of clues. However, take it anyway and read it twice to unlock picture #15 — a cast shot that includes most of the major players. (Edward and Constable Zak are notable exceptions.)

– And while you won’t be using it until Chapter VI, it’s not a bad idea to collect the rope that’s purportedly hanging in front of the window. (Click on the curtain to take it.) Darren can then use this on Valentina for a funny line. 

– The “Edward” topic sends the would-be butler off on the errand, so use the “Black eyes” topic first if you want to hear everything he has to say.  

– You can call Madame Fortuna to learn that “death will touch you” — or maybe not. And this is your last chance to catch up with the lawyer and notary on any missed topics. (Their business cards vanish in Chapter VI.) 

– New responses when you click on the family tree at the right side of the library and the mattresses against the rear wall of the study upstairs.

– Be sure to read Darren’s scratched-out suicide note in the diary (“To the finder of this book”).

– Finally, one of the game’s minor mysteries is cleared up: the lingering red cursor for the vicarage door. Return to the vicarage yard with Mordred’s book in hand and having read the passage from the Book of Guardians and try the door again to get a different response.