Black Mirror III: Final Fear – A Game Guide

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.