Black Mirror Walkthrough by Peter Olafson

The report doesn’t
exist — you won’t find it in the morgue or anywhere else —
and the issue is then abandoned at an active point of investigation.

But it’s not
the last time we’ll hear about burns. A burned plant turns up
in Chapter IV at the scene of the third murder. (And, no, it’s
not explained then, either!)

Like Bates, Dr. Hermann
picks up a couple of extra topics as you explore the house. Once you
assemble the torn-up photo from the old wing’s fireplace (see “The
old wing” section below), you can ask after the man pictured.
(Hermann can’t identify him. You’ll learn later from Victoria
that the doctor is a relative newcomer to this strange neighborhood).
And once you’ve spoken with Victoria about the key to William’s
study,the doctor agrees to arrange delivery of a parcel of William’s
belongings that opens up a puzzle in the library.

Hermann vanishes from the
library after you head to Willow Creek. His basement morgue will be
a regular stop in chapters II, IV and V.

You’ll want to poke around
a bit in this large room’s three sections. On the left side of the
middle one, you’ll see a round table. The scroll in the middle is
a map. Later in the chapter, this map provides access to the village
of Willow Creek and the Warmhill church and, in later chapters, to
a range of other locations: Hermann’s house in Chapter II and
the Stonering site, the Ashburry asylum and the Sharp Edge lighthouse
in Chapter IV. (The Old Mine also appears on the map in Chapter IV,
but you can’t travel to it. You can reach this location only
in Chapter II and then only through the secret tomb beneath the Warmhill
church.)

Right now, the map has
just one purpose: a shortcut to spare yourself some room-to-room clicking.
Wherever you are on the estate, clicking on the house takes you back
to the main hall — as though you’d just entered through the front
door. (Click on the grounds in front of the mansion and it takes you
to a position just outside the main gate).

Bear in mind that using
the map requires a right click and a left click. Hence, it’s
most efficient when Samuel’s at the far ends of the estate:
the attic outside William’s study (a walk and then four double-clicks
from the main hall when moving room-to-room) and inside the greenhouse
(five double-clicks from the main hall).

Also have a look at the
globe to the left of the world map on the right side of the library’s
mid-section. On closer inspection, you’ll see the top has been raised
to reveal a model of the solar system and that “it seems like
something’s missing here …” This is a significant puzzle
later in the chapter — it conceals the key to William’s study
— but you can’t do anything with it now.

Finally, check out William’s
work table at the rear. The big book here — the chronicle of the
Warmhill manor — doesn’t contain any information critical to our
story, but does contains a number of interesting nuggets.

1) “It is thought
that Marcus [Gordon] had the [Warmhill] church built on pagan lands,
where many innocent people died through the ages.” The chronicle
goes on play down this belief, but this reference nevertheless appears
to set the stage for a spooky story you’ll hear from the church’s
grave-digger near the end of the chapter.

2) Lest you confuse him
with his evil brother Mordred, the chronicle establishes Marcus as
forward-thinking good guy — being that he built both the Warmhill
church and the Academy at Black Mirror. (And no, you won’t find
any signs of the Academy or its library in the game.)

3) Finally, the book foreshadows
the importance of the Warmhill church as a source of information on
the Gordon family’s early history. That comes into play in chapters
II and V.

You’ll use a hidden
button on the table later in the chapter.

At the left side of the
rear part of the library is a black statue of a person holding a key
or amulet. This foreshadow events in chapters III and VI, when amulets
serve as keys to Dergham Gordon’s tomb and a key chamber in
the Black Mirror catacombs.

The Rembrandt-like picture
on the far wall in the library’s entry area is Jeremy Gordon.
(A duplicate can be found to the left of the fireplace in the old
wing.) Click on it and Samuel identifies him as William’s father.
You’ll find his crypt to the right of William’s grave
in the rear portion of the Warmhill church’s graveyard and he’s
apparently the author of the chronicle on the work table.

Odds & ends: How’s
that now? The chronicle ends: “Recorded by the hand of Jeremy
Gordon 1632 A.D.” William was born in 1903. If Jeremy is William’s
father, he was around 300 years old when his son was born. We’ll
give the designers a break and assume there were either two Jeremy
Gordons … or Samuel needs to take a headache pill.

Other hotspots: In
the front section, the shelves flanking the library entrance and the
scrolls beside the chair in the foreground. In the middle section,
the chest to the right of the table where you found the game map,
the 16th century world map and the central bookcase (located at the
rear of the library, but view-able only from the middle section).
In the rear section: both bookcases and the drawers in the lower right-hand
bookcase.

Non-hotspots: The two
clocks — one atop the drawers behind the work table, the other below
Jeremy’s portrait — aren’t interactive, but you’ll
hear one or the other of them ticking faintly as long as you remain
the library. The first time you enter the rear section, they’ll
both chime twice in close sequence.

And check out the horned
helmet above the drawers in the right-hand shelves. This is another
example of foreshadowing. You’ll find its twin — and a sword
matching the one on the wall beside the fireplace in the main hall
— in the castle catacombs in Chapter VI.

Dining room:
Located through the left of the two doors at your starting position,
it’s mostly a pass-through location — scenery on the way to somewhere
else. However, look at the bowl on the table beside the window and
you’ll see a few pieces of candy scattered among the apples. Take
them. You’ll use them a little later in the chapter to bribe the child
Vick in Willow Creek.

The two doors at the rear
put you in the rear garden (left) and the kitchen (right).

Other hotspots: the
middle chair on the left side of the table and the Buddha figurine
and broken clock on the mantel.

The kitchen:
The only items of interest here are the attic and cellar keys, which
are hanging on hooks to the right of the cellar door.

For what I suspect are
technical reasons, while both keys are visible on the screen, only
one is accessible for viewing or taking at any given time. In this
chapter, you can identify the cellar key until Bates tells you the
attic key is at the same location.

Bates moves to the kitchen
in later encounters. The rear door takes you out onto the castle’s
right lawn (here called "the right wing") and the near right
door into the dining room.

Odds & ends: Bates
makes a point of mentioning he’ll need to visit the attic later
in the day and reminding you to return the key.

Return it, don’t
return it. It doesn’t seem to matter. If you hang onto it, this
key will vanish from your inventory and be restored to its place beside
the cellar door when the chapter ends. Bates comment is really just
more foreshadowing. He’ll find Samuel in the attic when he faints
after leaving Williams’ study.

Note that you can also
try to use the attic key on the cellar door. It glows encouragingly
— typically an indication you’re using the right item in the
right spot — but Samuel then says it’s the “roof key”
and won’t work here.

Other hotspots: the
vase beside the keys, the stove around the corner to the right (and
that’s a hard one to spot), the decorative spice-grinder beside
the exterior door. the servants’ dining table in the far corner
and the cabinet on the right side of the screen and the drawer therein.

The
Second Floor

From your
starting position, just drop down a screen and climb the stairs.

Top of the stairs:
Mainly a junction point. The archway straight ahead takes you to the
family’s rooms and a right turn along the balustrade to the
balcony, old wing and attic.

Odds & ends: Check
out the end of the left balustrade and you’ll find a door icon
for “upper floor.” Like the child’s room beside Samuel’s
bedroom and the ground-floor section of the old wing, this location
doesn’t actually exist. Try to go there and you’ll learn that
the corridor is lined with empty chambers. This makes up in a small
way for the significant disparity between the exterior view of the
castle (in which the castle appears huge) and the comparatively small
area that can actually be explored.

Other hotspots: the
chest of drawers.

Hallway:
This two-segment looping hallway (located through the archway at the
head of the stairs) gives access to the family’s rooms: Robert’s study
in front, Victoria’s bedroom to the left and Samuel’s bedroom to the
rear.

Look at the magazine rack
beside Robert’s door. The newspaper here contains a note to Robert
from an H.H. (clearly the family doctor, Heinz Hermann; it’s
read in his voice) that suggests the two doctors are conspiring in
some illicit activity.

“I will take
care of your ‘parcel’ as usual,” Hermann writes.
“Fortunately, no one cares about anything in this godforsaken
place.”

The note also references
a drunken messenger named Mark. You’ll meet him at the end of
the chapter and again in Chapter II, when you’ll enlist him
to create a timely diversion at Hermann’s morgue and make a
key.

You can’t bounce this note
or a companion note found in Hermann’s trash in Chapter II off
either Dr. Robert or Dr. Hermann … and you won’t begin to get to
the bottom of their plot until you reach Ashburry in Chapter IV (though
you’ll find horrific evidence of Hermann’s complicity in Chapter II).

Other hotspots: In
the front section: the picture at the corner (the wife of the otherwise-unmentioned
Thobias Gordon) and an apparent meal-warmer on the table below. In
the rear section: the clock in the lower left corner, the table and
chairs and the far end of the hall, the picture on the wall above
them, the right-hand of the two large paintings on the right wall
… and the door on the right side of the screen. Ostensibly, this
leads to what was once a child’s room. Click on it and Samuel says
the walls are now bare and that it isn’t worth a visit.

Robert’s study:
You don’t need Hermann’s note to establish that, as mentioned
by Bates, Robert is acting strangely. It’s been 12 years since he
and his nephew saw each other last, but, when you knock, he doesn’t
invite you inside. He talks to you through a crack in the door. The
man has something to hide.

Initially, you can speak
with Robert about William, the castle and "what’s new."

Robert doesn’t seem taken
aback by (or even wholly aware of) the odd circumstances accompanying
William’s death. He accepts it as a suicide — a not-unreasonable
conclusion for someone who hasn’t seen the introduction — and suggests
Samuel is “jumping to conclusions.”

"You don’t happen
to think it was murder, do you?" Robert asks. "William was
alone in the tower when it happened and door was locked from the inside.
So a stranger’s intervention is impossible."

You may feel inclined to
put Robert’s secrecy, his extended absences, the note in the newspaper
and William’s death together. And the first three do go together.

But not the last. Robert’s
preoccupied with another matter. He will eventually be revealed as
a Very Bad Man, all right, but he’s not responsible for his father’s
death.

The “Black Mirror”
topic raises the issue of the castle’s state of disrepair and provides
a spooky tale of failed repair attempts in the old wing. "The
new structure never lasted more than couple of years," Robert
says. "It is as though the old stones do not want to accept the
new ones."

This is foreshadowing of
the family curse you’ll learn about at the end of this chapter and
in Chapter II. The will of Gordons past seems to exert an influence
in the world of Gordons present.

Robert accrues a slew of
additional topics as you perform tasks or talk to other members of
the household and staff. If you: a) talk to Bates about Robert’s not
wanting the servant in his office, b) reassemble the torn-up photo
from the old wing’s fireplace, c) reassemble the photo and run it
by Robert and Victoria, d) retrieve your camera from your dresser
drawer, e) try to open Robert’s chest (whether or not you know it
to be Robert’s at the time), f) retrieve the film within, g)
take a picture of the symbol on the castle wall, h) talk first to
the gardener Henry and then to groom Morris about Henry or i) talk
to Henry, then to Morris about Henry and then to Victoria about Henry
(with a "positive" reply) …

…. Robert can: a) offer
the rather thin excuse that he doesn’t want to be bothered by Bates’s
"servility," b) assert that he doesn’t know the man — matter-of-factly
if you make a “negative” response to his return question
and perhaps protesting too much if you take a “positive”
tone, c) confirm the photo resembles one of his patients, d) indicate
there’s usable film in his chest in the attic, e) give you the chest
key, f) accept his chest key back, g) refer you to Murray’s
Pawn Shop in Willow Creek to have your film developed, h) briefly
discuss the feud between Henry and Morris and Henry’s boozing or i)
speculate that Victoria doesn’t like Morris because he is "so
common."

Only b) through e) are
necessary to make progress in the game.

Victoria’s room:
You never actually get inside, but, in Chapter V, Victoria will talk
to you through a crack in the door. (Apparently the Gordons are paranoid
about people seeing their stuff.) Most of your interactions with Victoria
take place elsewhere: the common room in Chapter I and the main hall
in Chapter II. Right now, a click on the door just gets you a reminder
that your grandmother is down in the common room.

Samuel’s room:
You’ll have to unlock the door with the key provided by Bates at the
end of the intro to get inside. Simply drag it from your inventory
onto the door.

Inside, click on the suitcase
(which is over on the loveseat and vanishes at chapter’s end)
once to open it and twice more to extract the headache pills and wallet
it contains. (You can also right-click on the wallet to remove a coin
from it, but there’s no need to do so now. You won’t use a coin
until you reach the Ashburry asylum in Chapter IV.)

Odds & ends: Curiously,
you never actually select the headache pills in the game, though they’re
used for you on two occasions. One crops up if you visit the greenhouse
in this chapter and the other at the end of the Chapter IV.

There’s one minor puzzle
here — opening the locked bottom drawer in the dresser near the door
— and it’s a mite tricky.

As Samuel speculates when
you try to open the drawer, the key is in the room. But its hiding
place doesn’t become interactive (turning the mouse pointer red) until
after you’ve tried the drawer and have discovered you need the key.
And when you try to look atop the doorframe with a left-click, Samuel
complains that he can’t see up there. It’s too high.

No, Samuel doesn’t need
something to stand on. You just need to right-click on the doorframe.
(You’ll run into this a lot in the game.) Samuel then feels blindly
along the top of the frame and retrieves the key. As with the door,
drag the key onto the drawer to unlock it and activate the drawer
again to reveal a camera.

If you’ve come straight
up from the main hall, you won’t be able to take it. But the pointer
stays red when placed over the camera. Read: You’ll be able to take
it when you need it. And you will need the camera after you look at
the symbol on the castle wall near the spot where William’s
body landed.

You can also establish
here why Samuel has been estranged from his family. This room and
the old wing summon bad memories. Clicks on the photo album in the
top dresser drawer, the broken mirror above the dresser, the framed
photo atop the dresser (a spooky cut-scene here) and the topmost picture
on the left wall above the loveseat all lead to brief, sometimes-anguished
reveries about Samuel’s companion Cathrin.

"Forgive me Cathrin,"
says Samuel when you click on the picture above the loveseat. "She
died in those horrible flames. and it was my fault. I will never forgive
myself for that."

Odds & ends: Cathy’s
one big loose end.

You never do get a
clear account of the fire and Samuel’s part in it But at the
end of the game Samuel makes some general comments about his past
that, if they apply to the fire, seem to suggest it wasn’t accidental.

Also: Who is she? Samuel’s
precise relationship to Cathrin is never revealed. Wife? Girlfriend?
Overly-friendly governess?

In fact, the game is
oddly quiet on familial relationships in general. Granted, William
being Samuel’s grandfather is mentioned on the back of the game
box. But you actually have to talk to the grave-digger at the Warmhill
church to learn in-game that William was Samuel’s grandfather.
Victoria is never expressly called his grandmother — in-game, she’s
always just "Victoria"– and you won’t learn in plain language
that Robert is your uncle until you talk to the furnace attendant
at the Ashburry asylum in Chapter IV. This lends a whole new meaning
to "estranged."

You can adjust the environment
a bit as well. Click on the fireplace. Samuel says the room is cold
and that he’ll ask Bates to light a fire here. The butler now
has a new "fireplace in the room" topic. Find him and use
it. Bates tells you he’ll see to it. Leave the house using any of
the three doors (in the main hall, the dining room and kitchen) and
then return to the rear portion of the upstairs hallway. You’ll find
Bates just leaving your room and a fire blazing merrily within.

It doesn’t do a thing
beyond adding an animation (and a hotspot), but it’s a nice
little touch.

Finally, you can use the
water basin beside the loveseat. Samuel washes his hands. You can
do this repeatedly in each of the four chapters in which you visit
the castle. (Chapter III is spent in Wales and Chapter VI limits you
to the regions below the castle.) Then interact with any other object
and you can do it again ad infinitum.

I never found a practical
use for this, and suspect it’s just an obscure kind of foreshadowing:
Much as he may wash them, Samuel won’t leave the game with clean hands.

Other hotspots: the
bed, the old rolls of films and the bible (both in the bottom dresser
drawer), the lower left picture and two lower-right pictures on the
wall behind the loveseat, the fire in the fireplace (after Bates starts
the fire), the crucifix on the mantel and the picture above it.

Balcony:
The door off right balustrade (which leads to the old wing) leads
onto a balcony atop the portico. There’s nothing out here, but it’s
the only spot in the mansion exterior where you can look up at William’s
tower study. The music swells and Samuel says that to find out how
William died, he must find a way into that room.

The old wing:
This ruined section of the castle, located at the end of the balustrade
right of the head of the stairs, is important for two reasons.

a) It’s on the route to
William’s tower study. The study is off the attic, and the attic stairs
are located at the right rear of the old wing.

Right now, the door to
those stairs is locked, but not in any enduring way. Try the door.
This gives the servant Bates a "key to the attic" topic.
He’ll tell you it’s on a hook in the kitchen beside the cellar door.
You can get it now or wait until Samuel decides to record the strange
symbol on the castle wall.

b) A left-click on the
fireplace on the right side of this room reveals it contains "just
ashes" … but the cursor stays red. So right-click on it to
examine the ashes more closely and you’ll find the pieces of a torn-up
photograph. Right-click on them in your inventory and you’ll open
the game’s first stand-alone puzzle. See “The Torn-Up Photograph”
section below for some tips.

Odd & ends: When
Samuel first enters this room, he’ll reminisce about how he was responsible
for the fire that took Cathrin’s life. (See the "Samuel’s room"
section above for more examples of our protagonist’s happy thoughts
on this topic.) And that’s his last word. He never explains why he
was responsible, and Cathrin vanishes from the story after Chapter
I.

If you talk to Robert
and then Bates about the state of the castle — without visiting the
wing — the servant intimates that the old wing is dangerous.

It isn’t really. Yes,
the ceiling does collapse between chapters I and II. (Be sure to revisit
the room in Chapter II or later to witness the results. It cuts off
access to the attic and William’s study.) And Samuel can indeed
die in later chapters. But he won’t die here.

Other hotspots: the
chair beside the window, the vase to the left of the arch, the cabinet
on the far side of the arch, the painting to the left of the fireplace
(a duplicate of the portrait of Jeremy Gordon from the library) and
the chandelier above it. (A click on the chandelier summons another
sad reverie about the fire.)

The
Third Floor

The
attic: The entrance at the right rear of the old wing is
locked. Try the door and then talk to Bates — the repository of all
knowledge on such matters — to learn the attic key hangs in the kitchen
beside the cellar door.

You’ll visit the attic
at least three times in this chapter: once to try the lid on Robert’s
chest and the barred door to William’s study, once to extract the
film in that chest and pull off boards on the study door and finally
to unlock and enter William’s study.

Robert’s chest is on the
right side of the attic. Once you try the lid, you’ll have to return
to Robert for his key. (However, if you try the lid before you need
the camera, you’ll be able to immediately request the key.)

The attic’s distinct
from every other room in the house. (You won’t find another
screen like it until you reach the entry screen in Willow Creek.)
The scene begins to scroll to the right once you reach the middle
of the first screen.

Walk all the way left to
find the barred door to William’s study.The boards can be removed
with the hammer from the drawer of the work table in the stable (See
"The stable" entry in the “The Grounds” section
below.) But the lock won’t fall until you solve the solar system puzzle
down in the library. And that requires quite a bit of legwork — outlined
below under "The Major Threads."

Odds & ends: The
first time you enter the attic, you’ll hear a flapping of wings.
And at the left end, both on the first visit and thereafter, you’ll
periodically hear the cooing of pigeons or doves.

You won’t find
any birds up here, but if you look up at the tower from the portico
or the right front corner of the castle, you’ll see a half-dozen
birds circling above it. (You’ll see this phenomena repeated
over the Warmhill church later in this chapter and also over the ruined
church on the Gordon manor in Wales in Chapter III.)

What’s that about?
It could be a few things. Circling birds can be a sign of death, decay,
coming rain or simply that the birds’ natural habitat has been
somehow disturbed.

Any or all of those
reasons could fit into our story, but given that it’s not raining
at any of the three locations when the birds are present and it verifiably
does rain at two of them later in the game when they aren’t,
I’d bet that was the designers’ rationale.

That said, the birds
outside look more robust than pigeons and they’ll appear here
whether or not you’ve visited the attic.

Other hotspots: the
rocking chair, the chest and cardboard box to the right of the chair,
the right near corner and the shelves in the background. (The attic
and William’s study become inaccessible after the end of Chapter
I, so complete-ists will want to finish their explorations here before
then.)

William’s
study: The room from which William fell in the intro and
Samuel’s objective in this chapter. You won’t get in here
until the end of the chapter.

The door is locked and
barred. You can remove the boards with the hammer from the work table
in the stable but the key’s buried in the solar-system puzzle
down in the library and you can’t reach the item needed to activate
it until the arrival of Dr. Hermann’s messenger.

See the two “Entering
William’s Study” sections below for details.

The
Cellar

Also off-limits
at this time. The door’s in the kitchen and the key’s hanging
beside the door.

Well, sort of.

That is, you can identify
it as the cellar key — but only provided Bates hasn’t already said
the attic key is at this same location. (If that’s the case, you’ll
simply take the attic key when you click on the hooks and return that
key when you click on them again.)

You can’t actually take
the cellar key until you explore the sub-cellar sewers in Chapter
IV. (You won’t need it to operate the pumps in Chapter II. On that
occasion, Bates precedes you into the cellar and leaves the door ajar.)

The
Grounds

The
portico: Just outside the front door, with exits left and
right to the front corners of the castle. Dig the giant skulls on
the portico itself. (You’ll find these again in Dergham Gordon’s
tomb in Chapter III. Are those vampire fangs in the upper jaw? You’ll
also find a similar image xxx on the game’s menu screen.

Also check out the two
strange tentacle-like trees. These are non-interactive, but you’ll
find others on the right side of the castle (including the only one
you can actually inspect) and in the rear garden.

The left front
corner of the castle: Located one screen left of the front
door, this is an important location. You’ll find here the bent section
of fence where William’s body landed (clicking on it enables you to
ask Bates about the spot), the symbol on the castle wall beside the
casement window (once Bates points it out) and, with a right-click,
the "strange object" in the bush to the right (again, after
Bates has pointed out the spot on the castle wall). You can then ask
Bates about the object and he’ll put you onto the gardener Henry.
(He’s at the base of the stairs just inside the estate’s main gate.)

Odds & ends: This
symbol vanishes in Chapter II. (Other symbols appear in chapters II,
IV and V (two), but this is the only symbol location you can revisit
in a later chapter.)

The right front
corner/top of the stairs: This appears to be another pass-through
location, but it does contain one unimportant hotspot: the lit second-floor
window. Click on it and Samuel identifies this as his room. (Actually,
being that Samuel’s is the middle room in the hallway, I would
have placed this more to the right. The lit window should be the one-time
child’s room beside Samuel’s.)

The right wing
(outside the kitchen door, between the top of the stairs and the rear
garden): Just scenery here — mainly emblems of decrepitude. Samuel
can inspect the large dead tree (“It invokes a rather queer
feeling in me”), the gazebo (“summer house”) and
three “menhir.”

These standing stones have
a companion outside the main gate — together foreshadowing the appearance
of a more sinister stone at the Stonering site in Chapter IV. The
extension to the right forms the top the archway above the path that
leads back leads to the greenhouse.

The rear garden
(outside the dining room door, behind the right wing): The fountain
here is a focus in Chapter II. But click on the dirty water now and
you’ll pick up an extra topic (cleaning it up) when you talk
to the gardener Henry. (Henry’s at the base of the stairs.)

Other hotspots: the
bench to the left of the fountain, the base of the far tower (“to
the stable”) and the trees to the right of that tower.

The base of the
stairs: Located just inside the main gate (or down the stairs
at the right front corner of the house). You’ll see the gardener Henry
raking leaves off to the right. Sooner or later, you’ll have to talk
to him about the "strange object" he found in the flowerbeds
and then follow through on his pawn ticket. The rest is optional.

Initially, Henry talks
only about himself and William. And he’s uncomfortable talking about
William (the whole "don’t speak ill of the dead" thing,
I suppose). He suggests the old man was crazy. Samuel wonders how
he got this impression. This will become clearer once you talk to
Harry at the Three Kegs Inn in Willow Creek and the grave-digger at
the Warmhill church.

Like other characters,
Henry picks up other topics in the course of the chapter. If you:
a) look at the water in the fountain in the rear garden, b) reassemble
the picture from the fireplace in the old wing, c) retrieve the "strange
object" from the bushes at the left front corner of the house
and talk to Bates about it, d) follow up on the pawn ticket mentioned
in topic c), e) try the greenhouse door, f) look at the bloody branch
grinder to the left of the greenhouse door or g) look at the watercolor
painting in the greenhouse …

… Henry can: a) agree
to clean up the fountain, b) deny knowing the man (Henry’s another
newcomer), c) confess he had a companion piece to the object but pawned
it at Murray’s Pawn Shop in Willow Creek, d) protest he still doesn’t
know where he lost the pawn ticket, e) explain that he keeps the greenhouse
locked during the day to keep the groom Morris out of his things,
f) assert he puts only branches in the grinder or g) tell you he’s
looking after the picture for Victoria.

Topics c) and d) are the
only required ones, but a) sets up the discovery of Henry’s
body in the fountain between chapters I and II. (Hence, if you’re
curious about Henry’s non-essential sidelights, you’ll
want to talk to him sooner rather than later.)

But here’s the strange
thing: Even if you skip over this topic in Chapter I — it’s
not required — in Chapter II Samuel treats the topic as though he
had selected it. That is, he tells Bates that, having asked Henry
to clean the fountain, he feels responsible for Henry’s death.

My guess is that this is
a limitation of the ADGS game engine. Each of The Black Mirror’s
six chapters is a stand-alone entity and, beyond the end of the one
chapter igniting the start of the next, details of the player’s
actions in one chapter do not flow into later ones. You’ll notice
that similar decisions on two additional topics — Samuel’s
request that the groom Morris board up Black Mirror’s dry well
in Chapter I and the footprint found near the fountain in Chapter
II — don’t make the transition into subsequent chapters.

The tenor of this particular
exchange is also worth noting. While Samuel exhibits much solicitude
for the old family retainer Bates early in the game, he is oddly officious
with newcomers Henry and Morris, who are after all his grandmother’s
servants and not his own. (Samuel does turn out to be the heir to
Black Mirror, but he won’t learn that until Chapter V.) He threatens
to fire each of them when they display less than the requisite enthusiasm
for the respective tasks of fountain-cleaning and well-boarding and
Henry a second time over the lost pawn ticket. (Later in the game,
Samuel can also go off on other characters — even Bates — but these
aren’t built-in reactions. All flow from “negative”
choices in conversation.)

These over-the-top reactions
are never explained in plain language. (In Chapter II, Samuel himself
wonders to himself why he’s yelling at Morris about the well.)
But it’s not difficult to guess from our protagonist’s
voice — on-edge from his first words — that he’s wound way
too tight. That headache medicine isn’t doing the job!

Other hotspots: the
smoldering leaves near the base of the stairs.

And note the demonic
claws supporting the lights at the base of the stairs. Sinister? No,
there’s nothing sinister about this place at all!

The main gate:
This location can be reached directly by clicking on the castle grounds
(on the slope below the castle proper) on your map, or, if you don’t
yet have the map, by moving down and left from the base of the stairs.

You’ll meet Dr. Hermann’s
messenger Mark here automatically toward the end of this chapter and
collect a letter from the mailbox on the right gatepost in Chapter
IV.

Note that attempts to walk
right from this screen after you’re cleared to land in Willow Creek
automatically call up the game map. (This also occurs at the exits
of certain other locations in the game.) If you don’t yet have the
map or Willow Creek is not yet an active destination, Samuel says
he has no reason to leave the manor.

Other hotspots: the
gate itself and the menhir stone to the left.

The greenhouse:
Up the alley beyond Henry. It’s not an essential location in
this chapter — it’s important only in Chapter II — but comes
with a couple of nice touches that add to the mood.

Predictably, the door is
locked at first. Less predictably, there appears to be blood inside
a grinder to the left of the entrance — the first tangible evidence
of something nasty going on here in the wake of William’s death.

It turns out to be not
so tangible. Backtrack to Henry at the base of the stairs and ask
after the grinder and greenhouse. He’ll explain the greenhouse is
locked to prevent one "Morris" (whom we’ll meet shortly;
see "The stable") from snooping around in his belongings.
(He offers to unlock it for you, but Samuel seems satisfied with the
explanation and declines.)

And as to the blood, Henry
seems genuinely flummoxed: He protests he only puts foliage in the
grinder.

Samuel then suggests that
he imagined it. And, sure enough, if you retreat to the greenhouse
and look in the grinder again, the blood is gone.

Did he imagine it? Samuel
thinks that’s possible, for he automatically reaches into his
pocket and takes a headache pill.

This is one of the two
uses for the pills in the game and occurs even if you haven’t yet
retrieved them from the suitcase up in your room. (The headaches pop
up on our radar again at the end of this chapter and at the end of
Chapter IV and, optionally, during a visit to Dr. Hermann’s
house in Chapter II.)

What’s this about?
This event has a three-fold purpose.

1) The blood appears to
be a premonition of Henry’s murder. (This occurs between chapters
I and II.) The Black Mirror designers love to give early tastes of
future events. This is a pretty vague one — being that you only learn
the true cause of Henry’s death (and hence the possible relevance
of this premonition) if you click on one particular spot in Chapter
II and then follow up with two characters.

2) It’s designed
to throw us off the trail.

Samuel’s between-chapter
dreams will be haunted by images of death. He appears to have advance
knowledge of most of the murders that occur between chapters I and
II, II and III and IV and V.

After the first of these
sequences, you might well wonder whether he was actually a participant
haunted by memories of the bad deeds. But a premonition provides an
innocent context for Samuel’s future visions. Here, he’s
simply an simply an observer and the player’s thus more likely
to read the dreams as more of the same.

That said, it’s curious
that the grinder sequence wasn’t tagged “essential.”
(As mentioned, all the greenhouse stuff in Chapter I is optional.)
If the designers want the player to trust a protagonist who seems
to witness a murder virtually every night, the player’s going
to need a reason!

3) Finally, the headache
that follows the vision foreshadows the game’s big secret. Have
you already guessed? I’m loath to give it away in the first
chapter, so let’s just say that Samuel is not the usual objective
narrator. We now know there’s something wrong with him.

Odds & ends: Can
you get into the greenhouse in Chapter I? You can, though not to any
clear purpose. Try the door and then return to Henry and ask about
it. As noted, he’ll explain he wants to keep Morris out of his stuff,
and Samuel wonders to himself what Morris covets in the greenhouse.
(You’ll learn in Chapter II that it’s a blackmail note.)

Now go out to the main
gate or up the stairs (but not back to the greenhouse) and then return
to the base of the stairs. Henry has vanished. Now return to the greenhouse.
It’s now unlocked and you’ll find Henry filling a flowerpot at his
work table at the left end.