Room the fourth

THE LONG GALLERY

Five frames, five plates, and every plate certain of itself. The Bible below tells a shorter, truer story.

The wall itself

Read the plates. Accuse the liars.

Click a frame to examine it close up. When you are sure a plate lies, accuse it. The wall is said to open for the liars in order, eldest by true birth first — and the guidebook swears each liar's frame carries a moon in the carving.

The parish Bible, kept in the gallery lectern

What the family wrote down

Register copies for the Vane family, in the incumbent's hand
Name	Born	Died	The incumbent's note
Josiah Vane	1791	1849	Built the gallery. Hung his own portrait last, so as to be nearest the door.
Edmund Vane	1833	1893, missing	Burial refused by the family: "he will come home." The ground is still waiting.
Eleanora Lansing Vane	1840	1877	Taken by the mere. Her locket was buried with her; it was never in the coffin.
Marigold Vane	1871	1883	Died of the spring fever, aged twelve. Fond of a doll with its face turned away.
No other soul of that name lies at Mourningmoor, and no plate outside this family belongs on this wall.

"A Visitor's Companion to Mourningmoor Hall", 1890

The guidebook's warning

On the gallery plates

In the spring of 1893 the plates were re-cut by an unsteady hand, and the family chose to leave the errors in place, out of respect or dread, the guidebook does not say. Set your watch by the Bible, and never by the wall.

On the wall safe

A small iron door waits behind the panelling, and its three dials wear the phases of the moon. The housekeeper of that year told the guidebook the trick of it and then asked the sentence struck from print. It survives in a proof copy: set the dials in the order the plates lied, eldest first.

On the medium's portraits

Madame Grimm sat for no painter, yet by autumn 1893 a portrait in her likeness hung in the gallery. The plate was cut before the portrait was dry. The Trust has always declined to explain either.

Behind the panelling

The wall safe

Three brass dials, each bearing the moon in five of her moods. New, waxing, full, waning, half.

Eldest first, the guidebook said. The moons are worn into the carvings of the lying frames.

From the safe, in the medium's hand

The confession of Theodosia Grimm

"The thing that answered was not Eleanora. It wore her voice the way the drowned wear water. When the candles guttered at a quarter past midnight, it came up through the hearth, and Lord Edmund followed the locket's light down the stair behind it — down, into the cold, holding her name in front of him like a lamp."

"I held the door. I was paid to hold the door. I am writing this in the dark because I could not make myself strike the match again."

— T. G., October 1893. Pinned to the inside of the safe: a key, rimed with frost.

Take the stair below