The Black Mirror
In the dock stood a girl, but could she be the one who had lately entered and was seated between her female companions?… Even the judge, sitting in Mr. Justice Deidpole's seat, was unfamiliar, a wraith from another century. A faint perfume, as of herbs or wholesome flowers, stole to the young man's nostrils… Was it reality, this scene, or a form of nightmare?
In the 1930s, when a string of pearls is stolen from a wealthy guest at the Wheatsheaf hotel in Derriford, suspicion quickly falls on Ann Bacon, an 18-year-old maid. Though she protests her innocence, she is arrested and hauled up in front of the county court. In 1752, a rich traveller stays at the Cock Inn just outside the town, where she, too, is relieved of her pearls. Everyone is convinced of the guilt of Patience Passey, an 18-year-old serving girl at the inn, and she too is arrested and tried at the local assizes.
Linking the two eras is a marshal of the court who starts to realise he may be the only person able to witness both cases first-hand.
First published in 1948 and now released as part of The British Library's Tales of the Weird.
Johnny Mains
Johnny Mains is a British Fantasy Award-winning editor and genre researcher. He was Project Editor on the 2010 re-issue of The Pan Book of Horror Stories, created the critically acclaimed series Dead Funny: Horror Stories by Comedians (co-edited with Robin Ince) and has spent the last five years deep in the archives, uncovering ‘lost’ stories by notable authors such as Edith Nesbit, Algernon Blackwood, Oscar Cook and Daphne Du Maurier, among others.
British Library Tales of the Weird
The British Library Tales of the Weird series revives and unearths classic strange fiction from the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the form of novels, single-author collections and thematic anthologies, complete with new introductions and fascinating notes by expert editors.
British Library Tales of the Weird consists of seventy-four books and series is set to expand with the upcoming release of two more books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
