The Mist on the Mirror

 The Mist on the Mirror (1992) by Susan Hill

Our story is framed by our unnamed narrator who sits and talks with Sir James Monmouth for a while at their club and then gets involved in an after-dinner ghost story fest. After the men break up their after-dinner chat, the narrator is joined by Sir James on his walk home. Sir James tells him that he'd like our man to read an account he's written up "of certain--events." He doesn't just ask him...

...abruptly, his hand shot out and he clutched my arm. "I beg you," he said in a low, urgent voice, "read it."

When the man receives the package containing three black leather notebooks, he sits down, intending to just read for a bit before going to sleep. But the story grabs him and doesn't let go until the end.

I settled into my chair, turning off all the lights save for one shaded lamp beside me. I suppose that I intended to read for an hour at most, expecting drowsiness to overtake me again, but I became so engrossed in the story that unfolded before me that I rapidly forgot all thought of the time, or my present surroundings.

And for most of the book that's what happened to this reader. I settled down in bed with just the low glow of the bedside lamp and intended to just read until I got sleepy. And I finished the story before that ever happened...

The notebooks tells about Monmouth's early life--how his parents died when he was five and he was sent to his Guardian in Kenya. How he lived with this man until he was seventeen and during that time Monmouth became fascinated with the idea of travel and was particularly drawn to accounts of the great pioneering traveler Conrad Vane. After his Guardian's death and coming into his inheritance, he spent his time following Vane's footsteps all over the globe until an illness forced him to put adventuresome travel behind him. So, he made one last journey back to England, the land of his birth (as well as Vane's). His fascination with Vane doesn't end when his travels do. Now that he knows where the traveler had been, he wants find out where he comes from and starts looking into Vane's past. 

His journey into the past isn't an easy one. Those who might be able to tell him something about Vane seem peculiarly reluctant to do so. Those who hold records of Vane's schooldays try to dissuade him from looking at them. But he feels even more compelled to do so when those he contacts tell him to leave it be.

"No one," he said, "wants to revive the memory or disturb the shade of Conrad Vane. No one will speak to you of him--no one who could possibly be of use to you. No one who knows.

The wall of silence is eerie. But even more so is the figure of a boy that begins appearing to Monmouth, a pale, sad young boy with anxious eyes. Also unnerving is the strange mirror he finds in the first inn he stays in. A mirror whose duplicate is found in the room given him when he visits Vane's old school. A mirror that mists over to reveal a face that's not his own. During his visit to the old school, he hears the sounds of a weeping child late at night--from behind a locked door that is not there in the full light of day. But Monmouth sticks to his task...and what he finds is more disturbing than the warnings implied.

So, Susan Hill can write a good ghostly mystery with a gothic feel. We're not told explicitly, but I get the idea that the events Sir James describes take place in the early 20th Century while what he finds out about Vane must have taken place in the mid- to late-Victorian period. The atmosphere is just right for a nice shivery, spooky story and I enjoyed what we learn from Sir James's point of view. I was completely sold for about three-fourths of the book or so. But (like my previous read) the break-down occurs in the conclusion. Now, I know that ghost stories may not have complete explanations, but I do expect there to be a bit of logic to how the ghosts operate within the narrative and some of this just doesn't make sense in a world where ghosts do appear (my quibbles are noted in a spoiler section below). Overall, a very absorbing read from the author of The Woman in Black (one of my favorites) with just the right mix of mystery and the supernatural--but a somewhat anticlimactic ending. ★★★★

First line: London, and the library of my Club, toward the end of an afternoon in late November, that bleak, dispiriting time of year when the golden Indian summer days that lingered on through October seem long gone, and it is yet too early to feel the approaching cheer of Christmas.

Last line: And as I looked into the slightly foxed and pitted glass, the surface seemed to blur and dissolve, as if it were misting over with a fine white vapor. I stared in dawning recollection and fear, for the face I saw staring back at me through the mist was not my own, but that of another

SPOILERS (related to quote above and other things that just bother me): Okay--I would like someone to explain two things to me. First, why on earth is that mirror in Pyre (the home of the Quincebridges and NOT of Monmouth and certainly not any relation of that innkeeper at the beginning of the story)? Second, we basically know why Monmouth is haunted by the boy's ghost, the misty mirror and all the rest, but why would our narrator start seeing things in the mirror? Just because he read Sir James Monmoth's notebooks? I also wish we were given a clearer picture of how the boy is related to Sir James. Obviously, they're kin of some sort, but what sort? Is that all related to the death of Monmouth's parents? If not, what really happened there? And why did Conrad Vane curse all the Monmouth men? (And--apparently anyone interested in them if we take our narrator's final vision as a preview of things to come.)

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Deaths = 5 (one strangled; two train accident; two natural)