The Secret of the Haunted Mirror - M. V. Carey [4]
The next room was a prim and proper parlour, and Mrs. Darnley called it her Victoria room.
“It’s a reproduction of the parlour where Queen Victoria used to sit with her mother when she was a very young girl, before she was queen. The furniture was made to order, but the mirror over the mantel is one she actually owned. Or her mother owned it. I like to think of Victoria looking into that glass, being so young and innocent, and with all those years of greatness ahead of her. I sit here sometimes, and I have a special dress to wear when I do. I don’t pretend I’m young Victoria. I’m much too old. Sometimes I pretend I’m her mother.”
She then showed them what she called the Lincoln room. It was a dark, shuttered, cluttered-chamber. “This is a replica of the room which was used by Mary Todd Lincoln when she was a tired, lonely old woman, long after President Lincoln died.
That mirror belonged to her.”
Next to Jupiter, Uncle Titus shifted restlessly. “A sad room,” he said.
“Very sad,” agreed Mrs. Darnley, “but then, many famous people are famous because of some great sorrow.”
She closed the door on the little room and became suddenly brisk. “My Marie Antoinette room is upstairs. I have a little hand mirror that belonged to the queen and a few other trinkets that she used. This dress I have on was copied from one of her portraits.”
“I see,” said Jupiter softly. “Is that a sad room, too?”
“Perhaps it is, in a way,” said Mrs. Darnley. “It’s a pretty room. I like to sit in it, and I try not to think of how she died – poor, silly little queen. I’ll show you the room.
It’s a copy of one at the palace of Versailles. But first, you’ll have to see the latest addition to my collection.”
“It’s a real horror,” said Jean Parkinson.
“We can guarantee you’ll hate it,” added Jeff.
“It is ugly,” admitted Mrs. Darnley, “but I’m very proud of it. She rustled the rest of the way down the corridor and crossed the entrance hall. Uncle Titus and the boys followed her past double doors into the dark room they had glimpsed earlier. As soon as Mrs. Darnley opened the curtains, they knew they were in the library. Three walls were lined solidly with books. The fourth wall, the one nearest the street, was panelled with dark wood. There were two long windows, and between these was a mirror that reached almost from the floor to the ceiling.
“Yikes!” exclaimed Pete.
The mirror itself was not unusual. It reflected the boys and Uncle Titus clearly and without any distortion. But the frame was grotesque. A metallic substance had been moulded into a series of strangely repellent shapes. There were tangles of tree roots which parted here and there to reveal little faces – the faces of creatures which were not quite human. Some of the sculpted beings had horns on their foreheads.
Some had tiny slits for eyes. Some seemed to chuckle with evil glee. At the very top of the frame a stunted, twisted figure with pointed ears was fondling a snake.
“Wha …” Bob pointed. “What are those things supposed to be?”
“In Spain the word would be trasgos,” said Mrs. Darnley. “We’d call them goblins. That mirror belonged to a magician, a man named Chiavo who lived in Madrid almost two hundred years ago. He claimed that he could look into the mirror and see the earth spirits, the goblins, and that they predicted the future for him.”
“They were supposed to live in caves and underneath trees and in damp, creepy places like that,” said Jeff. “And they were friends with snakes and worms.”
“Ugh!” said Jean Parkinson.
“I am very proud of this glass,” said Mrs. Darnley again. “All of my mirrors have stories and many have seen great beauty and great tragedy, but the Chiavo glass is supposed to be truly an enchanted mirror, if one can believe that sort of thing.”
She looked, thought Jupiter Jones, like a woman who hoped that a mirror really could be enchanted.
Behind them, in the entrance hall, the doorbell chimed.
“That’s probably Señor Santora,” said Jean. She grinned at The Three Investigators.