The Black Mirror : 76

Author: Duke, Winifred

Classic crime

Published on 20 August 2026 by British Library Publishing in the United Kingdom as part of 'the British Library Tales of the Weird' series.

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.