The Mezzotint

In 1922 the middle-aged and bumptious bachelor Edward Williams (Rory Kinnear) is living an uncomplicated life as the curator of a small museum at an Oxford-style college. His life revolves around his work, golf, playing cards and trying to solve a family mystery - why his great grandfather had two surnames on his birth certificate. Specialising in the topography of England, he is initially disinterested when an art dealer sends him details of an early 19th-century engraving, a mezzotint, of an old country house. The engraving has a very high price - two guineas - for so average a piece - and Williams sends for it on approval to see if it justifies the amount being asked for. When the picture arrives his golfing friend Binks (John Hopkins) comments on the wonderful play of moonlight across the lawn in the picture. And a figure on the edge of the engraving. But there hadn't been a moon - or a figure - when Williams had first looked at it. Williams encounters the eccentric Mrs Ambrigail (Frances Barber), the wife of the local vicar, and discusses with her his attempts at solving the mystery about his ancestor's two surnames. Binks discovers that the house in the picture is Anningley Hall in Essex, where the infant child of a former owner disappeared mysteriously one night, soon after the child's father had Gawdy, a local poacher, executed. The heartbroken father, who was discovered dead three years later, turns out to be the artist who created the mezzotint. Williams discovers that the mezzotint changes every time he looks at it - with something sinister and "rather too grotesque" appearing in the image with links to his own family.