'Mansion' Inspired by The Black Cat?

A fan named Matthew shared his thoughts with us on what he thought we some of Bellairs's purported inspiration for The Mansion in the Mist:

Myriad references to THE BLACK CAT (a 1934 horror film from Universal Studios, starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi) exist in THE MANSION IN THE MIST.  Wasn't John Bellairs a Karloff fan?  (Karloff is (subtly) alluded to too.)

That tidbit popped into mind when this was posted to CraveOnline recently:

The Black Cat (dir. Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934) came out during the rise of the Universal Monster Film’s golden era. And while it has never achieved the worldwide fame of a Dracula or a Frankenstein, is still bears the beautifully twisted 1930s horror sensibility of those classics. The story of the film has actually very little to do with the original story, about a man who bricked his murder victim up behind a wall (hiding dead bodies is a common theme in Poe), following, as it does, a Satanic priest who looks after a car-wrecked traveling couple, but it’s still wildly atmospheric, and has wonderfully towering horror actors to menace our heroes. No one less than Boris Karloff plays the Satanic priest Hjalmar Poelzig, and the even-more-towering Bela Lugosi plays the wounded Hungarian doctor who must match wits (and even play a deathly game of chess) with Poelzig. Again, it drifts from Poe (as so many of his films do), but it’s still one of the great horror films.

Anyone else see a connection?