Jamaica Inn, Part III

Mary continues her fight against Joss, she can see that he is beginning to crack under the strain of running the smuggling operation, and he is now drinking and having nightmares more often. She ends up witnessing an incident where people are killed and horrified, she decides she has to turn him in, even if it causes Patience to end up in trouble as well. However, it is difficult for her to get help. Jamaica Inn is so isolated and she can only get away by walking long distances. On hearing that Joss is planning to take his wife and escape from Cornwall, she walks to the vicarage of the Rev Francis, the white haired vicar, but finds that he is out. Desperatley she goes to the house of the local squire Bassat, but his wife tells her that the squire has gone after Joss, and plans to arrest him. Mary is worn out and frightened. She is only a farmer's daughter and has no horse to ride, and she knows that the squire's family are wary of her, as the girl who has been working as a lowly barmaid in Jamaica Inn. She goes back home, and finds her aunt and uncle have both been stabbed and are dead. Squire Bassat thinks that it is a pedlar who has had a grudge against Joss, but they find him locked up in a room in the Inn. So it cannot be him. Mary goes for shelter to the vicar's house and there she finds drawings in his drawing room, of his congregation with sheeps faces. She realises that he is not a kindly vicar but he's an evil man, and he comes in and catches her and tells her that she now knows his secret, that he was the leader of the smuggling ring and that he despises the local people. He was the one who stabbed the Merlyns. Horrified, and feeling helpless Mary tells him she will fight him, just as she fought Joss, but she feels very much the burden of her sex. He drags her off wth him, telling her he will get out of England and she will be his companion. She cant stop him takng her out of his house and onto the moors, but a fog comes down and they have to stop and wait for it to lift. She fears that if the Squire looks for him, the vicar will kill her to hasten his escape. They are sheltering on a tor in the moorlands, and she sees Jem Merlyn, following them. He shoots at the vicar who falls and is killed. Mary is saved and the squire, admring her courage, takes her in to his house. He suggests that she could be a nursemaid or a companion to his wife.... and says that he will get a new landlord for Jamaica inn. Mary hates hearing the whole story over and over, and thinks that when she's recovered she will go back to South Cornwall and try to start a new life on a farm there. Jem Merlyn asks her to come away with him. He turned his brother in, and killed the vicar, but he still likes to be free and live his own way. Mary tells him she wont go with him.. and then changes her mind and agrees to become a wanderer, like him.