Jamaica Inn

THE LOCKED DOOR.

The next few days pass in peace, Joss had ridden away on the moors somewhere, when magistrate, Mr Basset arrives at the inn. Mary and her aunt pretend they know nothing of Joss’s business. The magistrate investigates the place and wants to take a look in the barred chamber. The door is locked and Joss has the key, but Basset sees no problem in that and cracks the door open with a bar. Enormously disappointed, he finds out that the room is empty. After asking Mary a few questions, and getting no answer to them, he leaves the inn. When Joss arrives he gets furious when he finds out that Basset has been there. He takes off on foot, and Mary tries to follow him, but after a while she loses track of him. Mary decides to go back to the inn, knowing that when darkness comes on the moor, it is sudden and without any warning. The sky grows dark and after a while Mary finds out she hasn’t been walking towards the inn, but is lost. Fortunately a carriage passes her by and the man inside is friendly enough to take her with him. After a brief acquaintance she learns that the friendly man is Francis Davey, the vicar of Altarnun. Despite his scary looks -he is an albino- Mary feels like he is a man she can trust with her deepest secret, the activities of Joss Merlyn at Jamaica Inn. Although he believes her, he says there is little he can do about it. He drives her home, and advises her to stay calm and act as if nothing has happened. When she arrives at the inn, Joss is already home, sitting next to an empty bottle. It seems that he is drunk, and he stays drunk for several days. She decides to take advantage of her gained freedom and goes to explore the moors a bit more. After a long walk she sees a little cottage in the distance. When she finds out that the owner is Jem Merlyn, she goes and talks to him for a while. He invites her to go with him on Christmas Eve to Launceston market to sell some horses he has stolen. One of them is Mr Basset’s horse and he is eager to get a lot of money for it.
After accepting the invitation, she leaves him to head back to the inn. After she has returned to the inn, Joss Merlyn tells her the truth about his smuggling-business. He and his fellows go to the cliffs to wreck ships. They make a ship sail towards the cliffs and make it crash on the rocks. Afterwards they kill the people who have survived the crash and then they take the belongings, such as gold, jewellery, that strand on the beach with them.
On Christmas Eve Mary goes with Jem to the Launceston market. He has painted Mr Basset’s hors black and sells it back to Mrs Basset, who hasn’t got any clue that it was her horse. Afterwards they go visit a fortune-teller. She predicts that Jem will kill a man and she warns Mary about not trusting a dark stranger. Mary suspects Jem of being the dark figure that she had seen when the smugglers first came, the man who had killed the poor stranger. It starts to pour and Mary wants to go home, Jem goes to get the carriage, but he never returns. It’s eleven miles, back to the inn, but she meets her old friend, vicar Davey, who takes her home with his carriage. Just as they arrive at the inn, Joss, who is as drunk as a lord, stops them, kills the driver and takes Mary with him and his gang to the cliffs to wreck another ship. That night is one of the most terrible night ever for Mary. Witnessing the wreckage of the ship and seeing hundreds of people, who die in the cold, dark water. The smugglers get all of the goods out of the water. But when they discover that it is already dawn, they panic. The cover of the darkness of the night is gone and a lot of people will wonder what a group of rough men are doing out this time of the morning. Soon they will find the link between them and the wreck and they will hang.
When they arrive at the inn, Joss realises what he has done and gets even more scared.
Or the magistrates will find him, or the leader of the gang –the dark figure, Mary saw- will kill him. Mary is convinced that the leader is Jem, yet she has no proof. Joss decides to flee along with Patience and Mary, over the moors.
All of the sudden, Jem appears, he tells Mary that the reason why he never showed up is because Mr Basset had arrested him, as he had found out that the horse Jem sold Mrs Basset was actually his horse all along. He says farewell to Mary and tells her that he won’t bother her again.
Mary has got a plan. She will go and tell it to the vicar and put a stop on Joss Merlyn, as she finds he should be punished for the evil things he has done. So, she tells Joss that she will go have a nap before they leave in the evening and she escapes and goes over the moors, towards the vicar’s place. Unfortunately, after walking for hours he is not at home. She leaves him a message and she has to walk again several hours to get to Mr Basset’s place. He is home neither, but Mrs Basset is kind enough to listen to Mary’s story. She sends Mary out along with a police officer that works for Mr Basset. He explains to Mary that they had gotten a tip about the wreckage and that Mr Basset was already on his way to Jamaica Inn, to arrest Joss. But when they arrive, nobody is there yet, and they find Joss and Patience murdered. Mary suspects Jem of the murder. It’s hard for her, as she has got feelings of love and feelings of hate for him.
Later that evening the vicar who had found her message comes by the inn and comforts Mary. Mary goes home with him and learns the truth there. He is actually the dark figure she had seen the first night that the wagons came and he had killed her aunt Patience and uncle Joss. Mary is trapped. He says they have to escape, as Jem knows he killed Joss and Patience. Outside of the inn Jem had found a new nail that comes from a horseshoe from the horse of the vicar. As a thief of horses, Jem knows the work of every blacksmith on the moors and so he will probably already know who lost it, and therefor who is the murderer.
The vicar takes Mary with him on the moors, but Jem, who had found them, kills the vicar.
Mary decides she will go back to the village back south, where she and her mother once lived. On her way, Jem and her paths cross. He is going north. Mary is torn, she has to decide between the place she loves and the man she loves. She chooses Jem, and sets out on the uncertainty and excitement of a wandering life with him, turning her back on her old home in the south and setting her face northwards, towards her new life together with Jem.