Mary Barton

Once Esther leaves, Mary bars the door and covers the windows. She has recognized the wadding as made of paper from the valentine Jem sent her—the valentine she repurposed to copy a Samuel Bamford poem for John. Thus, the wadding proves to her that John murdered Harry. She goes to search John’s things for the rest of the paper—hoping that she won’t find it, that John gave the poem away to a friend prior to the murder—and finds it in John’s coat pocket, along with bullets and a packet of gunpowder.

Mary is sure that Jem never told John about Harry, so she has no idea what John’s motive for murder was. While she is horrified by her father’s crime, she feels relief that Jem is innocent. She resolves to prove his innocence—somehow without implicating her father. She burns the wadding and, feeling that she must gather all her strength, goes to sleep. The next morning, she wakes up determined to provide Jem with an alibi for the murder.

Mary goes to Job’s, hears Job and Margaret talking, and realizes they must be discussing not only the murder but Mary’s blamable flirtation with Harry, which Mary never told Margaret about. Mary greets them in a small voice. Job greets her with excessive formality, while Margaret says nothing. Mary says she’s come to ask their help in proving Jem innocent. When Job suggests that Jem did commit the murder because Mary “jilted” him, Mary begs him to help anyway, asking how somebody produces an alibi. Job suggests that the best way to clear Jem’s name is to find the real murderer, terrifying Mary—but then he adds that she needs to figure out where Jem was the night the murder was committed.

Meanwhile, Margaret still sits silent. Because she has never had her vanity appealed to and finds it easy to do the right thing, she can’t understand why Mary flirted with Harry, judges her harshly as an immodest girl, and thinks of ending their friendship. Then, abruptly, Mary asks whether Margaret was with Alice the night of the murder and heard Jem come home. Margaret says she remembers something about Jem escorting Will partway to Liverpool. Mary immediately resolves to go ask Mrs. Wilson about it.

When Mary reaches the Wilsons’, Mrs. Wilson announces that Jem’s trial is on Tuesday, bursts into tears, and says she’ll blame his execution on Mary. Mary asks where Jem was Thursday night. Mrs. Wilson explains that he accompanied Will partway to Liverpool. Mary says that they must contact Will, who can swear that Jem was with him. She is horribly pained by her conviction that John murdered Harry, but she feels her “first duty” is to focus on Jem.