Detective Mary

Chapter 49

Lydia has been extraordinarily depressed lately.

When Jane and Mary return and she gives Mary the five hats she lost in a bet, her long confinement will be over. But while embroidering, Lydia is not so happy when the day she has been waiting for comes.

Because the end of her confinement wasn't as wonderful as she'd imagined it would be.

The wedding of Jane and Mr. Bingley is fast approaching, and Mama and Papa and Jane are busy all day preparing for it. A letter from Mr. Bingley just yesterday saying that he will be returning to Netherfield in three days to join in the wedding planning has turned Longbourn upside down.

With everyone so busy, Lydia, who is usually the most favored and lawless of all, has naturally lost her status as the baby of the family. Mrs. Bennet, who spoiled Lydia too much, was too busy with her eldest daughter's wedding to care what Lydia thought. The few times Lydia has been unruly, all she gets in return is a reprimand and a scolding.

The original Lydia had never suffered such indignities.

It all began when Mr. Bingley moved to Netherfield Hall.

Come to think of it, it was at the ball that attracted the thieves that Mary made her mark, and then again and again she attracted the attention of the others, and became more eager to communicate with them, and was no longer so self-conscious and uncaring as she had been before.

Lydia is not happy that Mary, who is usually the most unassuming and unappealing person in the world, is stealing all the attention.

She was saddened and even a little angry that Mr. Bingley had moved to the Longbourn neighborhood.

Especially since the sadder Lydia got, the more she cared about what Mary had said.

She had been right when she said that Mr. Wickham would leave and pursue other rich ladies as soon as they had no more money to inherit, and she had been right when she said that when Mr. Wickham found out that other rich ladies were not to be pursued, he would naturally come back to make a little effort to please Lydia.

And since Miss King had left Meryton, and Lydia had met Mr. Wickham in the street, he had resumed his old cordial manner.

Mr. Wickham was Mr. Wickham, as handsome as ever, as considerate as ever, and every word he said went to Lydia's heart, and Lydia ought to have been happy, but whenever she intended to be happy, Mary's unsmiling look came before Lydia's face.

...... Nasty Mary!

Just knows how to sell her books, purposely talks backwards to everyone, and is full of ideas on how to make a splash, hate her!

Lydia didn't want to admit that Mr. Wickham was a money-grubbing man, but Mary's words always lingered in her mind, making Lydia both reluctant to alienate Mr. Wickham and afraid to agree to his dances, and there was still a time in her fifteen years of life when she had been in such a complicated mood.

Mr. Wickham's invitations and gestures of goodwill over the past few days had all been vaguely passed over by Lydia. What made it worse was that here she was, frustrated and apprehensive, while the culprit of it all, the nuisance Mary, was still in the same carefree mood.

Like today.

Mrs. Bennet had ordered several of the Bennet sisters to do this and that early in the morning, and each of them had been given a rather menial task. While Lydia was muttering and complaining to Catherine, Mary had rolled up her sleeves and finished her share of the work, and then, with pen and paper and books in hand, found a well-lit spot in the parlor and began to deliberate on her serial.

By the time the rest of the Bennet sisters had finished, Mary was already scribbling on paper.

Elizabeth saw her stop writing and asked curiously, "Constructing a new story, Mary?"

Mary: "Uh-huh."

Jane: "Mary says she's going to write a circus story this time."

Elizabeth spoke up rather surprised, "A circus murder?"

Mary: "......"

How come the first reaction is all about this, mystery deduction is not just about murder cases, ok! It's too gory and violent to have people die every day.

"It's a burglary." Mary explained.

"A burglary?"

Elizabeth blinked, "Something to do with the circus? You give me a quick thought!"

What's there to hear! Lydia thought with a huff.

It wasn't just a detective novel, Lydia thought that boring as hell - of course she found any book particularly boring. A while back Jane had sent home a brand-new magazine, saying that Mary's serial was published in it, and Mr. Bennet had read it over and over again not to mention that this came back with a Mary's story to the left and a Mary's story to the right.

What's so rare about it, anyway?

Lydia was jealous and a little resentful. Seeing Jane and Elizabeth, and even Catherine, get curious and sit down next to Mary, she grunted, and without saying a word she stepped straight away and followed with a hard seat.

"What are you doing!" Catherine was bumped hard by Lydia.

"What," Lydia glared back, "I can't sit in the living room?"

This was meant to be followed by everyone listening to Mary talk about the idea.

Lydia listening to Mary talk about conceptualization?

Needless to say, Mary had expected her little sister to be angry and depressed, but she couldn't have imagined that Lydia would still come over to listen to her story - if she was interested, she should at least read the ongoing serialized Serial Killer Chess Game first!

But as Lydia herself had said, she wanted to sit in the living room, and no one could stop her.

So Mary glanced at her with only slight surprise before withdrawing her gaze to look at Jane and Elizabeth.

"As last time," she said, "I have only a rough idea of what will end up as a draft, perhaps entirely different from what I have now."

"Then speak of inspiration," said Jane, relieved; "good writing always needs revision."

"The inspiration came from a wealthy American businessman who ran a circus called P.T. Barnum."

"Ah."

Elizabeth sniffed with a look of realization.

"It's that Barnum who performs for the Queen!" She said.

"What?" Catherine asked blankly.

Guess knew Elizabeth would know of Barnum's existence.

Years ago, there was an article about P.T. Barnum in the magazine newspaper that their father, Mr. Bennet, had brought home. It was also on that article that Mary learned that Barnum was still alive now.

His fame had spread throughout Europe and the United States decades ago, and he had even brought his circus to London in 1844 to perform for the Queen at Buckingham Palace, which had been a sensation in those days.

Elizabeth also loved to read on weekdays, naturally read this story.

"This Barnum, his circus was a worldwide sensation for a time, for no other reason than that his exhibitions were extraordinarily unusual." Mary explained to Catherine.

"What was different?" Catherine pressed.

"Midgets who juggle, black maids who have survived the Revolutionary War, twins whose bodies grow together, and women with long beards, to name a few."

"Women with long beards?!"

Kathryn repeated with unmitigated horror, "How in the world can there be a woman with a beard?"

Whether there were, or were not, real or not, Mary had no idea; after all, she had never seen Barnum's circus on display with her own eyes either.

Knowledge of the legend was thanks to Hugh Jackman's musical movie King of the Circus, and it was only after seeing the movie that she went to get a rough idea of what the real P.T. Barnum was really like.

The storyline in the movie was inspirational and tender, reinforcing the romance and downplaying the reality, like a dream come true. The real P.T. Barnum, however, was highly criticized and reprimanded.

Numerous people say that he has contempt for human rights, that he uses lies to trick his audience into buying tickets, and Mary is not sure exactly what the situation is, but according to the modern theory of public relations, Barnum has a louder name than the king of the circus.

--King of Public Relations.

Mary had never studied public relations, as a twenty-first century commoner, according to her layman's view, Mary thought he could also be called the king of marketing and packaging in the nineteenth century.

People in the nineteenth century accused Barnum of packaging his exhibitions with lies, thus making people lose sight of the items for sale themselves. However, they would never have imagined that in a hundred years or so, the "immorality" that people still criticized today would become a commonplace.

After the development of capitalism in World War II, society had changed drastically. Under the guidance of consumerism, everything in society, even people, were objects of entertainment and consumption. People's spiritual life has entered into a state of near ecstasy-especially after the Internet was introduced to every household.

Everything is a commodity, and everything can be packaged. Gradually, as this phenomenon becomes more and more common, what we consume is no longer a commodity, but a false "landscape".

We are immersed in a landscape society full of advertising, marketing and guidance, everywhere is a show, everywhere is a show, everywhere is a false "public relations", as for what its original face is, the essence of what is not the most important.

Mary had long been accustomed to this kind of business tactics, so when she read through the comments and news criticizing Barnum at that time, the strong sense of contrast made her feel quite emotional.

In comparison, it was no wonder that some realist writers preferred to miss the aristocratic class styles of the past rather than be complicit with the emerging bourgeoisie.

Modern people like Mary, who claim to be sober, have less moral fiber than the people of the nineteenth century.

This gave Mary a slightly different way of thinking about the next case.

"I'd like to write about such a circus," she said, "like Barnum's, with members who are either midgets or handicapped, and who make money off their defects to satisfy the curiosity of the people."

"And what does this have to do with the burglary?" Elizabeth pressed.

Mary was lost in thought for a moment.

She carefully weighed the phrases while quickly clearing her mind.

"Because," she said, "the owner of the circus announced on the first day of his arrival in Paris that he was not here for the purpose of performing."

"Then what was his purpose?"

"He's going to take his circus members," Mary said in a long drawn-out tone, "to steal the most valuable painting in Paris, the Mona Lisa."