In the Miss Marple short story The Blue Geranium, Jean Instow is a friend of George Pritchard.
Jean was attracted to George and admired the devotion with which he tended to his invalid wife Mary Pritchard. In her opinion, he deserved a reward. When Arthur Bantry told Jean about Mary's paranoia regarding the flowers on her wallpaper turning blue, Jean was not sympathetic. If Mary were to die of fright, it might be all for the best, she had told Bantry.
According to Arthur Bantry, Jean was a pretty girl, very fair, "with a healthy skin, and nice steady blue eyes." She shared George Pritchard's interest in golf. Bantry and his wife both felt that Jean and George were well suited to each other, if circumstances had been different.
The mutual attraction between Jean and George made her a possible suspect in the death of Mary, but Miss Marple dismissed this possibility since Jean and George had not married. They had probably suspected each other and kept apart.
Portrayals[]
In the ITV 2010 adaptation of the novel (Episode 3, Season 5 of Agatha Christie's Marple), the character is played by Caroline Katz. Here her name has been changed to Hazel Instow and she has a backstory. She is an artist and the wife of Eddie Seward, a wealthy man who became an abusive drunk. Not able to endure his ill-treatment, she changed her name (her real name being Penelope Seward) and came to the village of Little Ambrose and settled down. When Eddie had more or less gotten rid of his drunken habit, he spotted one of Hazel's paintings in an art gallery and through them, managed to locate her. He travelled to Little Ambrose on a bus and there met Miss Marple. Eddie was later found dead. Miss Marple surmised that Eddie had come to ask Hazel to take him back. She had declined and subsequently Eddie hanged himself. In this adaptation, the theme from the original story of Hazel and George Pritchard suspecting each other of being the killer of Mary Pritchard is developed quite well. Indeed, Hazel accuses George on the street of the killing, George denies it and tries to drag her away just as the police come to arrest him. There was suspicion on Hazel because she was seen in the vicinity of the Pritchard house near the time of Mary's death. But later, Dermot Milewater provided her with an alibi. She had come to see him. She took her religion and her vows seriously and was conflicted about the fact that being married herself, she was nonetheless having an affair with a married man. Hazel and George were seen going off together at the end of the show.
In the NHK adaptation The Blue Geranium, Episode 15 of their anime series Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple, Jean Instow also appears but has a very small role. She only has a few lines where for example she tells Miss Marple that she believes that George couldn't have done the killing. There is no back story and the viewer is merely told that she is a friend of George. She is not considered a suspect in this adaptation.