The Murder of Harriet Monckton

by Elizabeth Haynes

  ‘Girls, girls. Back to your work,’ I said. It is a rare day that I need to raise my voice to them now, once they have settled to their tasks, but the sight of the uniform seemed to inspire a kind of madness in them. My own heart was beating hard and fast, thinking perhaps he had come to arrest me. I forced myself to breathe slowly; blinked once. Took my time to respond.

  ‘Rebecca, perhaps you will take over the supervision. Miss Finch, keep your girls in order, please. I shall be listening out for you.’

  I took the sergeant outside and closed the door. Before he could speak, I held up my hand to silence him, and listened for uproar within. Nothing. All was quiet. They were either terrified, or listening at the door.

  ‘How can I help you, sergeant?’

  ‘It’s the inquest, miss. Coroner requests your attendance at one o’clock.’

  ‘But that’s in an hour! I cannot possibly dismiss the school so early.’

  The sergeant stared back, resolute.

  ‘I have no replacement,’ I hissed, ‘since my own deputy was murdered.’

  I saw him blink. Perhaps he was noting my dissent; he would report it back to the coroner. Some penalty might be imposed.

  ‘I am able to attend at three, and not before,’ I said, by way of compromise. ‘Perhaps you could inform the coroner.’

  I left him standing there and went back inside. The girls’ heads were all bent studiously to their tasks. If I had regained my composure, I should have addressed them directly: Listen and learn, girls. When you are afraid, you simply pretend that you are not, and it is very difficult to tell the difference. And the other lesson: You do not always have to do what men tell you to do.

  Thomas Churcher

  Harriet was dead.

  I saw her body myself, with my own eyes, and yet in my dreams she was still walking and talking as if she was not. Every night I dreamed of her, and awoke bereft again, remembering. Losing her afresh every day. I walked the fields late into the night, trying to exhaust myself so that thoughts of her would not haunt me, and yet each time she was there, just before the dawn.

  I caught her in snatches, fragments of memory or half-remembered things.

  Her hands, how they were so delicate, slender fingers and pale skin. Holding her hand and feeling the bones in it, like a bird’s, the softness of her palm turned up to my lips so that I could kiss it. Hands accustomed to holding books rather than tools; hands that guided others.

  From the doorway of the shop once, years ago, when she was still a girl, I saw her in the market talking to a woman with two children, an older girl and a baby, just barely on its feet, its hand fisted around the girl’s index finger. And the girl was laughing with Harriet and her mother, and Harriet’s hand on the baby’s head. I had watched her hand and thought how gentle she was, how tender, and yet how strong.

  ‘You are a brave man, Thomas,’ she said, more recently. She was laughing when she said it but she meant it nonetheless. We were sitting on the bank of the river with our faces to the dregs of the late autumn sun. I should have been working but Clara was in the shop and Father was away, so I told my sister I was going to call on our grandmother. And after that I called on Harriet.

  ‘Brave,’ I said, ‘I don’t think so.’

  I had told Emma; broken off our association. In the end, it had been easy. I had Harriet’s words in my mind, the promise of her. If I had Harriet, I had no fear of anything, not even the fury of Emma Milstead. I cannot be with you any more. You should find yourself someone who is worthy of you. I had said it kindly, and at first Emma was tearful, and then a very short time after that she was angry. I knew she would be. She had been angry with me before. Why? she asked me. I could have told her any number of things. That I did not want to have children with a woman who had such a violent temper; that I did not like her mother; that I thought she was too beautiful to be with a man like me. I could have told her any number of truths, but instead I said, I don’t love you, Emma. The tears dried and her face reddened with rage, and she shouted and called me fickle and cruel, and said nobody in the town would have anything to do with me, once the truth was told. Then she had stamped her foot, and turned and run away, back to the town. I’d watched her go and I should have felt more – sadness, perhaps, or a horror at what I had done – but instead all that remained was relief.

  ‘I didn’t think you would do it,’ Harriet said.

  ‘You asked me to,’ I said. ‘I would do anything you asked. Anything.’

  She kissed me, then, or perhaps she did not; perhaps this is one of those misremembered dreams. It does not matter now. I can imagine that she kissed me for a long time, her hand soft against my cheek, and how good that felt, to be that free. ‘You are a good man, Thomas Churcher,’ she said to me. ‘You are a good man, a kind man, and you deserve to be loved.’

  I dreamt that she was drowning in the river, that I jumped into the water to save her and it took me too. The last thing I saw was her face beneath the water, her arms outstretched, delicate fingers clutching for my hand, black blood between her teeth. I woke in a panic, my heart pounding with it, the same thought that I had every time I woke: Harriet is dead. I cannot save her. I am too late.

  Reverend George Verrall

  ‘I swear by Almighty God …’ Sergeant King began.

  He said he was at the Station House between one and two o’clock. He said that the Reverend Mr Verrall of Bromley Chapel, accompanied by the superintendent of the chapel – that’s Churcher, Thomas, although he was not the superintendent, he had no such title but what was the man to know about such things? He saw me, and Churcher, and assumed that he was my deputy.

  ‘Mr Verrall said they had been searching for her since ten o’clock in the forenoon and that she was …’

  And the man looked down at his notebook and consulted it for the exact words I am supposed to have used, although through the mouth of the police sergeant they do not sound like my words at all.

  ‘He said she was “a pious and a modest girl” and he feared she had “destroyed herself”.’

  yes, yes I feared that

  I told you I feared that

  lie upon lie George

  may God Himself strike me down

  Thomas Churcher

  She was afraid of him, of the reverend.

  ‘Why?’ I asked her. ‘He is a godly man.’

  She looked at me, a wry grin twisting the corner of her mouth. ‘I think that he is not. He is a man who tries to be godly, and falls a little short.’

  ‘We all try, and we all fall short, except for the Son of Man himself.’

  Her gaze dropped to her hands, open and loose in her lap. I took hold of one of them and held it tightly for a moment. I did not understand, of course. I understood nothing then, except for how this made me feel; how my heart soared like a bird when I was with her.

  ‘Has he hurt you?’ I asked her.

  ‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t think badly of him. He is your pastor. He will still be here long after I am gone.’

  ‘What am I to think, then, that you are afraid of him?’

  She was quiet for a while, her hand still inside mine. I wanted her to turn to me and kiss me but she was deep in thought; wisps of hair curling over the back of her neck, under her bonnet.

  ‘I told him something once, in confidence.’

  ‘Yes?’ I said, encouraging her.

  ‘I rather think that it was a mistake.’

  ‘A mistake?’

  ‘He forgets nothing, even those things you would prefer him to forget.’

  ‘You are afraid that he will not keep your confidence? Surely he must; it is the obligation of his profession.’

  And she turned her face to me, and smiled. ‘Let’s talk of nicer things,’ she said.

  I thanked God for the warm evenings, although the days were now short and we were meeting more often in the dark. We took advantage of the days when I finished work early, meeting in our secret places: the furthes
t reaches of the river, the woodlands behind the Archbishop’s Palace, the chapel. The space behind the chapel, when there were too many people around. We sat on the ground with our backs to its southern wall, talking in whispers because on the other side of the wall was the back yard of the Three Compasses. Once we sat and listened to an entire conversation between a drayman and one of the barmaids, neither of them any the wiser. We watched each other’s eyes, holding our hands over our mouths to stop any sound from escaping. Once, meeting earlier in the day, we listened to some men in the field behind, singing and telling stories. Once, she fell asleep there with her head upon my shoulder, whilst I sat motionless and holding my breath lest I disturbed her.

  She told me of Miss Williams, how sweet and kind she was. I replied that the rest of the town thought her rather fierce, myself included. Several times she had scolded me like a child for getting in her way, or standing too long in one spot, or – once – for ‘looking oafish’. That made Harriet laugh.

  ‘She is the loveliest woman alive,’ she said. ‘I wish I were more like her.’

  ‘You are lovelier,’ I said.

  She blushed and pulled a face, and pretended to push me away. ‘But of course she’ll never marry. Not Miss Williams.’

  ‘Indeed, she is too old,’ I said in reply. ‘If she hasn’t found a husband by now, I can’t see as anyone will take her. He’d need to be a brave man to do it.’

  ‘Why?’

  I hesitated, choosing my words. ‘She likes to keep control of those around her. The same way she takes her lessons. She does it with you, too, Harriet.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She keeps you on a very tight rein,’ I said.

  She looked thoughtful, and did not reply. It was growing dark, and I offered her my hand to help her up the bank, lest she lose her footing and fall into the river.

  ‘I should like to marry,’ she said, climbing to my level. She placed her hand on my arm for support. I did not move away.

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘I should like to promise to love one man above all others. And to be loved in return.’

  I felt my heart beating in my chest at the closeness of her. Her dress felt smooth, silken. The evening was salty, dusty, the air full of the scent of bare earth and dry leaves.

  She was twenty-three, the same age as me. I should have asked her, then and there, for my heart had been beating warm and strong for her for seven long years. But I did not ask. It was only seven days since I had broken off with Emma. I thought I should wait a little while, speak to my father, speak to the reverend.

  And I waited, and because of that I lost her.

  Reverend George Verrall

  ‘Mr Verrall? Are you quite well?’

  I found myself outside, in the yard. There was little breeze to stir the air, and I was seated upon the steps of the workhouse, my head bent low. Albert Richardson was next to me, his hand upon my shoulder.

  ‘Reverend?’

  ‘Quite well, thank you,’ I said, but even to my own ears my voice sounded feeble. ‘Rather warm in there, I felt.’

  ‘Yes indeed.’

  Without asking my leave, he took it upon himself to perch on the step next to me. ‘You must be feeling this worse than any of us,’ he remarked.

  I flexed my jaw for a moment before responding. ‘What do you mean?’

  He fixed me with his insipid blue eyes, widened for effect. ‘Just that you and she were friends, were you not?’

  so it begins

  ‘She was a member of my congregation, Mr Richardson.’

  ‘Of course, of course. Nobody’s saying nothing else, Mr Verrall.’

  liar

  liar

  I waited, in case he went away, but he did not.

  ‘What did he say?’ I asked, at length. ‘The sergeant. What else did he say?’

  ‘Just all the places they looked. And then how Mr Sweeting and Mr Churcher came running up to him to say she had been discovered in the chapel.’

  ‘In the privy,’ I said. ‘Not in the chapel itself.’

  ‘And how he sent for the surgeon and how he guarded the body in the meantime so that none should touch it. And then how he went rooting about in the night soil and came across a bottle that had been tossed in there. He gave the bottle to the surgeon, to check what was in it. Surgeon said it smelled of salts. I reckon it smelled of night soil myself.’

  like he got close enough

  ‘Quite.’

  Behind us, the doors opened and the crowd began to issue forth. Albert and I jumped to our feet to avoid being trampled. The great throng of Bromley gossips went forth to spread the word. At the back, Maud Richardson with her daughter.

  ‘There you are! Where’d you go running off to?’ she demanded of her husband.

  ‘I was just seeing that the reverend was well,’ he said. ‘Thought he looked a bit peaky, rushing out like that.’

  Maud noticed me then. ‘Good heavens, yes. You do look most peculiar, Reverend.’

  ‘I assure you both, I am fine.’

  ‘What’s gone on?’ Albert asked his wife, tilting his head to the door.

  ‘They are stopping for dinner. This afternoon they are going to call Miss Williams, I told Mary we’d come back. Three o’clock sharp.’

  now there will be a tale to hear

  Frances Williams

  I dismissed the girls at half-past two; an hour early. Mr Campling sighed and grumbled at it, but even he is not belligerent enough to argue with a court of law.

  I could sense the atmosphere in the Market Place as I crossed it, and outside the workhouse where they were gathered in groups. I caught snippets of conversation as I passed, angry at myself for failing to meet their eyes and show them my defiance. Too late, I wished I had attended the inquest earlier, to understand the proceedings, to get a sense of it all. I was coming into this blind, and I was – to my own bitter disappointment – afraid.

  My usual response to feelings of fear and discomfort is to react with yet more determination and stoicism, and today was no exception. I should perhaps have apologised to the court for my failure to attend when requested, but one glimpse of the old man who sat in judgement of us – of Harriet, and of me – made the tatters of my heart harden. Your dusty grey wig does not make you my better, Mr Carttar, I thought.

  ‘Miss Williams, thank you for taking the trouble to attend.’

  He was expecting me to apologise, and this was my opportunity. I raised my chin instead.

  ‘If you would be so kind, pray tell us how you knew the deceased.’

  I cleared my throat to begin. ‘I was well acquainted with Miss Monckton. She was assisting me in the management of my school. We met eighteen months after my arrival in Bromley, as she had been employed for some time at a school in Hackney. We were introduced upon her return.’

  ‘And you became friends?’

  ‘Yes. Good friends.’

  From somewhere behind me I heard a snigger, and a shush. Despite my resolve, I felt the heat rise in my cheeks.

  A deep breath, then another.

  The coroner said, ‘And now, Miss Williams, if you could tell us everything you recall about the night of the 6th of November.’

  Another breath. Do not gasp. Do not hesitate, or stumble over your words. You are fluent. You are eloquent. You are recalling a memory of another person, nothing else. This is not difficult. All you need to do is state the facts.

  ‘Harriet had stayed overnight with me on the Sunday night, and she was to have done so on the Monday night too. She had taken my place at the school on Monday, as I was unwell.’

  ‘Unwell, Miss Williams?’

  ‘I had a bad chest,’ I said, and once again I heard a murmur, a snort coming from behind me. Surely my girls are better behaved than these, their loutish parents!

  ‘And the deceased?’

  ‘During Sunday and Monday she was in perfectly good health and spirits. Better than normal if anything, which I attributed to her
having procured a situation as teacher at a school at Arundel in Sussex.’

  At the right hand of the coroner sat another man, a sourfaced clerk with thin black hair plastered wetly over his skull. Until that moment I had not paid him any attention, but now I realised he was writing down what I was saying. At my continued silence the man looked up and glared.

  ‘She took tea with me and Clara Churcher at about six o’clock on Monday evening,’ I said. ‘And then, at about seven o’clock, she said she would go out to catch the post and return shortly. She had been writing a letter.’

  And in her diary. I could picture it; Harriet bent with her head low, writing in the journal she carried everywhere with her. The letter lay unfinished before her, and I had wondered what sudden observation had caused her to break off the writing of it and transfer her attention to noting some private recollection.

  I had been dozing in the chair by the fire, having hardly slept the night before. I did not see her finish the letter. I did not see where she put her journal.

  ‘I fully expected her back long before nine o’clock, but I did not see her again. She never returned.’

  I felt the emotion of it rising up in my chest, threatening to spill out. I swallowed it back down again. Not here, not now. Later I could cry. Later I could wail and scream and beat my fists against my forehead; not now. Retell the facts, I thought. Just that: the facts. ‘She never returned, which very much surprised me. I supposed she had gone home to her mother’s.’

  I wished desperately for a glass of water, something to swallow down the tide of anxiety, the fear of saying the wrong thing. Of giving away some detail that should attract their attention.

  ‘Thank you. Now you are no doubt aware that the surgeon has conducted a post-mortem on the deceased?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you may have heard that the surgeon concluded that the deceased was found to be five or six months advanced in pregnancy, is that the case?’