The Murder of Harriet Monckton

by Elizabeth Haynes

  ‘I have been told as much,’ I said.

  ‘Were you aware of her pregnancy before that?’

  Liar, liar, Frances Williams! Do you dare?

  ‘I had thought her rather stout of late, but I did not know, nor did it occur to me, that she was in the family way.’

  ‘And her emotional state at the time did not betray her condition to you?’

  ‘On Sunday evening she was in high spirits.’

  ‘Why do you suppose that was?’

  Harriet, in my room, singing and dancing. Often on a Sunday she was subdued; something about attending the chapel three times made her melancholy. Or perhaps not that; perhaps I should say reflective. But on that last Sunday she was different. She was almost joyous. What are you about? I had asked her. What’s this, girl, so much joy?

  And she said, In a few days I shall be free of all this. In a few days I will escape.

  Escape me? I asked, dreading her answer.

  Of course, not you. I shall miss you, Frances. I shall miss you so very much.

  And she had taken my face in her hands and kissed my mouth quickly. Oh, that she had lingered! Sometimes she did, in a tease. Her lips on mine, held there as if she had forgotten what she was doing and was distracted by the sensation. And then I would move, and the spell would break and she would leave me. I should do anything – anything – to prevent that.

  Is Bromley really so very dreadful, I asked her, that you should long for escape?

  And then her smile dropped a little. I need to be free, she said.

  Of me? I asked.

  Of him, she said.

  Who?

  And she shook her head and pulled out her journal, and read something and smiled again.

  I could guess at it, though. I could guess at the man who troubled her this severely, that she should long for a strange place in preference to her home.

  ‘And did she have other close friends, Miss Williams?’

  I cleared my throat. ‘She was a regular attendant at Mr Verrall’s chapel,’ I said.

  ‘She was to leave for her situation shortly, as you understand it?’

  Behind me, the crowd stirred. I wondered if Verrall was present. I had not noticed him as I came in, and that was unusual. In any given room, the reverend stood out. Not for appearance, for he was as a man, in my opinion, quite nondescript, with his brown whiskers, bare at the chin, tallish but not too tall; average in every possible way. But he had an energy about him, a fervour, perhaps you could call it that. He drew people to him, and his congregation swelled.

  I felt it, and I resisted. I always resist compulsion.

  But that is not true at all. I was compelled to love Harriet, and I let myself do it. Perhaps that is why she died.

  ‘I understood from her that she was going to Arundel in a few days,’ I said.

  ‘Apologies for the delicate nature of my questions, Miss Williams, but do you know of any man who had expressed a particular fondness for the deceased? Anyone to whom she had grown attached?’

  I paused, took a breath in. ‘I heard nothing of any person being in love with her.’

  It’s always best to avoid an outright lie, if you can. But presenting a half-truth can prove difficult if you are called upon to elaborate or explain. I had not answered his question, preferring instead to answer another. I heard nothing, for scarcely anybody spoke to me, especially not to gossip. Doubtless if the coroner asked the same question of Susannah Garn, or Lottie Beezley, there might be said to be any number of people in love with her. Perhaps they might even include me, although I doubt they should name me thus in a courtroom.

  I heard nothing of any person being in love with her. I saw it, of course, all the time, if indeed that was what it was. Infatuation, perhaps; lust. I saw that all the time. I saw it and knew it. But love? Perhaps that was just me.

  The coroner dismissed me after that, and called Alfred Garn, Susannah’s half-witted brother. I was almost tempted to join the throng at the back of the room, for curiosity’s sake, but I felt them staring as I walked past and I had no wish to stay.

  Reverend George Verrall

  The mind is a curious device; one that enjoys torturing its host. I can never quite comprehend it, the efforts the mind goes to, to undermine one’s own sense of wellbeing. If it is not questioning decisions, judging one’s physical appearance or creating pains and chills that have no apparent cause, it is imagining phantoms and creating nightmares with which to disrupt the only time one should expect peace and quiet.

  I woke from a dream, sitting upright in bed, my nightshirt soaked with sweat, breathing hard. It took a moment for me to come to my senses, to realise where I was, and not where I thought I had been.

  Sarah turned in bed. I had forgotten she was there. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing. A dream. Go back to sleep.’

  I tried to settle but found I could not; after a few minutes of lying motionless, my heart still pounding, I rose and took a blanket from the chair. With that about my shoulders I went downstairs, found a candle on the hall table and lit it. The fire in the study was barely glowing, but with the door closed and the silence all around me I fancied it was almost comforting. At times like this I regret my vow of temperance; a tot of something, brandy perhaps, would be just the thing to send me back to sleep.

  But alcohol was the fuel of the Devil, and the Lord Himself knew that I needed no further assistance from that quarter.

  The room looked very different, now, from how it had looked in my dream. In my dream it was bright daylight, five or six or seven policemen in here, searching through all of my things. The sunlight allowing nothing to be hidden: dust and papers and books thrown into the air whilst I pleaded for them to take better care. My cries went unheard, as if I were not there at all, or I had turned invisible. The couch was overturned, the upholstery rent with a pocket-knife, and I protested and protested, unheeded. I did not ask what they were looking for, or suggest I could help them in their search. I just wanted them to stop.

  And at the height of it, when the table lamp was thrown to the floor and smashed into a thousand glittering shards, scattering across the floorboards, I saw the object of their search: on the mantelpiece was a glass bottle with a large label proclaiming ‘POISON’.

  Still they searched; I tried to turn them from their task, tried to push them from the door, but they ignored me – and the bottle. But surely it could only be a matter of moments before one of them turned to the fireplace and saw it, and a further moment before they charged me with the ownership of it, I who had denied it all …

  At that moment I had started myself into wakefulness and the dream dispersed.

  I felt little short of exhausted here in the study, but I did not want to return to bed and to sleep. Instead I sat on the couch – which was, almost to my surprise, fully intact – and looked to the mantelpiece as if expecting to find the glass bottle there, or for it to appear before my eyes like a parlour trick.

  I was a foolish old man, to be thus affected. And by a dream! None of it was real. In a few days or maybe a week the inquest would reach a verdict, and all of this would be at an end. I would rest easy again, and Bromley would return to the way it had been before Harriet even arrived. It had to be so, because the alternative proposition was too hideous to contemplate.

  To pass the time until daylight, or until I could sleep again, I tidied the papers on my desk, reading through the notes for future sermons that I had made in the weeks past. All seemed pathetic, uninspiring, vapid. I had written so much better! What had happened to me? I thought back to the time before Harriet, to Phoebe; in those days I had produced the best sermons of all. The Lord had spoken to me then in a way that He had not done since. Perhaps I should have tried harder with Phoebe; then Harriet might have been just a brief interlude, someone to keep me in mind of the nature of the Lord whilst I waited for my Fire and Glory to return.

  Perhaps Mrs Burton knew where Phoebe was. I resolved to as
k, in the morning. Perhaps we could find her, bring her back to Bromley, and then everything would be as it was before all of this sorry business had begun. The sooner it was ended, the better.

  I stared once again at the mantelpiece with dry, tired eyes, and in that moment inspiration struck me.

  dear God!

  thank you, thank you

  For the unravellings of my fevered mind had given me an idea after all, one that came from the Lord Himself. Inspiration. The bottle. The search for the bottle.

  I took up my pen and found some notepaper in the drawer, addressed the note and dated it, and asked of Mr Carttar the coroner to consider whether it were possible that the deceased had taken the prussic acid in some other manner than as a liquid; whether the poison was obtainable as a powder, or as a pill, or as a dragee; and, that being the case, whether the search for a bottle had been entirely unnecessary, and its absence not therefore a conclusive defence against self-harm. After all, the most likely answer to the dilemma was yet that Harriet had taken her own life. She was unmarried, and with child; she had secured a position that she could, in her condition, never have taken up. What further reason did she need to wish to depart this life?

  The letter written and sealed, I felt a sense of deep relief. That was it, then: what the Lord had been trying to tell me, through the medium of my fevered dreams.

  I should be better at listening for His Voice.

  Saturday, 11th November, 1843

  Thomas Churcher

  Father and James left me in bed this morning. I was pretending to be asleep, although they made enough noise getting up and dressed. I had been dreaming about Harriet, and I wanted to stay with her for as long as I could.

  That day we went to the woods instead of the back of the chapel or by the river, and walked through the trees, talking. I was telling her about boots and shoes and how they are made, and why our boots are better than Ayling’s or Burgess’s, because of the quality of the leather. She said she should never buy shoes elsewhere as long as she lived, and I smiled and said in that case she might be my best customer.

  We walked away from the paths and deep into the woods where the ground was uneven, thick with pine needles that were soft underfoot like a mattress, soft and fragrant and smelling of the rich earth and the cool wind. I found some cyclamen and gathered up some flowers for her, and she smiled and thanked me, and by and by we got to the edge of the wood and walked along the hedgerow back towards the town, picking blackberries and vying to find the biggest and the best, until my fingers were stained with the juice and her mouth was dark with it, and I kissed her, tasting the warm sweetness of the berries in my mouth and hers. I felt the heat rising up inside me and I wanted her. She was in my arms and I moved my hand to her waist and I felt something, like a stiffness, perhaps, or a hesitation. It was enough. I held her again and kissed her but I did not force her. I thought she would come to me when she was ready, and, if that happened, I would be waiting.

  When we parted I looked at her and in the dappled light of the sun her pale skin and dark eyes and the red of her mouth were so beautiful, so lovely.

  And the darkness of her lips made me think of the blood and then all I could see was dead Harriet instead and I had to get up and get dressed and go for a walk to get the picture of it out of my mind.

  Dark blood between her lips, like varnish, her eyes glazed, her skin still warm.

  Reverend George Verrall

  I woke late and lay for a while listening to the sounds of Sarah and Mrs Burton discussing the purchase of new linens. Jessie would be with them, standing there wide-eyed and dumb, waiting for something that sounded like an instruction. Phoebe would have involved herself in the discussion from beginning to end; perhaps she was in a new house now, as a housekeeper, with Mrs Burton’s no doubt effusive letter of introduction to assuage any doubts as to her character.

  I heard Sarah’s voice grow louder as she came out into the hall: ‘… that girl needs a job to do.’

  That girl needs help, George.

  She had said that to me the night before Harriet died, sitting in the parlour after supper.

  ‘That girl needs help.’

  ‘I do not see,’ I said petulantly, ‘why I should be the one to do it.’

  She put down her work and stared at me. ‘Because the Lord calls you to help those in need, George. Do I really need to explain it to you?’

  ‘I’ll thank you not to take that tone, Sarah. You are the first to say that charity should be for those who are in need through no fault of their own.’

  ‘And is this situation her sin alone?’ She set her mouth in a line. ‘You should think, perhaps, of the consequences of your actions, and of your inaction.’

  And she bent her head to the embroidery once more. A dozen remonstrations filled my thoughts but I could give none of them voice. What did she mean? That the chapel would be tainted by the association, once it came out? That I might be suspected of putting a child in her belly?

  you should have helped her when you had the chance to

  It was too late to do anything to fix it now.

  That evening we had sat in silence for a long while, until the tangle of my thoughts unravelled to the sudden horrifying idea that if I did not offer some sort of practical solution, then Sarah might well seek out Harriet herself and offer some sort of assistance, as part of her pastoral duties. If I did not take care of it, then the matter would escalate out of my control.

  ‘I shall see her in the chapel,’ I told Sarah. ‘Tomorrow evening. I will pray with her, and offer assistance. Will that satisfy you?’

  And she had nodded, and offered a curious sort of smile, and said no more about it.

  too little

  too late

  Richard Field

  Maria joined me for supper, which pleased me greatly. I tried my best to lighten the mood with conversation, but she kept her head down and spooned her soup.

  I had spent the morning at my club, scouring all the newspapers for any mention of the dreadful events in Bromley. That I found nothing at all was a good sign; perhaps the journalists would steer clear of it. And yet it made me feel sad, too, that Harriet’s untimely death was something so unremarkable as to go unreported.

  ‘What I can’t get over,’ I said, chewing, ‘is what she was doing with that Williams woman.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ Maria said, but quietly.

  We had discussed it already at some length. We knew of Miss Williams, of course, from Harriet’s letters to us. At first we had been pleased that she had found a friend, for at first her letters back from Bromley had been full of melancholy. She had complained of her mother and her sister, of feeling lonely; of the townsfolk being cold and ignoring her. She said that she thought it was because she had returned wearing London clothes and having clearly expanded her own means, which had made Maria snort. I recall one letter in particular where she had said quite clearly, ‘I am not well liked.’ She had mentioned the Churchers, a family she had known for years, and other members of the chapel; but none who seemed to be close friends.

  But then she had made the acquaintance of Miss Williams, a spinster more than ten years her senior, and everything had seemed to change. All her letters were about Miss Williams: how she talked, what she ate and wore, what lessons she was teaching to the girls in her care.

  ‘You cannot complain of her making new friends,’ Maria had said to me, at the time. ‘After all, if she had not been the kind of girl to nurture intimate friendships with her own sex, you and I would never have been introduced.’

  ‘That is true, dearest, and I’m not complaining,’ I had replied. ‘I just think it a little odd, for a woman like that to attach herself to a younger female.’

  ‘Attach herself! What on earth is that supposed to mean?’

  I did not answer. I could not say why I felt so uneasy about it.

  ‘Anyway, you haven’t even met the lady in question. She must be perfectly decent, if Harriet likes he
r so much.’

  Nevertheless, in my letters of reply I asked Harriet more questions about Miss Williams, to satisfy myself that she was not being led astray. All enquiries were answered joyfully; it seemed there was no limit to the brilliance and resourcefulness of her new friend. And then within a short matter of time Harriet was spending the night with her, ostensibly to avoid the walk back across the fields to her mother’s house, and yet that in itself seemed very odd, to me.

  Her final letter to us, which arrived just this very week, showed the extent of the woman’s manipulative skills – Harriet had delayed her travel to us in order to deputise for Miss Williams at the school because she was supposedly unwell. Who knew but that Harriet’s life might have been saved, had she only made the journey as she had originally intended?

  I said as much, again, to Maria as Annie cleared our plates.

  ‘I do wish you’d stop,’ Maria said, as the door closed.

  ‘But I can’t help but see the significance of it,’ I insisted. ‘That she was sleeping with her! Do you not see it?’

  ‘All I know is that my friend is dead, Richard, and we must accept some responsibility for it.’

  Her words had a cold finality about them, and she stood up – a little awkwardly – and left me to sit at the table and enjoy a pipe and a glass of port on my own.

  She was right, of course. Harriet was dead. And, the more you looked at it, the more it became my fault.

  Sunday, 12th November, 1843

  Reverend George Verrall

  The attendance at the morning service was poor, very poor. There was not even bad weather to account for it, for the Sabbath day was grey and cloudy, not at all cold. The air hung outside much as it did within the glorious walls of the Lord’s house, gloomy and turgid. That morning, in my dressingroom, I had taken myself in hand and indulged myself in the hope that my sermon might be enlivened somewhat by it; my original talk had had to be put aside following the terrible events of the week, and I feared that my own grief at the loss of Harriet would prevent me from delivering the Lord’s Word to my flock in a manner which they would find enlightening.