The Murder of Harriet Monckton

by Elizabeth Haynes

  But that did not happen. I opened the door and he was standing in the parlour.

  Clara got to her feet.

  ‘Tom,’ she said, ‘the sergeant has come to ask you a few questions.’

  Reverend George Verrall

  I should like to say I remembered Harriet from the first time she came to the chapel, but I am afraid that I cannot. She was there as an older girl, sitting with Clara Churcher. Her parents worshipped elsewhere, I presumed at the parish church, so she had begun to attend of her own volition, perhaps as a form of rebellion, or experimentation. She was a serious, quiet girl, who rarely spoke out and only spoke to say goodbye and thank you to me after the services.

  At some point she was no longer there, and I believe that must have been when she went to London to teach. She would occasionally come back to Bromley to visit her family at the weekend and would appear at the chapel for the Sunday morning service. She grew into a fine, attractive young woman. I believe teaching was good for her, because her confidence grew and on the occasions that she visited she would sometimes speak to myself or the deacons after the service about some matter of interpretation, or to ask for us to pray for her, or her father, who was ailing.

  Eventually she returned from Hackney, and after that her attendance at the chapel was very regular indeed. I dare say she did not miss any service or meeting at the church at all.

  All of these things I shall say to them, if they ask. And the other things I shall keep to myself.

  Clara Churcher was pleased with Harriet’s return from London, for she had been badgering me for help running the Sunday School for weeks, and Harriet, as a teacher, was the perfect person. After a morning service Clara came to me again, this time to ask permission to approach her friend about the Sunday School, and I told her to bring her to speak to me after service.

  That very evening, Clara brought the girl to the vestry after the service. I recall I was in something of a hurry to get home.

  ‘Reverend, I believe you know Harriet Monckton. She is willing to help me with the school, while she waits for her next position.’

  I looked up from my desk. Was I peevish? I don’t recall, but I must have felt something. Annoyance at the interruption, perhaps. Cross that Clara had clearly told the girl that she would be given the position as Sunday School teacher, when I had told her I wanted to speak with her first. That it had all been rushed through, and taken out of my hands.

  Perhaps I tutted. Clara had set her mouth tight and thin, expecting something, an argument. Disagreement. And, behind her, a dark-haired, dark-eyed vixen, smirking.

  ‘Very well,’ I said, or something similar.

  Disturbing, that was what it was. I had mixed feelings about her, from that moment on. I couldn’t say why. She was perfectly pleasant, and kind to the children, and good at keeping them in order. She joined in with the prayers, and sang well, and looked up at the pulpit, listening to every word. Yes, that was it: she listened. Sometimes I would look out over the congregation and despair of them. George Sweeting, waiting intently for the messages that he could take and twist for his own ends. Mr Joyce, asleep. Mary Ford, head down, either asleep or daydreaming but in any case certainly not concentrating on the Word. Not listening. I can bring fire and damnation into it, I can shout about the hellfire that awaits them, sinners all, I can call them pilgrims and penitents and lambs and disciples, but half the time they are thinking about their dinner, or the conversation they had with their children last night, or the price of fruit at the market. They are not listening, not really there.

  is that my failing or theirs?

  forgive me Father for I have sinned

  There she was, just behind Clara Churcher, standing in the open door.

  ‘Well, Miss Churcher, you can leave us in peace.’

  She turned and left, and closed the door behind her.

  ‘Am I disturbing you?’

  ‘No, not at all. Come in, Miss Monckton. Take a seat.’

  ‘I wished to compliment you on a most enlightening sermon.’

  fixing me with that dark-eyed fathomless stare

  like a fox looking at a rabbit

  ‘Thank you. Praise be to the Lord for his blessed Word.’

  ‘I give thanks for it.’

  ‘And you wish to help with the Sunday School?’

  ‘I have been teaching at a school in Hackney, and I should like to help Clara until I find a new position.’

  ‘Why did you leave your situation there?’ I asked, thinking that if it were a matter of discipline or dubious morality, I should know about it.

  Her face flushed and she could not look at me, but instead addressed her hands, clutched in front of her, and said that she had grown homesick and that since the death of her father her mother needed her at home. I did not believe a word of it. I supposed there to have been some failed romance, or some dispute with another teacher. But she seemed intelligent enough, and so I told her she should begin to assist Miss Churcher, and resolved to keep a close eye on her.

  She came every Sunday. Sometimes she helped with the Sunday School but if there were not many in attendance she would sit for the whole service. George Sweeting, the superintendent of the Sunday School, said she was perfectly adequate, although occasionally a little free with her manner. I asked him what he meant by it. He said that she was always eager to do singing, and the reading of stories from the Gospel, and less keen on leading the children in silent prayer.

  She was always at the chapel. She became part of the building, almost. I recall a men’s Bible study and for a moment I was about to say, ‘Where is Harriet?’ for the sole reason that her presence was almost ubiquitous.

  Of course, her presence disturbed our status quo. Especially for Tom Churcher. When Harriet Monckton went to London he seemed to mature: he took over the chapel music, grew in confidence, spoke up at chapel meetings and started to court Emma Milstead. I thought he had forgotten Harriet entirely, but of course I was wrong. If I believed in such superstitious notions, I should have said that she bewitched him.

  For the rest, she was to all appearances a pious girl. Serious-natured. Thoughtful. If you had asked the congregation what they thought of her, that is most likely what they would say.

  She was good at fooling people, even from the very start.

  Thomas Churcher

  ‘My father will be back soon,’ I said to the sergeant. ‘Or we can go to the shop. Ask me questions there.’

  ‘No need for that, lad,’ he said, slowly, like he was talking to a simpleton. ‘I’m here now. Just sit down and I’ll ask you a few questions and you can answer them and then I’ll be on my way.’

  I looked at Clara. She nodded.

  ‘I’ve told you what happened,’ I said.

  Clara was staring. I looked at her, desperate. ‘Sit down, Tom,’ she said.

  I sat. My knee jumped a merry dance. He looked at it. I put my hand on it but it would not stop.

  ‘You said you spent the afternoon looking for Harriet,’ he said.

  I thought hard. What to say, what to say? Say nothing was the best thing to do, but here he was and here I was and there was nothing for it.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Who asked you to do that?’ he asked.

  It was a trick, I thought, he wanted me to say Mr Verrall, so I did not. ‘Nobody asked me. I wanted to help.’

  He looked like a kind man but he was big, red in the face, like a farmer or a smith, not a police officer with his uniform and his tall hat.

  ‘When did you hear that Miss Monckton was missing?’

  This was easier, I had answered this one before. ‘Mr Beezley told me. He said she was expected back the night before – Monday night – and she did not come.’

  ‘And what did you think had happened to her?’

  I frowned. What had I thought? I had thought nothing. Nothing at all.

  He went, eventually. The questions went on and on until I couldn’t think straight any more and I think
he saw that. He said he would come back. I told him I needed to speak to my father. And he looked at me oddly. Perhaps I had said something wrong.

  After he had gone I sat for a while with Clara drinking tea but she would not stop talking about Harriet and I could not listen. It was as though Harriet was hers. It felt as if they all thought Harriet belonged to them. Mr Verrall, Mary Ann, Mrs Monckton, Clara. Miss Williams. They each had a Harriet but it was not the same as the real Harriet, who belonged to me, and only me.

  Richard Field

  In the public bar at the White Hart I had to wait to attract the attention of the landlord, who was deep in conversation with two other men, one wearing the leather jacket common to hedge-cutters in the countryside, the other dressed more for town, and inebriated, judging by the slump of his frame against the counter.

  ‘… there should be none of it. He lords it over the town, like he owns the place, and owns us,’ said the man in tweeds.

  ‘Right enough,’ said the hedge-cutter.

  ‘For all that posturing …’

  ‘If he di’n’t do it, then someone put her there for him to find, I reckon.’

  The landlord noticed me then and straightened, and left the two of them to their opinions, and came to serve me. His name was Pawley, and he was kind enough to pretend to recognise me from my previous visits, as well as being in receipt of my letter asking him to keep a room for me.

  ‘My apologies, sir,’ he said, as we climbed the stairs, ‘if you found the conversation in the bar somewhat … indiscreet. You can imagine how people like to talk when something like this happens.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I replied. ‘What has the reaction been, in the town?’

  ‘Everyone is quite undone by it,’ he said.

  Pawley was a man I considered quite stoical in nature, one of those for whom the need to throw a drunkard out of a door comes as easily as serving him a jug of ale not a halfhour before.

  ‘I am most terribly sorry for it,’ I said.

  Pawley looked me in the face. ‘You and she were good friends,’ he said. There was no judgement in his words. Like many others, he looked at my greying hair and my stoop and considered that my relationship with Harriet could be nothing other than paternal.

  ‘Indeed we were. She lodged at my house in London for more than a year,’ I added, although this was perhaps more information than he required.

  ‘You’ll be staying for the funeral,’ he said.

  ‘Has it been announced?’

  He shook his head. ‘The inquest resumes on Wednesday, I’m told. Perhaps we shall know more then.’

  ‘Have you been attending the inquest, Mr Pawley?’

  He gave a short laugh. ‘Not I. Where do you suppose I get time off to sit in the workhouse and listen to all of that? Will you be wanting a meal?’

  By the time I had taken refreshment it was quite dark, and late to be making private calls, but now I was here I could not rest. I walked from the White Hart down through the Market Place, empty now that the traders had packed away their barrows, and entered the narrow gap into Widmore Lane. I had planned to walk across the fields to Farwig to pay my respects to Harriet’s mother, but it was only then that I appreciated how difficult it would be to keep to the path without a lantern, much less how I should tell the correct dwelling without disturbing perhaps several households. The street was lit by a lamp hanging over the door of the Three Compasses, and I had just resolved to sit in the public house for a while, and perhaps drink an ale, when I noticed that a second lamp over the gateway which led to the chapel was also lit.

  My feet carried me almost unbidden in that direction. Through this very gate Harriet must have passed on foot for the last time. I placed my hand on the gate and to my surprise it swung open. I walked into the chapel yard, thinking perhaps that there might be some prayer meeting going on. From the chapel came nothing but silence.

  The door, when I tried it, yielded easily to my touch. Inside, the building was quite in darkness save for a light coming from a door at the back.

  ‘Who’s there?’ came a voice from that very room.

  ‘Mr Verrall?’ I called.

  The door opened wider and the man stood framed in the doorway, his face in shadow, and yet it was undoubtedly he. I stepped forward.

  ‘You must be Richard Field,’ he said. ‘I wondered if you’d show your face.’

  Reverend George Verrall

  He offered me his hand but I did not take it.

  Instead I stepped aside and he entered the vestry, looking about him as if he had come to buy the place, hat in his hand, proprietorial.

  ‘I wished to thank you for taking the time to write to me,’ he said.

  I ignored his thanks. ‘I assume you informed the school.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you are well?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Although very much distressed by your letter.’

  ‘And your wife?’

  He flinched at this, but recovered his composure swiftly. ‘She is better than she has been of late, thank you.’

  ‘For that I am glad.’

  why has he come here?

  what does he mean by it?

  As if he had heard my thoughts, Field said, ‘I called to ask, sir, if there is any news regarding the laying to rest.’

  ‘Not yet,’ I answered him. ‘Unfortunately that matter remains with the coroner.’

  ‘I understand. Are they near reaching a verdict?’

  ‘That is something you will need to ask him.’

  We stood in silence for a moment, facing each other. There were many questions I had for Field, of course, and I have no doubt that he had many questions for me, too, but at that point we could not express them.

  ‘And Harriet’s mother,’ he asked, ‘how does the good lady?’

  I narrowed my eyes before replying. ‘How do you expect? She has lost her youngest daughter, in quite the most horrific fashion.’

  He left, shortly after that, and who could blame him? I felt rather sorry for the man. Of all of us, perhaps, he had loved Harriet the best, and yet of all of us he had let her down in the worst way. If one could trace the course of events back in time to try to find the source of the tragedy, then Richard Field’s behaviour towards Harriet must have been the very beginning of it. Had he not behaved as he did, then Harriet would undoubtedly still be among us, living and breathing.

  I watched until he closed the door of the chapel behind him, and then I returned to my desk to write to the coroner.

  Tuesday, 14th November, 1843

  Richard Field

  I slept badly in the strange bed and woke before it was light, wondering for a moment where I was. I reached for Maria but of course the little space next to me was quite empty and cold.

  I got out of bed slowly, cursing my aged bones, and used the pot, and then crossed to the window and looked down over the High Street, lit gloomily by the approaching dawn. Once again the day promised to be a dismal one, overcast and threatening rain.

  Sparing the candle, I dressed and waited until it was light enough to see, and then I sat at the small table and wrote a letter to Maria, who was never far from my thoughts, informing her of my safe arrival and promising to return as soon as I was able. I hoped that she and the baby were both quite well, and that Annie was attending to her needs as far as it was possible to do so.

  As the street outside became noisy with traders and the people of the town beginning their business, I breakfasted on bread and tea, and then made my way once again through the Market Place and out of town, towards the Cage Field and the path to Farwig. The path was dry underfoot, for which I was grateful, and with the benefit of daylight I could see the shapes of the houses a mile or so distant.

  At length two women carrying baskets passed me, and I asked them if they knew of a Mrs Monckton in Farwig, and how I should know the house once I arrived at it.

  ‘Why, sir, it has mourning above the door,’ the older of the two told me. They glan
ced at each other, no doubt curious.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I should have thought of that for myself.’

  The younger woman, who might have been the daughter of the first, asked, ‘Were you a friend of Miss Monckton’s?’

  ‘Indeed I was,’ I said. ‘I have come to pay respects to her mother. On behalf of myself and my wife.’

  ‘Is it true what they said?’

  The older woman nudged her sharply, and got a look in response.

  ‘I heard her throat was cut so that her head was nearly clean off her shoulders.’

  My mouth fell open with surprise.

  ‘Someone said there was blood in the chapel but no blood in the privy.’

  ‘I – I’m afraid I have no idea.’

  They left me then and carried on towards the town. I heard one of them laugh. Soon after that, the path narrowed between two enclosures and came out between the houses and on to a simple track, just wide enough for a single carriage. The street was very quiet, and no more than fifteen or twenty dwellings were there, with fields beyond and a pump. To the right of me a small house had had a piece of black crêpe fabric pinned above the lintel. The shutters were drawn and no smoke issued from the chimney. To all appearances the house stood empty, but I knocked softly at the door nevertheless.

  A moment later I heard the latch and the door opened. A young woman stood within, her sallow face a poorer version of Harriet’s.

  I removed my hat. ‘Miss Monckton?’

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  I was momentarily taken aback. ‘My name is Richard Field. I have come—’

  She opened the door and stood aside to let me in. I crossed the threshold into a parlour with a range and chairs either side of it, one of which was occupied by a lady dressed entirely in black. She eyed me without any degree of expectation.