The Murder of Harriet Monckton

by Elizabeth Haynes

  I felt that with Charlotte. And yet, here I was, in the Lord’s house, listening to my friend preach about the blessings of a pure heart.

  Whatever; my heart was pure enough.

  And afterwards, as the congregation filed out to congratulate Henry on his sermon, I took Charlotte to the vestry. She came willingly, as if understanding my intent, and yet when the door was closed behind us she dropped to her knees in front of me. The shock of it! I thought she meant for us to pray together. And yet a further shock was to come, for before I could join her in kneeling before the Lord she reached for me and undid my breeches and pulled my member clear of my clothes. I was breathless, and speechless, and when she took me in her mouth I let out a gasp of surprise.

  At some point during the next few minutes I looked down. I had my hand upon her straw bonnet, and I could not see her face; just her hand gripping me and her bonnet moving backwards and forwards with some vigour. The sensation was very different from fucking; the intensity of her efforts concentrated just upon my sex, coupled with her being on her knees in front of me, as if in supplication, as if in prayer … I found myself muttering some words out loud: ‘Lord grant me … in Thy Holy Name … lead us into Thy Light …’ and that too seemed to amplify the sensations.

  The Lord was with me. The Lord had sent me another, to teach me His Way. That a woman on her knees could bring me to Christ, could anoint me with the Spirit and take me into His Glory …

  At my peak I called out, ‘Praise be!’ and spent into her mouth.

  At any moment someone could have come in; indeed, a few moments after my crisis, when Charlotte had arranged herself and straightened her bonnet and let herself out, Henry himself came in to collect his coat and hat.

  ‘My dear chap,’ I said to him. ‘That was a most excellent sermon; your best yet, I fancy.’

  He shook my hand and thanked me very much for my supportive presence. He said he had felt the Lord had moved in the room. I agreed; I said the Holy Spirit had undoubtedly been present.

  Of course, you may already have followed the progress of this story and surmised what happened next; for over dinner at Henry’s father’s house, I was introduced to a young lady by the name of Charlotte Swift, who curtseyed to me most prettily and thanked me for my kindness to her fiancé. She said Henry spoke of me often; that he saw me as a man of the world as well as a man of God. That he looked to me as an example of how to perform the Lord’s work on earth whilst still looking to Heaven.

  We parted company a couple of hours later when I went to catch the coach. She visited Henry at the college on a few occasions before we all completed our studies and dispersed; each time, somehow, we found a moment for her to drop to her knees before me, to the glory of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

  There were times, of course, when I thought that really I should be able to achieve my spiritual peak with my own wife, instead of seeking out other women. But, in truth, that was one part of our lives together that seemed lacking. Despite my every effort to initiate some sort of pleasure in the procedure, Sarah perceived of coitus as something that was done for the sole purpose of producing children, and once a pregnancy was achieved, and for some length of time after each, Sarah would not suffer me to approach.

  Her first pregnancy, very soon after our wedding, ended in miscarriage in the fifth month, when I was away at Highbury College. I was made to wait a considerable length of time for marital relations to resume, and it was only having had a doctor to the house to examine her, and reassure her that there was no reason why she could not bear a healthy child, that she permitted me access once more. She told me she prayed for a son every night; it began to consume her. Our couplings were perfunctory and, for a few years, frequent. They were pleasurable as far as they went, but they resulted in no rapture. No enlightenment. Robert was born three years into our marriage, by which time I was engaged as an itinerant preacher in London, working for three or four dissenting chapels as required, which enabled me to spend time at home with Sarah and our son. He was always a robust, healthy child, for which I thank God, and his presence went some way to healing the wounds Sarah had suffered through her losses. George was born four years later, and William just two years after that. We had three healthy sons, and I thanked God for them every day. Through all of this my accomplishments as a preacher were becoming well known in south London; congregations were expanding in the chapels where I had preached, and people travelled some distance from their homes to hear me speak.

  During this time my need for Holy Fire was fulfilled by the wife of a minister at one of the chapels I had been called to serve. He had been laid low with an illness and was regularly indisposed. He was not inclined to temperance and I assumed from the mutterings in the church and the occasional word from his wife that his bouts of fever were brought about through overindulgence with spirits. The minister’s wife, whom I shall call Hester, though that is not her real name, worked hard for the benefit of the community, spending her evenings on visits to the poor and the sick, sharing everything she had, and never turning away anyone who was in need. I admired her very much, and told her so, and after a while we found ourselves drawn together. Thus we formed an attachment, which culminated in moments of intense passion in those times we found ourselves alone.

  Hester had no children, and told me it was because the Lord was angry with her husband, and would not bless the marriage. She believed that what we were doing was sinful, but she wanted a child so desperately. We corresponded regularly when I was away from home, and when I was back in Chelsea with Sarah the correspondence continued. Our letters were entirely innocent in nature; I wrote to her with advice on chapel matters; how she should secure funding from local well-wishers to facilitate her work with the poor, for example. Despite our regular couplings, she had not become pregnant. Perhaps that was just as well; at that time, Sarah was also pregnant once more. I told Hester the Lord needed her too much; for she was a minister in the truest sense of the word, performing the pastoral role of her husband as well as her own.

  I was very fond of Hester; I should not say that I loved her, for I have only loved Sarah. But in her last letter to me Hester foolishly asked that very question, and somehow – for she was not given to snooping – Sarah found that letter, and read it. I was at home, then. I remember it clearly, finding her upstairs in a state of distress. She had the letter in her hands.

  ‘She asks if you love her,’ she said, holding out the letter with a shaking hand.

  ‘Indeed,’ I said, ‘I have read it myself.’

  She faltered at that, taken aback by my calm response. ‘You don’t deny it?’

  ‘Deny what?’ I asked.

  ‘There has been…an association between you?’

  ‘The woman is the wife of a minister,’ I said. ‘What association could there possibly be?’

  ‘I don’t want you to preach there again,’ she said.

  ‘If I am required to go, I shall go,’ I said. ‘It is up to the Lord where He would have me speak, Sarah, not you.’

  I had not lied to her. I had not snatched the letter back, or thrown myself at her feet, or shouted that it was none of her business. I had not displayed any sort of shame, or guilt, and that was because I felt none.

  As it turned out, the Lord’s plans for me were already set. A few days after this discussion, our fourth son was born, a month early. He was, from the start, very sickly, and he lived for just eleven days before he was called to the Lord. Sarah descended into a grief so profound that she did not speak or eat for days; the doctor was called to sedate her. Ruth cared for the boys, whilst I prayed for my wife, and myself. The Lord told me that I should decline all invitations and remain at home in Chelsea. Some six weeks passed before there was any improvement; I had begun to consider taking the advice of the doctors, that she should be admitted to their care. An aunt of Sarah’s had been similarly inflicted with melancholy, and ended up entirely mad.

  It was at that point that my pr
ayers were answered, and the Hand of the Lord was revealed in all its glory, for I was invited to take up the ministry of the independent chapel in Bromley. This news seemed to lift her spirits; she told me she was looking forward to a fresh start in a new place, and to being a proper minister’s wife at last.

  Phoebe was one of our maids. She came into our employment soon after we arrived in Bromley, having previously worked elsewhere with our cook, Mrs Burton, and being thus recommended by her. Mrs Burton described Phoebe as being a ‘steady sort’, a hard worker, and I will admit that she was that. But she was also a liar, and a thief, and much wanting in morals; she stole jewellery from my wife, money from the household purse, and silver spoons from a set we had received as a gift from a relative of Sarah’s when we married.

  Sarah also took a dislike to her, from the very first. Of course, we should have dismissed her, but Mrs Burton always asked us to give her another chance. Phoebe was an orphan, and, if we turned her out, she would end up in the workhouse or, worse, on the streets.

  The other thing Phoebe had in support of her continued employment with us was that she knelt willingly before me and supplicated herself to the glory of God and to my tool, whenever the need arose.

  The congregation had previously worshipped at the Bethel Chapel, which consisted of a few tiny rooms; having outgrown their existing accommodation, a new chapel had been built in Widmore Lane thanks to the generosity of Mr John Bromley – whose name, to my surprise, bore no relation to the town in which he resided – a local philanthropist, and one who became something of a mentor for me. The new chapel was simple in structure, and not large, but in those early days we had barely twenty or thirty people worshipping there on a Sunday. It was a dismal place to begin my ministry; and yet I set about the task with vigour, getting to know the godless souls of the town, preaching in the Market Place, exhorting my tiny flock to go out and become fishers of men.

  All of this was spiritually exhausting.

  Within days of our arrival, whilst Sarah was still directing my sister Ruth in the process of unpacking our belongings, Phoebe had looked at me in such a way that left little doubt of her attraction towards me, and I had felt a surge of power from it that rivalled any I had felt for a woman. On the first occasion, she fellated me on her knees in the privy. She knew what she was doing. I whispered a psalm to accompany the moment of triumph. Afterwards I told her she was a good girl; and then I changed my mind and called her wicked. She did not seem overly offended or pleased by either.

  As well as the poor chapel attendance, I also had the small matter of a crippling debt to consider. John Bromley had been generous in gifting the land upon which the chapel had been built, but the construction of it and other expenses amounted to a mortgage of one thousand, one hundred and twenty pounds, to be paid back with an interest of five per cent. Despite this burden, John Bromley and I remained good friends, as I struggled to find ways of paying off the debt as quickly as possible.

  Phoebe helped keep me from despair. She was, as I have said, a hot-head, unpredictable in her moods. After Sarah had gone to bed, and Mrs Burton had fallen asleep in front of the kitchen range, Phoebe would bring tea to my study. She would always begin by kneeling; the sight of her face, looking up at me, as she took me in hand, was enough to raise me up to a state of spiritual grace before she got to work. In the study, I could speak and praise freely, and I found that the act of reciting a psalm brought me to a communion with the Holy Spirit, such that my peak would sometimes cause me to see visions.

  Phoebe continued to visit me, and with increasing frequency she would demand some attention after she had serviced my spiritual needs. Once, she refused to kneel and instead raised her skirts, and bent over my desk. ‘Fuck me first,’ she said, ‘and I’ll finish you with my mouth.’

  Perhaps her demands should have set a warning bell clamouring in my heart, but they did not. The sexual act still gave me a vigour that I needed, and even two years after our arrival, when the congregation had grown handsomely and the debt was diminishing, my Phoebe fired my spirit like no other. The sex act was not as spiritually pure; this fact had to be admitted. I no longer achieved the same soaring lightness of spirit as I once had. That only came from standing before a kneeling girl, my member disappearing down her throat while she looked up at me, her eyes pleading for more. Or for mercy, one of the two.

  At the very peak of our experimentation together, two things happened that brought matters to an unnatural close.

  The first was that, one evening in the study, I said aloud, although in jest, that I wished Phoebe was my wife and that I had never met Sarah. Of course it was a joke. If I had never met Sarah, I would not have been able to afford to study; I would never have gone into the ministry, and more importantly I would never have met Phoebe. The instant the words were out of my mouth I regretted them. Phoebe’s face took on a new, fervent glow.

  And then the second thing happened. One evening, Phoebe brought my tea to my office as usual. My spirit lifted at seeing her, and yet she appeared troubled. After she had supplicated herself to my satisfaction, I bade her sit. She told me that she found herself with child.

  I stared at her, uncertain as to how to respond. The oddest thing was that, in that moment, my need for her disappeared completely. I could not imagine kissing her, or touching her, never mind any further intimacies.

  She asked for some money, so that she could go away and get rid of it.

  I told her I would not, could not, facilitate such a sin.

  She asked me what then she must do.

  I told her I would think and pray, and speak with her further on the next evening, and she dropped an insolent little half-curtsey, and left the room.

  I did think, and pray, but, whether I reached a decision or not, the matter was taken out of my hands. The following morning Mrs Burton told me that Phoebe had left the household. A note had been left on the kitchen table; an aunt had been taken seriously ill, and Phoebe was required at home to take care of her. Whether she believed it or not, Mrs Burton pretended that she did. I could have asked at what point during the night had a messenger come for her, since the house had been undisturbed since Phoebe left me my tea, until the cook went down to light the range at five; but I did not. Phoebe was gone, and in a short space of time a new maid was employed, a dark-haired, thick-waisted girl called Jessie, with red hands and dull eyes.

  I was left once again with an absence of inspiration, a clouding of the senses. My sermons lacked fire; the congregation appeared apathetic, and the numbers, which had been steadily increasing, began once again to wane. The matter of the debt was, at least, somewhat easier to resolve; I had not initially considered the money at my disposal, through my wife. I prayed about the debt, and the Lord answered my prayers, and told me that I had been provided with every financial advantage, and I was expected to use these gifts and not to let them go to waste. I was indeed quite wealthy, for I had an income from the estate of Sarah’s father, and now I had the proceeds of the sale of the house in Chelsea, which brought me more than ten times the cost of the house in Widmore Lane, fine as it was. Having been so directed by the Lord, I paid John Bromley the full amount owed for the building of the chapel.

  Sarah, when she discovered it, was upset. I rather think that was the beginning of the coldness towards me. But it was a decision I never regretted. No, despite everything that has happened, perhaps not even now.

  And so now I come to the point of this confession: to Harriet Monckton. That is what you’re waiting for, I am sure. She is the cause of all this, the reason for my confession. You have been very patient, Rose, in reading all of this lengthy explanation, and now you shall hear the reason for it.

  By the time Harriet came to me, my inspiration had faltered. It truly felt that she was a gift, bestowed on me in my hour of need.

  She had returned to Bromley from London, where she had been teaching. Of course I remembered her from her previous attendance, but there had been a considerable cha
nge in her demeanour. She had a confidence, a quiet sort of awareness, and I daresay the difference was that she had gone away a girl and come back a woman. From the newspaper reports you will undoubtedly have read, you may have guessed: Richard Field had seduced her. She confessed as much to me soon after her return, said that she loved him, and he had dismissed her in favour of another. At our every meeting I believed I felt the hand of the Lord upon my shoulder, as if to say, See what I have given you. Harriet was perfect for my needs in every way. She was young and unmarried, and therefore in need of a pastor’s guidance as she found her place in the world. She was not so immured in the ways of the flesh so as to be hungry for it, and therefore sinful, like Phoebe and Anna; she was not so innocent as to be bruised and tarnished by it.

  But despite her self-awareness Harriet was not a strong woman. She was just a girl, who had fallen into schoolteaching because she was educated and the youngest daughter in the family; and she had not, either through choice or through lack of availability, yet made a suitable match. And Richard Field had had her, and had chosen another to marry, and so that particular opportunity had most likely passed her by.

  And yet she was, to all appearances, deeply spiritual. She attended chapel at every opportunity, and helped with the Sunday School, and came to the prayer meetings and stitched garments for the poor. She came with us to preach in the Market Place, handing out tracts. Often she did what the others hesitated to do: approaching people who were neither rich nor lovely, asking if they had had a meal, or if they had a room to go to, or if they needed anything. This took people by surprise. Sweeting, for one, did not like it.