The Murder of Harriet Monckton

by Elizabeth Haynes

  ‘The chapel will be overrun,’ he said, stopping just short of using the word rats. ‘We do not have the space.’

  ‘What do you think we are doing here, George?’ I asked him. ‘If we run out of space, we will build a new chapel.’

  He muttered something like only just paid for the old one and something else about that lot won’t put money in the coffers but I ignored him, watching her. And as I watched, she caught me looking and smiled.

  Whether she brought anyone to Christ, I could not tell you. All that became clear to me was that she manifested her faith in action, eagerly, as if she absorbed every word I spoke from the pulpit and determined that, whatever I told her a good Christian should do, she would do it.

  Perhaps that was the energy I felt from her. Perhaps it was something else entirely: diligence, or charity, or trust. Perhaps it was merely my own carnal cravings.

  She asked me once if she should still be saved, even after everything that had happened. She said the devil had taken her by the hand and had at the same time obscured the path of righteousness. She said she had not fallen into sin, she had been pushed. I told her the way of the Lord was not an easy one, and that she should never have expected it to be so.

  ‘But shall I be saved, even now?’ she asked. She had tears in her eyes. I think this was just perhaps the day before she died that she asked me.

  ‘Repent, and you shall be saved,’ I told her.

  She prayed with me but her heart was not in it, and I worried for her soul. Sometimes when people go so far into sin, it is more difficult for them to turn back than it is for them to continue on that path. I worried for her soul, and for the soul of Tom Churcher, who had been corrupted by his lust for her. He was being led down the same path.

  She trusted me. I relished that. And I – sinner that I am – I abused it.

  For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things … if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence towards God.

  My heart was sound through all of this, I assure you. From the first, I had known that the Lord had steered me on the right path, showing me the link between the physical and the spiritual, that healthy desire and action in the former led inexorably to joy and abundance in the latter.

  And yet Harriet’s death brought that abruptly to a halt. The death of my inspiration. My sermons were paltry and lacking; I knew not what to say to the congregation, how to lead them, how to inspire them. My heart was sore with it. My instinct was to find another to take her place, to kindle the fire within me, but for so many reasons I could not do it.

  In the months that followed Harriet’s decease, with all the upheaval caused by the inquest, the congregation dwindled. In the new year I redoubled my efforts, preached in the Market Place, visited all those who had left to worship elsewhere, exhorting them to return for the sake of their souls; some of them returned, but many did not. Sarah continued her visits to the sick and the poor, and, despite my requests for her to leave that side of things to me, she also visited those who had gone astray, and prayed with them.

  I found out about it quite by chance, when Sarah had gone to bed early with a chill, leaving Ruth and me in the parlour.

  ‘It is unlike her to catch cold,’ I remarked, when Ruth had taken her some broth.

  ‘Indeed,’ Ruth said. ‘But she has been out every day this week, and the weather has been very bad.’

  I had been in town for some of the week, and visiting with Jenner and other friends. ‘Out? Out where?’

  ‘Visiting,’ Ruth said, eyeing me.

  ‘Visiting whom?’

  She listed them. ‘The Churchers, and the Costins; George Latter. Fanny Hemsley, the Baxters. And Emma Milstead – we have visited her several times.’

  I ignored mention of the Costins and the Baxters, both families that I had expressly asked Sarah to leave in peace. They were at a delicate stage, all of them God-fearing Christians, who had felt tainted by the inquest in some strange fashion. I should speak to her of it later.

  ‘What’s she doing with Emma Milstead, of all people?’

  ‘You know she is promised to marry Tom Churcher?’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘Mrs Verrall is determined that the match should happen. She says it is quite the best thing for both of them.’

  I barked a laugh at the thought of my wife playing matchmaker in the town. It was like a sport for her, I thought, bestowing her good wishes on those less fortunate. I thought of Tom Churcher and how he had been with Harriet, and perhaps in this instance if none other my wife was right. Emma would certainly keep him in line.

  At the time I thought it a fine idea and allowed my wife her meddling; it was only afterwards, perhaps a year later, when the congregation was slowly beginning to build again – although without the younger Churchers, or most of the Milsteads – that I thought again about it.

  They had married in the July, in the parish church, with Emma’s mother and brother as witnesses. I heard that Clara Churcher did not attend. When I saw Tom Churcher in the town, he bowed his head and would not look at me. They had taken a house in Beckenham Lane, although with what money I cannot say, for neither the Churchers nor the Milsteads had ever had very much to spare. He had been such a kind, gentle young man, but the circumstances of Harriet’s death had quite changed him. Now he appeared to all as surly and bad-tempered, mixing very little with his former friends and instead keeping to his own business.

  Such things can only be expected for those who turn away from the true path.

  The Lord did not send me a replacement for Harriet, nor did I seek one out. Perhaps I realised, then, that I had been as mired in sin as any; my sin was pride. I believed that certain verses of the Lord’s Holy Book did not apply to me, or that I should interpret them in my own way. Thou shalt not commit adultery. It is as clear as clear can be. It is not open to interpretation.

  I confess I sinned against them all: against Phoebe, Anna, Betsy, Charlotte, Hester, and Harriet. And Sarah. Perhaps Sarah most of all. I used them to slake my lust. And I used my own relationship with the Lord to justify my actions! I am shamed by it, now.

  I wrote my sermons, and prayed for the forgiveness of my sins and for the Lord to bless the people of the town, and for us all to be spared, and they were passable sermons. And the summer turned to autumn once more, and the inquest remained adjourned, and then a full year had passed since that terrible night. Harriet’s name had not been spoken in the chapel for some months, and I fully expected to never hear her mentioned again. But, of course, there was no verdict. And such matters cannot ever be left to rest.

  I expect, my dear Rose, that you anticipated my confession to be this: that I am a murderer. That I used her for my lust, yes, I freely admit it – and for my inspiration, that, too. But that I took her life when she grew difficult?

  I did not.

  I did not kill her.

  On my honour, I did not kill her.

  Do you believe I am forgiven? Hours I have spent on my knees, I tell you. Do you think the Lord will save me and raise me up on the last day? Or shall I be cast down for everything I have done?

  Really, it matters not. I ask that you consider these words as the basis for such defence as may be offered for my soul, should I be taken by the constables. I realise that my behaviour warrants punishment, and I trust that the Lord will carry this out in whatever way He deems fitting. For the rest, Rose, I leave it up to you.

  Recorded as a true testimony in my own hand,

  Geo. Verrall, Gentleman

  Bromley,

  15th January, 1844

  Tuesday, 3rd February 1846

  Thomas Churcher

  They told me I was the first to know, because of the police.

  Sergeant King came to see me, to tell me that the coroner had been pressed into opening the inquest again. Emma was out the back in the kitchen and she heard, and came through, wiping her hands on her apron. Her stomach was vast and round, and she ha
d started walking with it sticking out even more, as if she wanted people to see it. ‘What’s all this?’ she asked, looking from me to the sergeant and back again.

  ‘The inquest,’ Mr King said. ‘They’re to reopen it. Next week.’

  ‘Whatever for?’ she asked. ‘That’s all dead and done with. It’s been over two years.’

  ‘They never reached a verdict,’ I said.

  She looked at me with one eyebrow arched, for she had been addressing the sergeant and not me, but he seemed too nervous all of a sudden to answer her. I knew how he felt.

  ‘Well, that’s their fault, not ours,’ she said. ‘All those weeks and weeks of talk, talk, talk and nothing to show for it. Ridiculous, I call it. And now the town is all settled once again and her name is mentioned and everything’s to be brought up all over again? What a show.’

  ‘Let’s trust that it will be a formality,’ King said to me. ‘Perhaps it’ll all be done with in a day. Nobody wants it all dredged up again.’

  I felt an odd feeling in my insides at the thought of it, a sour apple on an empty stomach. When Emma had gone back to the kitchen, Mr King tugged at my sleeve and took me outside.

  ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘they’re sending detectives from London. I thought you should know.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked him.

  He stared. ‘No particular reason. Just being neighbourly, like. You being a friend, and all. It’s out of my hands.’

  I wouldn’t have described him as a friend but it was good of him to think of me. But it was out of my hands too, and Emma’s, and my father’s, and everyone else’s.

  In the Market Place the next day or the day after that, everyone was talking of it. They had heard from Richard Hodges, the hairdresser, known around the town as Barbarossa for his red hair and beard, that he had written to some person in London to try to get the coroner to bring the inquest to an end, one way or another. So I thought it was his fault, and that otherwise all would have been left to lie and be forgotten about; but then some other person told me about letters in the newspapers and how things like this could not be left, they had to be finished one way or another and the only way to do that was to get the inquest reopened and dealt with for once and for all.

  I don’t listen to gossip. There’s no point to it. They talk themselves round and round in circles and, when I said that Sergeant King had already told me, they rounded on me like dogs, wanting to know this and that and the other. Why did he tell me, they wanted to know, in advance of everyone else? I had nothing to say, and it made me nervous to have them all asking.

  And then I got to thinking, and I went to my father’s shop. I shut the door behind me and he could see through the shop window all of them out there, nudging each other and pointing and waiting for me to come out again. I sat down on the bench seat beside the counter and rested my head in my hands and groaned.

  He stopped what he was doing and came out from behind the workbench, shaking off his apron. ‘What’s the to-do?’ he asked.

  I could not speak for a moment and I shook my head. He placed his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘What’s she done now?’

  ‘Not Emma,’ I said at last.

  ‘Well, that makes a change,’ he said, but then he saw my face and he sat down next to me and sighed. ‘Harriet, then.’

  And then I could nod. She might have been dead for over two years but she was still there, right there, in my heart, and he knew it.

  Nobody else did. I made my face hard and cold like stone, and if I heard her name mentioned I would turn around and walk away so that they all saw I had had my fill of it, the suspicion and the accusations. None of it was doing any good. None of it would bring her back. Let them think what they liked; my face was set, and they would not be able to tell anything of my true feelings if they only had my face to judge.

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  ‘The sergeant came. They want to start the inquest again. He said there are detectives coming.’

  ‘Detectives?’

  ‘From London.’

  ‘What for?’

  I shrugged. He looked at my face and breathed out hard, through his nose. ‘Was Emma there? When he said it?’

  I thought back, and remembered him taking me outside. ‘Not then. She heard about the inquest, though. She wasn’t happy.’

  ‘Is she ever?’

  I thought and thought back and I ended up right back at our wedding day, and I thought then that she smiled a lot. On that day, and on the day she realised she was expecting our first child. ‘Sometimes she is,’ I said.

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ he said, ‘once the baby’s born. It’s difficult for women, especially for the first. They don’t know what to expect, despite all their brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews.’

  ‘Will you be there?’

  ‘What, when the child comes? No, son. You have to manage that all on your own.’

  ‘No – when the detectives are here. If they want to talk to me.’

  He patted my shoulder. ‘They will want to talk to you, you know that. And here you are, a man grown, and you still want me there to hold your hand?’

  I got to my feet quickly.

  ‘Steady,’ he said. ‘I’m just teasing.’

  ‘Well, don’t. I don’t like it.’

  ‘Sit down.’

  I sat once again, still fidgety and tied up inside. ‘It was years ago, Father – how am I supposed to remember it all now? What I said and when?’

  ‘All right, if you want me there, I’ll be there. Don’t you worry.’

  ‘Emma will be cross about it,’ I said.

  ‘Let her be cross. You do what you need to do. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  I didn’t like to say to him that it was all still in my head, bright and coloured and clear as day. Everything that happened, every word that she spoke to me on that last day she was alive. How she was happy and excited and scared all at the same time. How she held my hand and told me I was a good man, a kind man, and she trusted me. And then, how I failed her so badly that she died.

  I can’t tell them about that. I have to stick to the things I told them in the beginning.

  Trouble is, the truth is plain and easy to remember. Lies, though, that’s different. You lie once, you have to remember the lie, and truth doesn’t fade when time passes, but a lie does.

  Reverend George Verrall

  I had hoped the day would never come. They are to return to the case after more than two years’ peace, resurrecting the filth of it for all to see.

  At the deacons’ meeting yesterday night, two of the deacons who had served on the jury, Thomas Parry and James Sherver, let it be known that they have both received letters from the coroner asking them to attend on Wednesday. On that particular night Robert Cooper was away on business, otherwise he should most likely have told the same story. The venue is to be the Swan, since the workhouse is now gone. I thought back to those days I had spent in that stuffy boardroom upstairs, staring at the jowly man at the table at the front, praying and willing him to see sense and direct the jury to the most appropriate verdict.

  Sweeting told me that the fat barber had written letters prompting the coroner to finish the case and release them all from their obligation; he had been boasting to all his customers, and anyone who would stand still in the market and hear him, that his letter had been forwarded to the Home Secretary, no less, and that he had received word that his careful diligence had been noted and appreciated by the most senior lawgivers in the land. And now, thanks to him, the coroner is to return, and dredge it all up again.

  I was dreading it. Chapel attendance was back to how it had been; the pews were full every Sunday. The Sunday School had had such good attendances that there was talk of erecting a new building at the back of the chapel purely for the purposes of ministering to the children. There was even discussion with John Bromley to purchase the land upon which his house stood, so that the chapel could be rebuilt to even grander proportio
ns, to house the growing flock.

  And yet, and yet.

  Harriet

  I had deliberately not spoken her name, or thought about her, for many months. I had put the events of that dreadful night to the back of my mind, lest it send me mad. For months following the last inquest I had expected at every moment to receive a summons to attend a further hearing, or even that the police might take things further still and arrest me – although for what, and upon what evidence, my fevered mind could never quite decide. It took a long time for the terror of that to fade, and, for the bad dreams to reduce in frequency, longer still.

  Harriet

  Even now I could see her face quite clearly; pale skin, dark hair, those dark, dark eyes. In years past, she might have been thought a witch. Some might say she bewitched me, even, as she had young Tom Churcher – that I was in thrall to her. But of course that was not the case. I used her for my own ends, that is the truth of it. I used her for inspiration, and when the time came I had no choice but to deny her.

  At the deacons’ meeting I watched and listened, and answered their questions, and revisited the subject of the sermons and the question of monies to be sent to missionaries; I read a report from my own son Robert, who was away at school and very much in need of prayers for the Godless boys in the supposedly Christian establishment to which I sent an astonishing fee every term. I listened as Mr Darnley read aloud from correspondence he had received in relation to the situation in Ireland, and we agreed to send chapel funds for the relief effort.

  I listened and watched, and all the time I thought of her and saw her eyes and memories of that night came back to me, swelling up inside me like a fountain: her bonnet, pulled forward over her eyes; the weight of her in the darkness. The dark blood between her lips. The shock of it all, the horror.

  Harriet