The Murder of Harriet Monckton

by Elizabeth Haynes

  I wanted to say many things to him, things like why should I do that and I do not represent the chapel or you and why are you here.

  What I actually said was, ‘I have work to do.’

  He said, ‘Ah, Tom, but you do not. I spoke to your father; he has released you for the rest of the day.’

  I could have argued with him; I could have told him that I would not be bullied by him any more, and neither would my father follow his instructions for no better reason than that he called himself a reverend.

  Instead, I nodded.

  ‘Perhaps you will come to my house this evening? You shall have supper with me,’ he said.

  It was not a request.

  With that, he placed his hat upon his head once more and bade me good day. As if he had been listening for the shop bell to ring, Father came from the store room at that moment.

  ‘Well, Tom,’ he said, ‘you’d best go. Don’t want to miss anything.’

  I was half angry to be so used, but, as I walked up the High Street to the Swan, part of me was also pleased to have a day out of the shop. And all I had to do, after all, was listen.

  When I arrived, the lane outside was full of people, the door to the brewhouse being firmly closed. The rising din sent my mind into swirls and knots. I stepped away from them and sat under a chestnut tree on the other side of the road and waited. Joe Milstead came across and sat down next to me; I had not seen him in the crowd.

  ‘There’s a delay,’ he said, taking out his pipe and filling it from a leather pouch that I had made for him. ‘Didn’t expect to see you.’

  I shrugged, not wanting him to know that I had been sent. ‘What delay?’

  ‘The coroner is talking to the jury in private,’ he said. ‘We are to be called in when they are finished.’

  He puffed on his pipe and we sat there for a while. A weak sun was trying to shine through the clouds, and it felt almost warm.

  ‘How does my sister?’ Joe asked.

  ‘Well enough,’ I said. ‘Getting big.’

  He laughed at that. He had married Susannah Garn six months before I married Emma; their first child had arrived less than a year after that. Every experience in my life, Joseph Milstead had done it before. I often felt myself dragged along in his wake, a frayed bit of rope, snagged by a keel.

  We talked about nothing for a while, and then eventually the door opened and the coroner’s assistant propped it open, and was almost pushed aside as the gathered throng jostled to get a good viewing position. Joe and I joined them. I saw Mr Beezley there, and Miss Williams, who I had not seen for a long, long time. Clara told me she had moved away, to be a teacher somewhere in the north. I should have liked to speak to her, but the coroner was already at his desk.

  The two London detectives were there, at the side of the room, and they both looked at me as I found my place. I did my best to ignore them but I felt the discomfort of their gaze upon me.

  Sergeant King was the first one called.

  ‘Did you ever see the deceased in the company of a man, in the weeks and months leading up to her death?’

  Sergeant King cleared his throat, and cast his eyes about the room, and alighted on me. He held my gaze for what felt like a very long time, then he looked back to the coroner and said: ‘I saw the deceased frequently walking in the town, and on a Sunday evening shortly before her death I saw her walking with a man.’

  I felt queer all of a sudden, hot and cold at the same moment, and I thought I might be ill.

  ‘Who was that man, Sergeant King?’

  ‘I am afraid, sir, I cannot identify that person.’

  And with that, Sergeant King was dismissed. The coroner said that there would be a delay, as the next witness had been held up, and the jury were allowed to get up and walk around. Most of the spectators left the brewhouse to wait outside in the fresh air, or go to the market or home for some dinner. I saw Inspector Meadows and the other one, Pearce, approach the coroner and speak to him, and I fancied they were telling him something about me. They had called again, once when I had been out with Father, and once again that evening. I had insisted I had nothing further to say, even with Emma standing at my shoulder. I had managed to remain calm, but only just.

  I looked back at the coroner just as I was about to leave the room and I saw Meadows point to me. That was enough. I walked back to the shop, thinking about what it was Mr Verrall had asked me to do and whether he had sent me there on purpose, to remind the coroner and the detectives that I had been in Harriet’s company that day.

  By the time I reached the shop I had made a decision, and I walked on to the corner and on to Widmore Lane. I tried the chapel gate, but found it locked, and so carried on the half-mile to the Reverend Verrall’s house.

  I had run this way on the night Harriet died. I barely remembered that part of it: the desperation, my feet flying on the gravel, my lungs aching with the effort of it.

  I should not think of that; it was not helpful.

  I rang the bell and the maid answered, showing me into the study and saying that she would see if her master was at home. He was an ordinary man and an extraordinary man, all at the same time. He spoke like us, he knew what it was like to live as a plain person, and yet he lived in a great big white-painted house with a drawing room as well as a parlour and a study and who knew what besides, and he had a maid and a cook and probably someone else to clean his boots for him. He told me once that it was as well he did have a good house, for all the people who needed it; he meant visitors, men who came to preach, but I always thought that there were people in greater need of a warm bed and they were never to be found inside its walls.

  For all that the house was fine and well-appointed, he kept the study plain: the walls were lined with bookcases, and he had a good oak desk, but beyond that, and a plain, threadbare couch, and a worn rug before the fire, there was little in the way of decoration.

  ‘Thomas?’ the reverend said, coming into the room and closing the door behind him. ‘What is it? I expected you for supper, as we agreed. You are very early.’

  ‘The inquest is adjourned,’ I said, although I wasn’t sure if that was the right word to use to describe the delay. ‘They are waiting for the next witness.’

  ‘Who is that, do you know?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Whose testimony did you hear, then?’

  He had not offered me a seat, but he had taken his, behind his desk; I stood before him, my hat in my hands, and I felt like a schoolboy waiting to be caned.

  ‘Just Sergeant King’s,’ I said.

  ‘And what did the good sergeant say?’

  ‘He said he had seen Harriet walking out with a man one evening, but he could not say whom.’

  He waited. ‘Well, go on,’ he said. ‘What else?’

  ‘Nothing else. Sergeant King was stood down. Then I came here. I am otherwise engaged for supper,’ I said, haughtily.

  ‘Tom,’ he said.

  I waited for him to continue.

  ‘We used to be fine friends, Tom, you and I.’

  I stared at him for a moment, not trusting myself to reply, and then I bade him good day, and went back to work.

  Frances Williams

  Having delayed for the arrival of the next witness, only the very curious, or those who could afford to be absent from their labours for a full afternoon, were in attendance at the later session of the inquest. The Reverend Mr Verrall, who to my knowledge had been in attendance at every meeting of the jury, was conspicuous by his absence. As well as myself, Jane Humphrey, Lottie Beezley and a few others I did not know, there were some I thought to be newspapermen, taking notes, no doubt to satisfy themselves with the filthy sensationalism brought about by the death of a young woman.

  I shan’t say innocent, for she was not. The space between losing her and where I now stood had widened like a chasm; the Harriet on the other side was scarcely recognisable to me, now. She had courted Tom Churcher, or, more precisely, she had allowed him
to pay court to her, knowing that she was in a desperate situation and that he, a single man, could help her out of it. Had she even thought about Emma Milstead? Had she thought about me?

  As the jury arranged themselves and the bodies in front of me cleared I noticed that a woman was already sitting on the seat in front of the coroner’s table, and there, standing close by, was Richard Field. This, then, must be Maria. She was dressed in a blue silk gown, with a dark wool coat over it, and a straw bonnet tied with a black velvet ribbon. From my position I could see but little of her, just a pale cheek and a small, sharp nose, but then she turned to a noise behind her and I caught a glimpse of a frightened little face, with pale eyes that were perhaps blue, or grey. She seemed very young. She did not look unwell, I thought, given the extraordinary efforts it had taken to bring her here. But then I caught something in the stiffness of her movements and I realised that her coat served to disguise what must surely be a pregnancy.

  She was not asked to stand for her oath, but allowed to take it sitting down, which she did in a voice that began timidly and grew only a little in strength. She gave her name as Mrs Maria Field, and her address as King Street, London.

  ‘Please tell us how you knew the deceased,’ began the coroner; his usual opening for every new witness. He barely looked up as he said it.

  ‘We taught at the same school, in Hackney,’ Maria said. ‘We became fast friends almost straight away, and remained so.’

  ‘And she also formed a friendship with your husband, is that correct?’

  Maria hesitated. I saw the bonnet move to show that she glanced to her right, to Richard, and his mouth twitched in the briefest of smiles. ‘Indeed. We lodged together with my husband before our marriage, and afterwards she was a regular visitor at our house in London.’

  ‘Were you at all aware of the deceased’s pregnancy?’

  ‘I was not aware. I noticed that over the course of the latter part of the year she appeared to increase in size, but I had not the least suspicion that she was with child.’

  ‘Did you ever have any indication of there being any intimacy between her and any young man?’

  Maria Field replied that she had not.

  ‘Can you tell us how you were made aware of the death of your friend?’

  At this, Richard Field stepped forward and produced a letter, which he handed to the coroner, who cast his eyes over it for a moment. It was from Mr Verrall, and Field said he had received it on the 9th of November, three days after Harriet’s death. The letter was read out to the court.

  There was no disputing it had been written by Verrall; full of pomposity and religious rhetoric, the effect of it was to inform the Fields that Harriet had been found dead, and therefore would not be visiting them in London after all, prior to her onward journey to Arundel. He had clearly felt compelled to elucidate his theory that Harriet’s death did not involve a third party but was caused, of all things, by excitement at having obtained the situation at Arundel, having been so long without.

  Was I the only person in the room who thought this utterly preposterous? That someone should fall down and die, because they were happy, and looking forward to the future? And at the same moment he seemed already to be entertaining his later theory – at odds with the first – that Harriet was unhappy and swallowed poison to end her own life. What was she, Mr Verrall? Was she happy, or unhappy? Or perhaps she had no expectation at all that she was about to meet such a horrific end. Such desperation in the man, to distract minds away from the word murder and away from the place where Harriet was found … and to place the blame at Harriet’s own feet, rather than looking elsewhere for it!

  Harriet. Her name was so seldom spoken in that room. Instead, she was ‘the deceased’, as if her whole life had been reduced to nothing so interesting as the method of her leaving it. But she had been young, happy, intelligent, brave, always as willing to learn as she was to teach. She had had everything to look forward to, and then a man had caused her to fall, and a man had killed her for it. What else was there to discuss?

  Wednesday, 18th February, 1846

  Reverend George Verrall

  William Rose, solicitor, arrived at a quarter to two, just moments after Jessie had cleared away the luncheon plates. I excused myself from Sarah, and retired to the study to receive my visitor.

  ‘Good God, man,’ he said, ‘you look quite dreadful.’

  Unlike many, Mr Rose has never felt the need to moderate his language when I am with him. That directness is, at least in part, why I felt able to trust him with the lengthy document that he now had presumably stored in a safe place, pending my need for it. I did not ask after it on this occasion. If the Lord should will it, perhaps we should never need to speak of it again.

  ‘I am quite well, thank you,’ I said.

  ‘You look as though you have wrestled with the very Devil himself half the night.’

  He was almost correct: at some dark hour, Sarah had shaken me to wakefulness.

  What? What is it?

  You were shouting, she said. Again.

  Not I, I denied, but the tangled bedsheets and the perspiration that soaked me were testament to the nightmare that had disturbed me. I had lain there awhile longer, hearing Sarah’s breathing deepen, and then I’d got up and dressed in the dark. As I did so, the clock in the hallway chimed for five. I had gone down to the study where the grate was still barely warm, lit the lamps and sat at my desk, listening out for Mrs Burton and Jessie, beginning their day in the kitchen. As always, I had been almost surprised to find my study as I had left it, for it had been the same dream that haunted me: men, searching; throwing my papers around, destroying books, turning over the desk, emptying drawers, and all the while the bottle marked POISON on the mantelpiece, growing bigger each time I saw it.

  ‘Shall we?’

  Rose, treating my study as his study, had seated himself on the sofa and withdrawn a notebook and a silver pencil from his case. I sat at my desk and prepared my own notebook.

  ‘Carttar arrived at eleven o’clock,’ Rose said, ‘and he remained closeted with the jury for upwards of an hour. Upon the room being opened, I made myself known to him and told him that I was a solicitor, and I was here to represent your interests and those of the chapel. I said that you considered that the newspaper reports had placed an improper interpretation upon your words, previously uttered before the inquest, to suggest that you had intended to leave Bromley as soon as the enquiry was over. Such was not the fact, I said. You merely meant that you had no intention of departing Bromley to another part of the country whilst the investigation was still under way, in case your assistance should be required for it. I said that you had been excluded from the room and the assumption made by other parties as a result of this was that you were a party to the death of a young woman.’

  ‘What said he to that?’

  ‘He said that I was assuming a point they had not yet arrived at, and your exclusion from the room was only in common with all the other witnesses.’ He paused, and a strange sort of a smile played about his lips before he added, ‘As well you know.’

  ‘But he allowed you to remain, as my representative?’

  Rose reclined further in his seat and crossed his legs.

  ‘He said I was as free to listen as any other member of the public. He even offered me a seat.’

  the man is the very devil

  I am certain of it

  ‘Well, then,’ I said, ‘tell me of the proceedings.’

  ‘The first witness was a …’ he consulted his notes ‘… Dr Leeson, who declared himself a physician at St Thomas’s Hospital, and a lecturer on chemistry and forensic medicine. He deposed that he had conducted an independent analysis on the remainder of the stomach contents handed to him by the surgeon, Mr James Ilott, and that he had similarly conducted experiments on the bottle found in the night soil, to ascertain whether it had ever contained prussic acid.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I will not trouble you
with the details, fascinating as they are. Suffice to say that the stomach contained in the region of thirty-five grains of prussic acid, around three-quarters of a grain being sufficient to kill an adult. She would have died almost instantaneously. Certainly within seconds.’

  ‘And the phial?’

  ‘Now,’ Rose said, uncrossing his legs and leaning forward, ‘that is also very interesting. It turns out that the phial contained sal ammoniac, dried up: common smelling salts, discarded by their owner when the efficacy of the preparation ceased for want of lime water. Definitely no prussic acid.’

  ‘We knew that from Ilott,’ I said.

  ‘Ah, but Dr Leeson had an interesting point to add, in that the salts found in the phial would react with prussic acid, and render that substance inert. In other words, the phial could not have contained prussic acid, for, if it had, the poison would have had no, or at least little, ill effect upon the person taking it.’

  I found my mind was whirling with this news, considering whether it might be plausible that Harriet had intended to drink the poison and then revive herself with an antidote but found it dried up … but no. She could not have had such rare scientific knowledge. The phial’s being found in the night soil was nothing more than a dreadful coincidence.

  ‘But you should not trouble yourself with that, Verrall. The next witness, however, was of rather greater concern.’

  ‘Who was it?’ I asked.

  Rose went back to his notebook. ‘One Martha Coote. Do you know her?’

  I shook my head. I had heard the name previously – she lives in Widmore, I believe – but I had not made her acquaintance.

  ‘She declared she was coming to Bromley on the night of the 6th, in the company of her brother-in-law, to fetch her husband from his club. She cannot be sure of the time, so many months having now elapsed. As she reached Widmore Lane, just before the chapel, she saw a man running down the middle of the lane very fast.’

  ‘From the chapel?’

  ‘From the direction of the chapel, although she did not see exactly where he came from. Just that he was running in the middle of the lane, away from the town. Towards, in fact, this very house.’