The Murder of Harriet Monckton

by Elizabeth Haynes

  The Reverend Mr George Verrall, who struck me as the sort of man always to wish to have the final word, was called to the stand as the last witness of the day. A letter was produced; it had been addressed to the coroner. The contents of the letter, which were read aloud, were suggesting that the phial found in the night soil must surely have contained prussic acid, and suggesting that ‘a competent chemist’ should be directed to conduct an examination of it. The letter was signed ‘Chemicus’.

  A murmur went around the room, and eyes turned towards Verrall, as the assistant passed the letter to him. We all knew his opinions and his manner of phrasing well enough by now to know that he had written it. I fancied his usually pale complexion had darkened a little at hearing his words read aloud in front of the people of the town.

  ‘Is this your handwriting, Mr Verrall?’ asked the coroner.

  Through his teeth, Verrall answered, ‘It is not.’

  ‘Then,’ said the coroner, clearly enjoying his sport, ‘if any person were to say that it is like your handwriting, and that the ink is such as you are in the habit of writing with, that would be false?’

  ‘If a thousand persons were to say so, it would be false,’ Verrall said, slightly raising his voice. ‘There is no similarity to my handwriting.’

  The coroner gave the tiniest of smiles, and whispered something to his assistant, who duly made a note.

  Then Verrall was dismissed, and the room was cleared. We waited outside for upwards of an hour, and then the assistant came out to announce that the inquest was again adjourned. I went back to London, and to Maria, too tired to think about Harriet, and that long May afternoon.

  Wednesday, 22nd April, 1846

  Reverend George Verrall

  Thomas Carter sent me a letter, stating that he had been called to attend an inquest in Bromley, and should be obliged for me to receive him for an hour or so prior to that event, to provide such explanation as I was able. Reluctantly, I agreed. I had been unwell for a week or more, a nasty rash creeping from my throat up to my face, causing my cheeks to appear reddened and sore. It was not a pleasant sight to behold, and yet it occurred to me that I could invite Carter to preach on Sunday, so that I should be able to remain at home and recover.

  He duly arrived at the house, and his first comment upon seeing me was that I looked very ill, as though I had been happily unaware of the condition of my face. Before he even sat down, he told me that he had a prior engagement for the Sabbath and so he would be unable to preach at the chapel, although seeing me now he was sorry for it.

  Peevish at having to appear before the congregation thus, I offered a quick prayer once more for healing and bade him sit.

  ‘What’s this all about, Verrall?’ he asked, and his manner vexed me further.

  I told him of the inquest and the prolonged delays with it, although he had been following the case closely in the newspapers. I told him that the reports I read were scant in their accuracy, as I had attended all sessions but one and had found the accounts of them to be very misleading. He knew why he had been called, of course: the testimony of Miss Williams, and her description of his ‘free’ manner with Harriet at the tea party.

  I remembered the occasion much better now I had had time to give it careful thought. It had been my intention to hold a prayer meeting at my house, and I had invited a few carefully selected members of the congregation – Harriet, of course, was one – to meet and converse with Mr Carter in an atmosphere of prayer and contemplation. Tea was to be served, and cake. From the very beginning, Carter had sought her out. So vigorous was his pursuit of her, I wondered if she had somehow said something to him, about my own friendship with her; or if he had heard something odd in the way I had spoken to her. Anyway, she had him spellbound: within just a very few minutes they were fast friends, speaking to no one but each other. After the prayers, and a talk, they took tea and disappeared. I sought them out, and found them in the garden, walking on the path to the gate.

  I should not like to think about that any more.

  I walked with Carter to the Swan, and, as we arrived, in full hearing of those townsfolk crowded at the door, he said he thought it was a very poor little establishment, and was there really nowhere more suitable?

  I did not answer. We waited inside as the jury settled in their seats and the coroner took his place. I thought momentarily back to that first inquest, and how I thought him then rather efficient, if a little pedestrian in his methods, and how much my opinion had altered since then. I loathed the man, absolutely abhorred him. I repented, and the Lord forgave, and yet at each sitting of the jury I found I hated him still a little bit more. In the end, I gave up the repenting, deciding to save it all until the verdict.

  Carter was called to the stand, and sworn, and asked to state his name, address, and occupation.

  ‘My name is Thomas Carter,’ he said, ‘and I reside at Fenny Stratford, Buckinghamshire, and I am a Baptist minister.’

  ‘And did you reside there in 1843?’

  ‘No, in 1843 I was living at Letton, in Somersetshire.’

  ‘Prior to this afternoon, when did you last visit Bromley?’

  ‘My last visit to Bromley was in August of that year, to see friends who are residing here. I came about four o’clock in the evening, and left about seven.’

  ‘Who are these friends you mention?’

  ‘I saw Mr Verrall, the family of the Churchers, Harriet Monckton, and many others.’

  ‘How long had you been acquainted with the deceased in particular, and how did you become familiar to her?’

  ‘As with my other acquaintances in this town, through the circumstance of my occasionally supplying the chapel. I had known Miss Monckton for some time before her death. I was in the occasional habit of corresponding with her.’

  ‘Mr Carter, what was the nature of your correspondence?’

  I saw him fluster a little, but he recovered quickly and replied, ‘The correspondence I used to have with her was generally of a religious character, and, on occasion, about her changing her situation. I believe her to have been of a very religious character.’

  ‘On your visit in August, where did you see her?’

  ‘It was at her mother’s house. Her sister was present all the time.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Carter. Were you aware that she was with child?’

  ‘I was not,’ he said, as if the very suggestion of it was an improper one. ‘Nor did I suspect such a thing. She made no communication to me on the subject.’

  ‘And prior to that August? You will have heard, Mr Carter, that the jury has been told of a tea meeting that took place at the Reverend George Verrall’s home, several months before the deceased’s death. Your presence there was noted.’

  ‘Yes, I recall the tea meeting, and conversing there with the deceased,’ he said.

  ‘You are a married man, I believe. Was your wife present at this tea party?’

  ‘She was not present. But my behaviour towards the young lady was, I assure you, beyond reproof.’

  The coroner noted this. ‘You will recall, Mr Carter, that in my letter inviting you to attend the inquest today I asked you to bring any copies of your correspondence with the deceased; have you done so?’

  Carter duly handed a letter to the assistant, which was passed to the hands of the coroner.

  ‘Is this the manner in which you were generally accustomed to address this young woman?’

  Carter fumbled. ‘Possibly it might be,’ he said.

  The coroner then read aloud the letter. It began, ‘My dear girl’, and went on to describe how he proposed ‘to myself the pleasure of a scant half-hour of your company’. It was a foolish letter, overbearing, pompous and repetitive, and it met with more than one snigger from the witnesses present.

  ‘And your visit to Bromley today, Mr Carter. Have you paid a call to anyone in the town, before attending the inquest?’

  ‘I arrived in London from Fenny Stratford last night, and came here th
is morning, direct; I have not called upon anyone since I came here.’

  The coroner dismissed Carter, who came straight to me at the back of the room, the fool, all smiles. Superintendent Pearce then said he had wished to bring forward Miss Williams, who was at present at Shifnal, in Shropshire, again, but she had not appeared; and so the inquest was once more adjourned, the room was cleared, and we all trooped out to the darkening sky. Carter was anxious to catch the London coach, and so he left immediately; I waited for half an hour, and then, asking Beezley to send for me if anything further transpired, I made my own way home.

  Sarah was waiting for me, in the drawing room.

  ‘Where is Ruth?’ I asked.

  ‘She has retired already, complaining of a headache,’ she said. For a moment she carried on with her work, and then she placed it in her lap and said, ‘Will there ever be a conclusion to this dreadful matter?’

  I said I hoped there would, and I prayed that the day would come very soon indeed.

  ‘And shall we then be free of her?’

  She meant Harriet. I did not answer.

  ‘Then let us hope that no more harm shall be done by her, or any other godless women,’ she said, picking up her embroidery once more. ‘Praise the Lord!’

  Frances Williams

  Over the course of the week, three letters had arrived at my house. The first was from Verrall, forwarded by Miss Davis, landlady at the Bell Inn. It was full of his usual religious tripe, praising the Lord for this and that and promising hellfire and damnation to the enemies of the cross. He asked if I was expecting to visit Bromley again, and requested that I should be so kind as to call upon him if I did so. I decided immediately that I would do no such thing; I did not either like the man nor trust him, and so no reason why we should have any private discourse.

  The second letter was from Richard Field, again forwarded by Miss Davis. He said that he had missed me at the two last sittings of the inquest, and that the proceedings appeared now to have reached the very dregs of opinion, with most witnesses stepping up to recount nothing but hearsay and speculation. He said that the tone of it had changed since my last attendance, and that now it seemed likely that Tom Churcher might be the guilty party.

  I put the letter down.

  ‘What is it?’ Emily asked. She was at the table with her own correspondence, a letter from her sister, from which she occasionally read aloud. The joy and humour in her letter, compared to the ill tidings in mine, was remarkable.

  ‘I fear someone is to be made a scapegoat,’ I said, and explained to her how Tom Churcher, a man ill equipped to defend himself, was being singled out as the guilty party.

  ‘What makes you so sure he is innocent?’ Emily asked. ‘Surely they would not accuse an innocent man.’

  I sighed, and considered it. ‘You have to understand how desperately Harriet’s death has affected the town. Or perhaps not her death but this Godforsaken inquest. It drags on and on, and no conclusion is reached; they are now resorting to gossip and presenting it to the jury as evidence. The whole matter is a farce.’

  ‘But the purpose of an inquest, surely, is merely to determine the cause of death? Not to find the murderer.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said, ‘and yet it seems that the coroner is driven to do exactly that, and he will destroy the community by doing so.’

  Today a third letter arrived, and I received it upon my return from the school. This one was addressed to me directly, and yet it had been delayed where the other two had not. It was from the coroner, requesting my attendance at a further meeting of the jury. He apologised for calling me once more from the country, but said that he was very close to the conclusion of the evidence and he asked me to indulge him with my presence one final time. The letter was dated Wednesday, 15th April, and it had taken a whole week to reach me.

  The date of the inquest was today, Wednesday the 22nd, and I had missed it.

  Wednesday, 6th May, 1846

  Thomas Churcher

  Emma’s confinement drew near, and the hot weather made her bad-tempered. She bade me do chores, and then complained I did them poorly, and finally threw me out of the house. I had nowhere to go and so I sat on the wall outside, picking at the moss that grew in the crevices, thinking of the things that usually occupied my thoughts when Emma was out of them.

  When I went back to the house she was crying. I stood in the doorway, not sure what to do. Her hands were clasped over her belly and she rocked herself, wailing.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘Shall I fetch your mother?’

  She shook her head and held out her hand, and I sat beside her with my arm about her shoulders, and comforted her as best I could.

  ‘I want to be a good wife,’ she sobbed. ‘I’ve tried, I’ve tried so hard.’

  ‘I know you have,’ I said, ‘and all I want is to be a good husband to you.’

  She seemed a little calmed by that, although I wondered what I had done to provoke her thus. At length she reassured me that the baby was not coming, and told me to fetch the clean linen from her sister’s house, and I went off again a little relieved to be outside in the fresh air.

  I walked the long way, up towards the White Hart, and past it and down across the meadow towards the river. The brewhouse at the Swan was being made ready, for there was to be another meeting of the inquest. This time I would keep myself away from it, lest the police find further reason to question me and accuse me of not co-operating. Besides, what happened inside the inn had very little to do with Harriet any longer. It was the town, the town tearing itself into pieces, and pulling those pieces into shreds. No longer were the women muttering about murderers in their midst and which of them might be next; now they wanted it over, forgotten, buried. Never mind the chapel; that had been torn asunder long ago. Now the reverend was doing his best to cling to those who were left behind – the foolish, the Godblind, the resolutely faithful, who had their eyes closed to the hypocrisy and the shame.

  He would do it, for he always did. If the chapel could survive the murder of a young woman, it would survive anything. All he had to do was stay where he was and preach, whilst his wife crept around the town in supposed secret, bringing gifts and bestowing money to those who needed it but did not ask. She never gave so much as a farthing to those who asked. Thus were the people of Bromley obliged to her, and to him, and those on the receiving end of the largesse found it convenient to forget whatever scandal might have been laid at the reverend’s door. He attended every inquest, not for the reason he gave – to look out for the interests of the chapel and its congregation – but to look out for himself; so that he should know immediately if he was accused. Thus he allayed suspicions before they had a chance to develop, and all the while he appeared to be representing those who were too poor or weak, or too ignorant, to represent themselves.

  But he never represented me.

  They might yet come for me. I kept myself ready at all times, thinking that they should arrest me and take me to jail. And there I should rot for want of a lawyer, or probably hang for my own lack of clever conversation. Perhaps it might be something of a relief.

  I had found my way, as was often the case, to that hidden spot on the riverbank where I kissed my Harriet for the first time. I remembered it so well, taking her hand to help her down the rutted bank. And all that time she was already pregnant, with the child growing inside her. I should have held on to her hand for good, and then I might have kept her, but instead I let it go, and in the darkness of that November night she slipped away.

  What if she had told me she was pregnant? She might have expected that I would have run, perhaps, or called her a whore. I have thought so long about that situation and what I might have done, and I cannot imagine turning away from her. But she did not know that, just as I did not know her secret in time.

  And why did she not wait for me, that last night, as we agreed? Did we miss each other in the darkness, or did she decide that she was better off without me, after all? Did she
think that I might defend her, and in so doing injure Mr Verrall, or he me? Did she think that he might have told me of her condition, before she had the chance to tell me herself? I think, now, that she intended to tell me, some time that night, before or after she met with Mr Verrall. That she liked and trusted me enough to share that desperate secret.

  I think I shall be haunted forever, by those things she did not say.

  Frances Williams

  The day was bright and clear, and the sun shining in a cloudless sky. I had caught the early coach from London, leaving the boarding house in Southwark at dawn, and speaking to nobody on board as far as Beckenham. At that point they all seemed to wake up, and the coach was full of lively conversation about where we were all going and why. I lied, and told them I was visiting a dear friend. As I left the coach at the White Hart, the elderly lady who had been seated opposite me caught my arm and wished me every happiness.

  The simplicity of her remark made tears start in my eyes, although she did not see. I wondered if today would be the start of that, true happiness, which I had craved for so long, and missed. Perhaps it was this, or perhaps the sunshine, that made Bromley seem so very much brighter; or maybe I remembered that Mary Ann Monckton and Jane Humphrey had both remembered me on my last visit, and spoken to me; but I felt less trepidation this time.

  The inquest began at half-past ten, and the room was as crowded as I had ever seen it. Richard Field was already inside, and I took a moment to thank him for his letter, and ask after his wife. He said she did well, although the child was due imminently.