The Murder of Harriet Monckton

by Elizabeth Haynes

  I opened my eyes. It was Thomas Churcher. He must have followed me in.

  I looked back in my journal just now and read those words I wrote about him, after the time he took tea with Frances and Clara and myself. I wrote that people called him slow-witted, and in fact he is not. He is perfectly clever, when you get to know him, but he does not care to display it. As a result people underestimate him terribly, something I had done myself.

  I ended the last entry abruptly, for Frances had called me to the table to eat with her, and now that I am alone once more I find there are more pressing things to write about. Just as we finished eating there came a knock at the door, and Frances answered; to my surprise and concern it was the reverend. He stood on the doorstep for a moment enquiring after my health, and Frances’s health, and my mother and sister, all the while with Frances staring at him and trying to make him uncomfortable enough to leave; but he would not. Eventually he asked to speak to me, and Frances closed the door and asked me whether I was minded to see him, or would prefer her to send him away?

  I judged that it would be easier to speak to him, and I took up my shawl and walked with him back through the Market Place and towards the chapel, where we might speak freely, without being overheard. We did this quite easily, although he had given me no indication of the nature of his enquiry, and upon reaching the chapel gate he seemed almost surprised to find where we were.

  ‘Do you want to go inside?’ he asked.

  I looked about us; nobody else was within earshot. A cart laden with sacks was rumbling past, two oxen tethered behind it. ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘I wished to apologise,’ he said, ‘for my behaviour. I feel I may have been a little harsh with you.’

  ‘I am going to have a child,’ I said. I was looking at him when I said it, and his expression showed shock, and horror, and perhaps a little fear.

  ‘You cannot surely be suggesting—’ he began, but I interrupted him.

  ‘I need help, Reverend. I need your help.’

  He put a hand on my upper arm, and opened the gate. ‘Come inside,’ he said. ‘Let us discuss it properly, where we are not at risk of being heard.’

  I followed him reluctantly, but, if my fear was the price that had to be paid for some sort of answer to my prayers, then so be it. He took me into the vestry, and I stood in the doorway while he bustled about. The sun had passed to the other side of the chapel and the room was darkening. He lit the lamp and asked if I was cold, if I wanted him to light the stove, but I could not bear to think of staying long in his company, so I shook my head.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘let us pray.’

  He did not give me the chance to refuse, or to walk away, but bent his head and prayed, ‘Heavenly Father, we commend our sister Harriet into Your loving care. Offer her guidance, and love, and comfort in her time of need, and so do not forsake her, in the name of Thy Son, Jesus Christ, who died that our sins may be forgiven, amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ I whispered.

  He sat down behind his desk and leaned back in his chair. I stood before him like a penitent child, waiting to explain my misdeeds. He looked at me for a long time, his fingers steepled, until finally he said, ‘Of course, you understand there is very little that can be done.’

  ‘On the contrary, there is much that you can do,’ I said.

  ‘What is it you want?’

  I hesitated. ‘I thought perhaps you might know of a place I could go, where I could have the child safely, and then deliver it into the care of a kind person. With my position in Arundel, I should be able to send money, and—’

  ‘Arundel?’ he said, and he laughed. ‘You believe you can still go to Arundel, in your condition?’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked, miserably.

  ‘Do you not think they will ask you about that?’ he responded, pointing with a long white finger at my stomach.

  I looked down. Even I could see it now. In another month’s time, how could I possibly disguise it?

  ‘And what reason would you then give,’ he went on, ‘for your absence so soon after beginning your work there? Do you even know when that time might fall?’

  ‘Then perhaps something else – something that could be done quickly, before I need to leave …’

  His face hardened. ‘You do realise what you are suggesting?’

  I did not reply.

  ‘What you are suggesting, Harriet, is the most terrible of sins. A dreadful business.’

  ‘You said once that there were no degrees of sin, that one was the same as another in God’s eyes.’

  ‘Perhaps it is unhelpful to think in terms of sin, in this instance. Perhaps, instead, we should consider it in terms of morality: corruption, profligacy, promiscuity. Do you prefer to think of it thus?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said.

  ‘For you are, indeed, promiscuous. Are you not?’

  ‘Indeed I am not, sir.’

  He liked to sport with me, I realised. There was some odd thing about my presence that roused him to a temper. I approached him meekly, and he saw impudence in it; I asked for help, and he relished making the matter worse.

  Well, then: I had nothing further to lose in asking.

  ‘But you could still help me,’ I said, and hesitated. ‘Perhaps, Reverend, if you could spare me a little money – a loan, perhaps – just enough that I could go away for a little while, and—’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘Yes, and—’

  ‘You’re asking me – me – for money?’

  I lifted my head, to look him in the face. His cheeks were red, his eyes wide. Somehow this had offended him more than anything else.

  ‘A loan,’ I said.

  For a moment we stared at each other. I thought of the mother cat, with her kittens, and Thomas Churcher bringing her food, and my poor broken heart shattered a little more.

  ‘You think that I should spend my money – my wife’s money, my congregation’s money … God’s money … to lead you even further into sin, to live your whole life telling lie upon lie? My child, you are up to your very neck in the mire of it – you are drowning in it – and I have no lifeline to throw you except to tell you to repent, and beg for mercy, and to throw yourself into the arms of Jesus, and perhaps you shall yet be saved.’

  ‘But you could save me, and you choose not to,’ I said. He was unmoved. I took a deep breath in, and turned to go.

  ‘I shall pray for you,’ I heard him say.

  He did not follow me. That was a small compensation. As I left, it occurred to me that, for all his bluster, he had not actually said no. Another compensation, I realised, as I made my way to the Market Place and Frances, was that he had not suggested some other form of exchange, some tawdry payment in kind, which would worsen my predicament instead of alleviating it.

  Wednesday, 4th October

  I stayed with Frances and went home again the next morning to change my dress. Mary Ann had gone early into town and I had not seen her in the market, or on the path. When she came back from the town I helped her prepare dinner, but the smell of it was too much, and I ate but a very little. After that, a long afternoon of sewing and conversation stretched before me and I told them I needed fresh air.

  I walked across the fields and up the lane and continued to Beckenham, and then towards Sydenham, before the long hill grew steep and my legs were tired and the weariness made me wish I had walked in circles. Now I was miles from home, and there were no carts or carriages going in the right direction, and there were but few heading for Forest Hill. I stood for a moment and pressed my hands into the small of my back, and stretched, and turned to go back the way I had come.

  After a little while it began to rain, just lightly, and then it grew heavier and more persistent, and soon my dress was soaked and my bonnet too, and the water dripped from it onto the back of my neck, and I lifted my shawl to protect me and soon that was soaked, too.

  I thought that perhaps this, too, was God’s punishment for being so foolish; perh
aps I should catch a fever and die of it.

  There were things that could be done, I thought. There were medicines that could be taken, to bring the child early, too early for it to survive. I could drink gin, to dull the pain. I could throw myself under the coach. But then perhaps the coach would turn, and the horses would suffer, and those inside the carriage would likely come to harm too, and through no fault of their own. Perhaps I could take care of the matter alone, quietly, in a way that might be slower and more painful, but at least I should be in control of it, and I could keep my baby safe inside me, while I waited for the end. We should be buried together, perhaps without anyone even realising the reasons behind my actions. And perhaps God would forgive me this most terrible of sins, and on the last day we should rise together, my baby and me, and be translated into Glory. And perhaps not.

  By the time I reached the beginnings of the town the rain had stopped. My shawl and my skirts were wet and filthy, and my bonnet ruined. I reached the Cage and thought of the mile I still had to walk, across the fields, which would be thick with mud now; I could continue on the road and find my way home that way, but it made one mile into four, and the road was not much more passable than the path, having had the progress of carts and carriages and horses as well as people to churn it up.

  I was halfway across the field, my progress slower than usual because of my exhaustion, when I saw two people approaching. I stood aside to let them pass, but when they reached me they stopped, and I looked up to see Emma Milstead with her younger sister. I smiled and nodded, and wished them a good day despite the weather, and I had a moment to think once again that Emma Milstead was really very pretty indeed.

  She bade her sister continue, and said she would catch her up; then, when the sister was a few paces away, Emma turned to me and said, ‘I know what you’re doing.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I asked, not understanding her.

  ‘Don’t play ignorant. You were seen, walking with my Tom, chattering away to him like the slut you are.’

  I frowned, and tried to think, and the only occasion I could think of was the time I met him in the field – just about there, in fact, where Emma and I currently stood, but chattering? No chattering was done, and in fact I recall that our meeting was largely conducted silently, and how very pleasant it was for that. But her tone, and her choice of words, made me indignant. That, and the fact that she stood at least a foot below me, and she was small and delicate and I could not be afraid of someone like her.

  ‘What of it?’ I said.

  ‘He is promised to me,’ she said.

  ‘That is not what he thinks,’ I answered, remembering what he had said when his brother had suggested the same thing.

  Her mouth opened in a shocked little O, and she made to strike me. I caught her wrist, and squeezed.

  ‘You are a nasty little bully,’ I said. ‘No wonder he wants to find someone better.’

  ‘Better like you? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Not me, but I am sure he deserves someone kinder, and sweeter, than you are, and I hope he finds that person soon, before you spoil his life completely.’

  ‘Let go,’ she said, twisting her wrist out of my hand. ‘I shall tell him you assaulted me! See what he thinks of you then!’

  She did not wait for a response, but lifted her skirts out of the mud and hurried along the path after her sister, flouncing like a child in a temper.

  I watched her go, and then continued in the opposite direction, looking for the place where the tree met the hedge, which should have the hollow place in the roots where the cat had her kittens. I wanted to see that she was dry in there, and safe, and that the kittens were well-fed and tended. I kept walking, and at length I saw the tree, and despite my tiredness my footsteps quickened, for I felt sorely in need of encouragement. Yes! It was the tree, and here the place that Thomas and I had crouched I bent down, my legs and my back aching dreadfully, to look.

  It was the right place, for the hollow was there, but of the mother cat and her kittens there was no sign.

  I am with Frances, in her rooms, and it is late: perhaps midnight, or later.

  She seemed to sense my very great distress this evening, if not the cause of it. I have grown good at hiding things, even from myself. It is in the moments when I am unprepared, when I am thinking of other, innocent things, that I am struck by the remembrance of the very deepest trouble in which I find myself. Or I can be laughing, or singing, or chatting with my dear friend, and I feel the movement of the child inside me and I think of those dark moments when I have considered death over living, and I am so very sorry for it.

  Frances held me in a tight embrace before bed, and said I am the kindest friend she has ever had, and how much she will miss me when I am gone. I think she knows that I will not be coming back this time, although how she can tell, I do not know. She watched me undress, and I hesitated at my chemise, turning my back to her, knowing that now my body is changing and that, surely, one day very soon, she will notice and say something and then all will be lost. How I long to tell her! For all her position, and her respectability, and her secure position with a good school, she is my very dear friend, and of all people, surely, she would help me?

  In bed, she slipped her arm about my waist and pulled me close to her. Inside me, the child moved, and I thought that she must surely feel it against her hand. But if she did she gave no sign. When she fidgeted and sighed, I managed to slip free of her and came to sit in my usual place by the stove, to write in my journal.

  I read back through a few of my scribblings and I noted that I never finished writing about Thomas Churcher coming to me in the chapel yesterday.

  He did not ask me why I was upset, which I thought was a kindness; or perhaps he simply did not notice. He asked if I was praying, and did not wish to be disturbed, and I said I was not, and he took a seat in the pew in front of mine. He told me he had come to speak with Mr Verrall about the music for the weekend, for it was to be a service of thanksgiving and dedication, and the reverend wanted the music just so. He asked if I had seen the reverend.

  I told him I had not, and said perhaps then I should go, and he replied that it was my house as much as it was his, or the reverend’s, and I should stay in it as long as I wished.

  I smiled at this idea, something so very pure and simple and beautiful, like Thomas himself. I said that I had errands to attend to, and I wished him good day, and he stood when I did, and made me a small bow, and I made him a small curtsey, and called him Mr Churcher, which seemed to please him very much, and we both laughed.

  There. Nothing of any consequence, but Thomas Churcher being so sweet to me made the events after that – the reverend being so very callous, and Emma Milstead so threatening – seem so very much worse. They all profess to be Saved, and which of them would I most like to meet in Heaven? I think you should guess.

  I wonder if he knows that the cat has gone?

  Sunday, 8th October

  I have been feeling better these past few days; I do not know if it is because the sickness has eased, and the weariness is not quite so dreadful, or if I have simply become accustomed to my condition and have come to accept that it is the Lord’s will, and that, according to Romans, Chapter Eight, all things work together for good to those who love God. Perhaps it is merely because the grey, miserable weather has finally broken, and we have had bright, clear days with sunshine, and it is warm for October. The weather has lifted everyone’s spirits, and the town is quite jolly with it.

  Even Mary Ann has been better; today she wished me a good morning, and asked if I wanted to walk with her to the town, for she is going to the parish church for her weekly chanting and reading out of prayers from a book. I said I would. She had expected that I should go to the chapel, but I had not decided whether I should or no.

  Of course, once we were on the path she began to talk about how she hoped I should like it in Arundel, for if I should find it not to my taste they would have to feed and clothe m
e once more, and our mother was not in the best of health, and so Mary Ann could not take in laundry for the damp air should affect it, so she should have to sew into the night, and her eyes were bad enough already. I said nothing and tried to think of other things, privately wishing I could tell her that Arundel was the very least of my concerns.

  We passed Susannah Garn on the way, and she stopped to tell us that her aunt, who was poorly, has been made well again; she was visiting her and would miss the morning service, but she asked me to tell the reverend that she would be present this evening. She said Mrs Verrall had visited, and been very kind; and that shortly afterwards the doctor had called, and told them that payment had already been made, and they were not to concern themselves further. She believes Mrs Verrall summoned him, and she thought she should go and say thank you, but she wondered if the anonymity of the act meant that the reverend’s wife wished for it not to be mentioned again? Mary Ann said she thought so, and Susannah said she agreed, but her aunt was concerned that they might appear ungrateful. I said that perhaps her aunt should write a note, privately, and have a boy take it to the house.

  I went on to the service, and gave thanks for my life and the small, precious life of my child inside me, who is still a secret. The sun shone in through the windows in a shaft of light that ended where I sat, purely by chance, so the candles at the front illuminated the reverend poorly, and I had to shield my eyes to read the number of the hymn that we should sing next. I felt blessed, that God had chosen me above all the others in the congregation to experience His Divine Light; and that it was a sign, that all would be well, that a solution would be found. The baby wriggled inside me, and I had to stop myself from placing my hand upon my belly to feel it. Other women do that, I have seen them, and now I know why.

  The reverend was preaching one of his sermons in a series about the Lord’s Last Supper, taking his text from the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter Twenty-six, and we had reached ‘betrayal’. He had spoken for a minute or two before I took out my book and tore out a page, and noted what he said, which I here transcribe: