The Murder of Harriet Monckton

by Elizabeth Haynes

  I walked into town and stopped at the Beezleys’, but Frances was not there, of course, for it was the middle of the morning and she would have been hard at work giving lessons at the school. I wandered around the Market Place for a while but then I saw a young woman with a child in a shawl tucked under her arm. Other women were gathering round to fuss over the baby, which could not have been more than a month old.

  I felt the tears start once again and the nearest place to seek refuge was in the chapel. I fully expected the gate to be locked, but at least the walk would take me out of the way of the busiest part of town, and from there I could begin the walk back across the fields. But the gate swung open when I pushed it. The main door was shut fast, but the back door was not. I called out when I entered, lest I should startle some poor person, but then immediately thought that perhaps someone might be at prayer. I was relieved to see that the chapel was apparently empty. I sat in the nearest pew and put my head in my hands and wept. All I could think of was Richard. I had made a mistake, leaving London, I knew it surely, and now I had no way to mend what had been broken between us.

  At length I grew aware that I was not alone, and with a start I realised that Mr Verrall was there beside me. I had been so overcome with my misery that I had not even noticed him approach. He asked me what was the matter. I wiped my face and got to my feet, and told him I was sorry, and I was quite well, and I should be getting along. He told me I had better take a moment to compose myself, and asked would I like some tea?

  In the vestry he has a stove and a kettle, and a tin of tea, and some china cups. He told me he would make the tea strong, for fortitude, and as he made it I sat in a comfortable chair beside his desk and watched him. He asked me if he should pray for me, and I answered that he might not wish to, if he had had any awareness of what troubled me.

  I should not have uttered those words, of course. He passed the cup and saucer to me, and then sat at his desk, his hands clasped in his lap, regarding me.

  ‘You do know, Harriet, that you can speak to me freely of anything at all.’

  I told him that I did know that.

  ‘And,’ he added, ‘anything you do say is subject of course to the confidential obligations of my profession …’

  And it was too much for me, to hold it all in; and I thought that when I had told Frances she had not judged me harshly, therefore so much the less should a minister of the Lord, and I found myself telling him the story, both what had kept me away from home so long, and what had sent me flying back here.

  When I had finished he was silent, and I was grateful. He looked at me gravely and said that the Lord would judge me not by my actions alone, but by what was in my heart. And then we prayed together, and afterwards he asked if he could help me in any other way, and I said that really there was nothing to be done, and so he should not feel that he needed to trouble himself further with me.

  We sat for a while and I have to admit that the tea revived me very well. He talked to me of chapel business, of the missionaries, of the church meeting and whether I should like to attend, until I felt myself again. He even made me laugh at some trivial thing: the finding of a broken coin in the offertory and who might be responsible for it, and the lengthy discussion that took place among the deacons.

  ‘They are like a bunch of chattering monkeys sometimes,’ he said. ‘I do not wish to be unkind, but I just wait for them to finish and then tell them what they knew all along.’

  I felt so very much better. I placed my teacup on the desk and rose. ‘I should not trouble you further, Reverend,’ I said.

  He replied that I should feel free to visit him at any time. He said he was often in the vestry, alone, in the mornings; that he worked on his sermons and his letters here, untroubled by the interruptions he experienced at home.

  I told him that he should find me interrupting him here instead, and he might regret suggesting that I visit.

  He said that my visits would be a pleasure and not any trouble, and that now the idea had been presented to him he found that he was looking forward to being interrupted by me on a regular basis, although he hoped that I would come not only when I was troubled, but also the next time I felt joyful.

  I shook his hand. He kissed mine. I left.

  Now that I am home again, and I have redeemed myself with my sister by folding the sheets and putting everything away, and then helping her to prepare supper, I find my thoughts very much diverted by my visit to the chapel. Everything feels very different now. I have hardly thought of Richard, and Maria, since then. Even now, when I bring them to the front of my mind, rather like pressing a bruise for the sake of one’s own curiosity, the pain is lessened. I can scarcely remember what it was that made me weep so much this morning.

  I keep remembering the conversation, committing his words to my heart, and here on the page, as now I can hardly believe them. He is a busy man, an important man, and he knows my sins, yet he wants me to visit him again. I hope that my spirits will remain uplifted and that, when I next visit the chapel, I shall not make quite such a spectacle of myself!

  Tuesday, 8th August

  Of course, I should have stayed away.

  However plain his invitation, I should have avoided the chapel until he had forgotten all about me once more. But Frances was busy with the school, and I wished to be away from the house. There has been no further news of Richard and Maria. I should, perhaps, have written to Richard, at the very least to let him know of my intentions regarding the school at St Albans, but I found I had no desire to contact him.

  Instead I had written to Mr Edwards directly, requesting that he should speak to the board on my behalf, and that I was willing to attend at short notice, should that be required. He had replied very quickly, reminding me that they required a further character, as the policy of the school was to ask for two references, and his own alone would not suffice. Needless to say, I shall require a better testimonial than the one he has provided for me!

  I thought of asking Frances but that very evening she had told me how desperately glad she was that I was here in Bromley, and how I should never leave. She meant it in jest but at that moment I could not ask her to facilitate my departure. Instead, I resolved to go to the chapel the following day to ask Mr Verrall for his assistance. That was this morning, and everything has changed, and I realise now my mistake.

  It was as before: the gate was unlocked, the main door closed fast, the back door opening when I tried it. And he was there in the vestry. The stove was lit, and as it was a mild day the door was open to allow the fresh air to circulate. I say this for he saw me coming, and got to his feet, and I knew almost immediately that everything was very different, for he did not greet me as he had before. Instead he ushered me into the vestry and passed me and went to the back door and locked it from the inside with a key.

  I should have spoken up. I should have voiced my request immediately, to make him realise that my intentions in visiting him here were entirely innocent, and quite business-like; but instead he made it clear, by the look on his face and by the purposeful way he passed me and went to lock the door, that my visit had become something else. Something transgressive.

  He returned to the vestry and said, ‘Did you close the gate?’

  I told him I had.

  ‘It would look ill, if I locked it,’ he said. ‘But the door is locked; if anyone should come, I shall tell them I did it without thinking.’

  I did not tell him that I should prefer not to be locked inside with him; I did not tell him that I did not understand. Now, of course, I know I should have said something. I have been thinking over and over the events of the afternoon and wondering why I chose to act as I did. Or perhaps, to put it another way, why I chose to not act at all.

  He was quite rough, and the deed itself was done very quickly. He did not undress. He did not look me in the eye. He kissed me, once, a dry, whiskery kiss on the mouth, firmly pressed so that I could feel his teeth behind; he was taller than Richar
d, and stronger, and younger, although still perhaps twenty years older than I. I observed these things as if from a distance. In my head were words like move and run and fight and yet I stayed motionless, like a doll.

  He withdrew from my body and spent into his hand. I thought that, at the end, felt curiously like an insult. By the time he had finished I had straightened my skirt and stood upright again – for all of this had taken place, wordlessly, against the side of his desk, and the wall – and then he kept his back to me whilst he arranged himself. He turned back to face me, wiping his hand upon a handkerchief.

  Afterwards he bade me sit, as if I had at that very moment walked into the vestry and found him working hard at his sermon. My bonnet was in a sorry state: the back of it had been crushed against the wall, and the ribbon half-torn off. I fingered it, avoiding his eyes. My hands were shaking. He offered me tea; I refused, saying I should rather have a glass of water.

  He poured water into a glass from an earthenware bottle that he kept on the high windowsill. My throat was dry. The water tasted stale.

  ‘Now, Harriet,’ he said, ‘this is a pleasant surprise. Was there a reason for your visit?’

  I told him of the school in St Albans, and how they required a second character. Given what had just transpired between us, it should have been awkward for him to refuse; and yet he seemed peevish. With a cold draught of shock I realised he thought I had come with the intention of seducing him, to ask for his help, and had thought he would not have done it otherwise.

  He sat and wrote it out while I watched, only in that moment beginning to realise what I had done and what he had done, and how everything between us had changed, for all that he was acting as if nothing at all had transpired. I could still feel the imprint of his body on mine. My thighs itched.

  Now, hours later, I find myself wondering if it did happen, or if I simply imagined it; for everything after it was completely normal and calm. Outside the chapel, the day was grey. The town was full of people who had no knowledge of what had happened. Frances was at school; Richard was in London with Maria. None of them knew, nor will they ever know.

  And the letter is here, in my hands, recommending me to the board.

  TO THE COMMITTEE OF ST ALBANS SCHOOL

  Miss Harriet Monckton, who is a candidate for the office of teacher, has been a member of the church under my pastoral care since August 1836, and has conducted herself with great propriety. I beg to recommend her to your confidence as one fully adapted to fill so important a station.

  Wishing you God speed in your laudable endeavours to train up the little ones to be useful members of society and to share at length as heirs of immortality.

  I am, yours truly,

  GEORGE VERRALL

  Pastor of the Independent Church,

  assembling in Bromley Chapel.

  I wonder at him; that he was able to write such a letter, just moments after he had committed an act with a younger woman, unmarried.

  Lust. Adultery. Sin.

  Wednesday, 9th August

  Yesterday evening I felt numb and cold.

  This morning I feel nothing but shame; I am disgusted at myself. For what took place yesterday in the vestry was an appalling lack of judgement on my part. Perhaps what I had told him about Richard Field had made him think that I would welcome his attention? But I had not. I did not invite it. I did not participate. I did not seek that out from him; on the contrary, I went to the chapel to ask for his assistance with another matter entirely. What took place was my fault in that it came from an inactivity, a passivity. Ennui, perhaps. Inertia.

  I do not blame him. I do not think him a bad person, just really a very ordinary one. I had thought him holy, and honest, and clever; a man closer to God than I, someone who could speak the truth and bring people to the Lord. Now I see that he is, as well as those things, a human being just as I am, just as Richard is, with baser desires and a terrible lack of self-control.

  A sad thing, a tragic thing, it is: such a moment, potentially a life-changing one for us both: the virtuous man and the fallen woman, the seducer and the innocent, and in fact it boils down to nothing more than two human beings crashing together and then moving apart again.

  The impetuous, and the indolent. The one who cannot control his desire, meeting the one who can see tragedy approaching, but lacks the impetus to move out of the way.

  I shall not go to the chapel alone again. That way, there will be no further misunderstandings.

  Friday, 11th August

  A letter came today, from Mr Wainwright, who is in charge of the board at the St Albans school. They are willing to employ me on a trial, for three weeks, commencing next Monday. He suggests I write for a room at an inn called the Beehive, which he recommends as being a respectable establishment. He will also enquire for suitable more permanent lodgings for me, should my performance be satisfactory.

  I took the letter with me to Frances this evening. She read it carefully and said she thought it was very poor that they were not providing me with lodgings from my arrival, and that as a single woman in the employ of a school board it is the very least I should expect.

  I had had lodgings in London, of course. With Richard.

  She commented that I did not seem very happy about the letter, and in truth, I did not feel it. I could not say why; perhaps recent events had changed matters for me. I felt very out of sorts, distracted by it all. I told her that Mr Verrall had been kind enough to write me a good character for the position, and she responded by pulling a face.

  I asked, ‘Why do you dislike him so?’

  She replied that she distrusted him, but she was not sure why. She said that she has a kind of sense about people, a feeling inside her, and the feeling has never yet been proved wrong.

  I wanted to tell her that I disliked him too, but of course then she would want to know what had happened to change my opinion so dramatically. Besides, it was not entirely true: I did not dislike him. I just saw him, now, for what he was: a man like every other man, driven by desires that were more earthly than virtuous.

  And Richard is just the same. I can only see that now: that my experience with Richard was exactly the same as that moment in the vestry, only much slower.

  I decided then and there to travel to St Albans, for there was nothing else to be done. My mother and sister did not want me; the shame of what had happened was keeping me from the chapel; and if I stayed there was a chance that somehow my ill behaviour would become public, and my reputation would be ruined.

  I told them over supper; they were both pleased. My mother wanted to know, where was St Albans? And my sister’s face told me that she cared not if St Albans were halfway to Australia, so long as I went there and did not come back.

  Saturday, 12th August

  I had dinner with the Churchers, for Clara had invited me and I wished to be out of the house as much as possible. Clara had prepared a roast leg of mutton with potatoes and carrots and broad beans, and we all sat around the table in a most jolly fashion. Mr Churcher is a quiet man, but knowledgeable; as well as making shoes and boots with Thomas, he holds the weights and measures for the town and provides a service to all the shopkeepers by calibrating their scales. He says he does that more than the making of shoes these days, and that Thomas is quite capable, and in fact he has a much finer skill in leatherwork than he ever had himself.

  Thomas blushed when his father said that, which I thought rather sweet. I believe he is much underestimated, for he is a deep thinker, although he expresses his thoughts but seldom. Clara talks and James talks, and often they talk for Thomas, as well, as if he were not present himself. They are so accustomed to doing so, they do not even notice they are doing it.

  I found myself trying to redress this by asking him questions directly – ‘What do you think, Thomas?’ and ‘Thomas, what music would you play in chapel, if you could choose?’

  This latter question resulted in him looking up at me in surprise, and responding, ‘Often
I do choose. The reverend permits it.’

  ‘Does he not match the music and the hymns to the subject of his sermons?’

  ‘Sometimes he does, one or two, but the rest of them he leaves to me.’

  ‘And how, then, do you choose?’

  ‘From the season, or the festival, if there is one. Or just the hymns I like best. Or, sometimes, because we have not sung a hymn for a long time.’

  He was quite pink with the effort of saying so much, in one answer. His family had stopped eating and were all looking at him in surprise.

  ‘Emma will be pleased,’ James said, and Clara admonished him for it.

  ‘Emma?’ I asked.

  ‘Tom is betrothed to Emma Milstead,’ James said.

  ‘I am not!’ Thomas exclaimed, and everyone laughed, which I thought rather unkind.

  ‘He and Emma have been sweethearts for a long time,’ Clara said to me, smiling. ‘Since you left for London, in fact.’

  For his part, I thought he looked uncomfortable with the idea, but had not the courage to say so.

  ‘And James is walking out with Millie Judds,’ Thomas said, as if in retaliation.

  But James seemed very happy to admit it, and said, ‘Indeed I am, and once I have enough money saved to get us a house I will ask her to marry me.’

  ‘It will take a long while,’ Clara said, ‘since money falls through the hole in your pocket!’

  We passed the dinner happily enough, and I helped Clara to clear the plates and wash them, and put them away, all the while talking of trivial things. She said she would miss me, when I went to the new school; I told her I should be back before very long if it proved to be an odd sort of place. She asked me why that should be, and I told her it was just something to say. But I was thinking that, just as Frances had an instinct about people, I have an instinct about places, and I am not sure about this. Perhaps it is because St Albans is north of London and it feels so much further away.