The Murder of Harriet Monckton

by Elizabeth Haynes

  ‘And as they did eat, He said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray Me. The Lord Jesus knew that one of them would betray Him, and He knew which of them would do it; but all the disciples gathered there all wondered who it might be. They were all afraid that it might be them, for they did not know who it was. Verse 22: And they were exceedingly sorrowful, and each of them began to say unto Him, Lord, is it I? These were the men who lived with the Lord Jesus Christ every day, who had heard the Word of the Lord for themselves, from his own lips, and yet each of them thought they might be capable of betraying the man they claimed to love so very much. We may find it shocking that the disciples of Christ believed they could betray their Master, and yet they knew, as we do, that when we sin against our brothers, we sin against God. First Corinthians, Chapter Eight, Verse 12: But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ.’

  Transcribing the notes now, I am struck once again with the horror of the hypocrisy of the man preaching these words, and I wonder that clean wine can come from such a filthy vessel. But it is proof, if proof were needed, that the Lord forgives, and, if He has forgiven Verrall, then He has also forgiven me, and that, if nothing else, is a reason to be glad.

  Then it was communion, and I had thought I should not take the sacrament, but had wondered whether I should be asked by someone why I had taken a blessing instead; but then I saw the reverend take it, and Emma Milstead, and I prayed, and the Lord moved me to take the bread and wine, so I did. I did not look at the reverend when he passed me the plate, and he gave no sign to me in return.

  When the service was over, I saw Emma Milstead walking out with her family, glancing back at Thomas, who was tidying the music, and talking to Alfred Elliott, who has a fine tenor voice and has been asked many times by the deacons if he would form a choir for the chapel, and manage it. She dallied, and waited, and fidgeted about, and then finally was told by her father to hurry, and off she went.

  I had nobody to hurry me along, and so I sat in the pew, in my shaft of bright sunlight, and waited until almost everyone had gone. I went to the porch, then, to speak to the reverend. He asked after my health, and called me Miss Monckton, and said he was pleased to see me. I told him it had been a most enlightening sermon. As I said it, Thomas Churcher hurried up to us, and shook the reverend’s hand, and asked me if I should like him to see me safely across the fields to my mother’s. The reverend looked at me, and looked at Thomas, and a strange sort of smile crept across his face, that I thought rather unpleasant.

  I said to Thomas that there was no need, but if he was not in a hurry I should like his company very much, and we set off.

  The path across the field stretched before us, the sunlight across the turned earth warm and soft and beautiful. I told him that he was very kind to walk me, but that Emma would not be happy with it, and she had already had cause to speak to me following the previous time we had walked together.

  He said, with a vehemence I had not heard in him before, ‘She thinks I am bound to her in some way; I tell you I am not.’

  I told him he should speak plainly with her, then, for she was very much convinced of it.

  He said, ‘I’ll not do that, I cannot.’

  I replied, ‘You should, Thomas, you must – for your own sanity, and for hers. If you do not care for her, set her free so that you can be free, too. You deserve happiness.’

  I had said too much, for he grew quiet, then, and would not speak. It was, in truth, none of my business. Perhaps he liked her very much after all, but was one of those men who would not say it.

  For a little while we walked on in silence, and then I asked after the mother cat, and said I had been very worried to see it had gone. He told me that when it rained he had brought a basket, and put food inside it, and tempted the cat within, and then brought her kittens to her, and so had taken her away from the hedge and brought her to the back room of the workshop, where at least it was warm and dry. He had left her with food and water, and the kittens were growing bigger by the day.

  I was so happy to hear this, and he smiled to see that I had been concerned, and told me that I should come to see the cat whenever I wanted.

  He took my hand in his, almost absent-mindedly. We walked along, and my heart was beating fast and hard. It was as if he had forgotten he was with me, and thought that he was with Emma, and had taken my hand as he might have taken hers, without thinking anything of it. I felt no artifice in him, no expectation, and that was why I carried on walking, my hand in his hand.

  Now I am home and writing here, the thought of him walking home with me, when he could have hurried and walked with Emma; and the tale of the cat, who was warm and dry and safe; and Thomas taking my hand and holding it … all of these things make my heart sing with joy. He makes me feel safe. I could be safe, with him.

  If he would have me.

  Monday, 9th October

  This morning brought two letters. The first was addressed to my mother. It was from my brother William, who writes to inform us that his wife, Anne, is expecting their first child. They are both overjoyed to be blessed thus and ask us to pray for Anne and the child, that it should be safely delivered, God willing, in the new year.

  Another door, then, that has been shut in my face; although perhaps this door was never really open to me. I am sure that God is fastening doors and windows so that I should see the correct path, and not be led to take a false one, which might yet lead me to a darker place.

  The second letter was from Richard, who has been waiting in vain for me to reply to his last. He says,

  Dear Harriet,

  I fear you may not have received my letter to you, or perhaps you have responded and that letter has gone astray. I am certain you would not have failed to reply, as I have always known you to be a conscientious young woman, who values her friends and respects her elders. For my part, I have considered most carefully everything that you said in your last letter to me, and I think perhaps you might have believed my words to be a little harsh. I trust that the intervening days have given you time to consider your response, and your position, and that, despite the tone of your last letter and the content of mine, we are still friends? Maria has been asking after you and I hope that, perhaps, you might visit us in London after all, before you journey onward to Arundel. I hope to hear from you soon, and until then I remain, always,

  Your

  Richard

  I cannot pretend I was not pleased to hear from him, and pleased, indeed, that he has regretted the harshness of his tone in that letter. I have read this new letter several times, in the hope of seeing something in it which might suggest that he has decided to assist me after all, but I cannot find it. However, perhaps he has spoken to Maria, and confessed his failings, and perhaps she was the one who prompted him to write – she has been asking after me, he says – and she will have thought of some possible solution that can only be spoken of in person, at their house, and that is why I should attend.

  Feeling great hope in my heart, I wrote back to him immediately.

  Dear Richard,

  Thank you for your last letter, which was safely delivered this morning.

  I did not reply to your last, as the tone of it and the content upset me greatly, and left me with nothing to say in reply that might not be considered unworthy of a Christian. I am glad you have reconsidered your choice of words, and thought them harsh, as I did too. I can also assure you that, despite your apparent belief to the contrary, I was, until you cast me aside for my friend, very much a faithful wife to you in deed, if not in name. I hope you have also reconsidered your response to my requests for help, and that you are now in a position to lend me funds, which I will return to you at the earliest possible opportunity, when I am in Arundel and earning a wage once more. Perhaps you have explained the situation to Maria, and she has been the one to urge you to change your mind? If you have not talked to her, I suggest it would be wise to do so, as she was my fr
iend long before she was yours; she, I am sure, will want you to help me in every possible way, and if I were to ask her myself I am sure she would take my part in the matter.

  I understand that my condition is far from a happy one, but I would ask nevertheless that you remember me in your prayers, as I pray for you all daily, and am, as ever,

  Your own dear

  Harriet

  Friday, 13th October

  Thomas has taken to loitering at the stile near my mother’s house, so that he can walk with me across the fields towards the town. I have asked him if he does not have work to do, or errands to run, and he makes up some excuse: that his father is waiting for delivery of silks or leather, and he cannot work until the delivery is made; or that he was in Farwig to visit an uncle with a message, or, this morning’s excuse, that Clara sent him to ask how I did, and if I should like to come to their house for tea.

  I said yes. I might as well enjoy the time I have left in Bromley; one way or another, it will come to an end soon enough.

  He has concluded the matter with Emma Milstead.

  ‘I didn’t think you would do it,’ I told him.

  ‘You asked me to,’ he said, ‘and I would do anything you asked. Anything at all.’

  We did not walk to the town; instead, we took the path that leads to the river, and walked until there was a place on the riverbank quite hidden from the path, and without a word having passed between us in suggestion or agreement he took my hand and led me carefully through the small space between the bushes, down to the bank. There were no boats upon the river, thankfully, or we should have been clearly seen; although just there the bank was very overgrown and the river quite narrow, so perhaps it is not used by the barges.

  We sat on the bank and I think I told him he had done the right thing, and asked if he felt any happier for it.

  He said he did.

  He was sitting very close, and once more he took my hand, which he had released when we had reached the spot, and he held it and turned it over in his hands, and looked at it, as a palmist might, or a physician. He said he thought I was very clever, to be a schoolteacher, and how I must think him very stupid and foolish. I said, on the contrary, I thought he was a truly good man, and that he played the music beautifully, and I had no skills at all to compare with his. He said he played to the Glory of God, and I agreed, and said God loved him and thought him a great man. He said he hoped it was true, but, if so, then God was the only one who thought so, as all others thought him an idiot.

  I said I did not think him an idiot at all; that on the contrary I thought him very intelligent, and, whatever people thought of him, he seemed reluctant himself to disabuse them of their opinions, and perhaps that in itself showed his wisdom.

  He could not look at me. His cheek was flushed. He seemed to steel himself into action, and he bent his head and kissed the inside of my wrist, lifting the sleeve of my dress an inch or so out of the way to reach it.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘I have wanted to do it, and now I have.’

  He smiled at me and I smiled, too, at the innocence of him, to be so satisfied with a gentle kiss.

  Friday, 20th October

  I am with Frances, and almost a week has passed since I last wrote here. I think, perhaps, I only write when I am afraid, or desperate, and that this journal is my solace; it serves me well, for telling a blank page of my worries is my only escape from them. So you may determine that my sojourn in the real world has been a happy one; and that is thanks to Thomas.

  I have told no one of our friendship, and I believe neither has he. Frances suspects, for he calls for me at her lodging, with some excuse or other, and, as hard as I try to keep the smile from my face when he does so, she must surely have seen that my demeanour has brightened considerably in recent days.

  This evening Thomas called for me as Frances and I were reading. It was barely dusk, a still evening at the end of what had been a beautiful autumn day. I told Frances I would walk as far as the chapel and then come back, that I should not be gone long. In the Market Place we saw Emma’s sister, and I should have dodged her and gone into Isard’s yard but Thomas held my arm and steered me into the open. We walked together in silence until the narrow opening to Widmore Lane.

  Thomas said that the reverend had asked after me; that he had seen us walking together and had enquired if he had broken off with Emma.

  ‘What did you say?’ I asked.

  ‘I told him that Emma and I were never promised in the first place, and that I had told her plainly of it.’

  ‘What did he say to that?’

  ‘He said he thought it was a pity, and he asked if I was now promised to you instead.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he answered. ‘None of his business what I do, is it?’

  ‘Indeed it is not.’

  I was pleased at this, and that Thomas is a man of discretion, for heaven knows he will need it if he is to continue to associate with me.

  Then he said that he wanted to tell someone, and of all people perhaps it should be the reverend, who knew us both so well. I asked what he should tell him, and Thomas flushed, and shuffled his feet, as he does when I have challenged him in some way, and then he said he wanted to shout it from the Market Place to everyone that he and I were walking out together.

  ‘Is that what we are doing?’ I said, and I was teasing him.

  ‘You know we are,’ he said.

  ‘Tell anyone you like, then,’ I said, ‘except for him.’

  That was the wrong thing for me to say, for then he would not let it rest. Why did I not want him to know? Did I not like him? Did I not trust him, who was appointed our Shepherd? I made it even worse then, for I said I was a little afraid of him.

  He said, ‘Why? He is a godly man.’

  I tried to make light of it, and said that I thought he was a man, who thought himself godly and tried hard to be so, but fell a little short. He said in reply that we all fall short of that, and I knew he was right. We had reached the path to the riverbank, and we took it, even though it was almost dark. There was a half-moon, enough to see by, but not enough to encourage the whole town to be out and walking. When we reached the space in the bushes, he took my hand and led me carefully over the rough ground, until we found our usual spot, and then he asked me if Verrall had ever hurt me.

  What could I reply? I said he should not think badly of him; that he is Thomas’s pastor, and will be here long after I am gone.

  He pressed the matter, and pressed it, and asked again and again, until finally I said that I had told the reverend something once, in confidence, and that I thought now that it had been a mistake to do so. It was not an untruth; perhaps, at worst, a half-truth. Thomas wanted to know more, and my heart wanted to tell him all, there and then, because it was dark enough for him not to see my face clearly and for me not to see his; telling stories that are as miserable as mine is becomes a little easier when you do not have to see the pain in the eyes of the person you are telling. But I stopped myself in time, for selfish reasons. I wanted to enjoy Thomas just for a little while longer, to enjoy the feeling of being liked and admired, for certainly when he learns about Richard and Maria, and the reverend, and, worst of all, that I am carrying another man’s child, surely he will not want anything further to do with me.

  We kissed, a little. He stroked my cheek, and kissed my neck, and my throat, and my wrist, and then my fingers, and then my mouth again. He kisses well, and is gentle, but strong. His arms hold, but do not grip. He is full of desire, and yet also full of self-control. This I know to be rare, in a man. I felt a rush of longing. How I wish I had more time! How I wish I had taken more notice of him before Richard, that I might have chosen differently!

  ‘I should like to marry,’ I said impulsively. ‘I should like to promise to love one man above all others. And to be loved in return.’

  Thomas looked as if he was about to speak but did not dare, and I am glad of it. However he
sees me, and however safe I feel with him, however hopeful, I am broken, tarnished, used, and forsaken. He deserves better than Emma Milstead, but, if that is true, then how much more so is it that he deserves better than me.

  Monday, 23rd October

  Another letter from Richard.

  Harriet,

  Your letter to me sounded, again, rather threatening. Was this your intention? That if I do not tell Maria of our most recent association, then you will do it yourself? Do you not think it possible that I can intercept such a letter, if it arrives here, and if you mean to tell her in person do you not think of how very hurt she will be by it? Do you think so little of her, your very dear former friend, that you would destroy her thus? She has, as you know, been unwell and is still very fragile after her confinement. I do not exaggerate to suggest that such a shock might kill her. Therefore I trust you will think carefully before such an act, and consider the consequences of your actions, and your behaviour.

  Richard

  If he thinks of Maria as weak, he is mistaken; she is stronger and wiser and bolder than she looks, and if he is taken in by her feminine manner then more fool him. With her having been pregnant herself I would not be at all surprised if she already knows, and perhaps that is what lay behind the awkwardness of our conversation on my last visit to London. Men underestimate women all the time, and, whatever pains we take to enlighten them, they never quite seem to realise the truth: that we are every bit as intelligent and strong as they are. It is only the demands of society that separate us.

  Nevertheless, he is right that she will be hurt by the news, for all the truth that she is married to Richard and I am not; and I should do anything to avoid hurting her, for I still consider her my friend. I am under no illusion that Richard would leave her to be with me, nor do I have any desire for that. What is it that I do want from him, deep within my soul? I am not sure. I think perhaps I have been entertaining the idea that we might all live together in the house in Fieldgate Street, as once we did: one man, one wife, one lodger, and two children. Perhaps I could be their governess, and bring up Richard’s two children together? Stranger family arrangements have been known.