The Murder of Harriet Monckton

by Elizabeth Haynes

  He grabbed at the railing and swung himself on to the path, and ran up it, and as he did so he was yelling, the words coming from the pit of his stomach and coming up into a roar: ‘Where are you, you devil!’ Then he was hammering on the door with the flat of his hand, once, twice, and it opened and there he was, Verrall himself, fully clothed and carrying a lamp which was so bright it made Tom shrink back and shield his eyes. He could not breathe. He stood back on the path, his hands on his knees, panting hard, thinking he might be sick.

  ‘What on earth—?’ Verrall said. ‘Tom? What is it? Is it your father?’

  That he should deny it!

  Tom launched himself forward and caught at Verrall, and the lamp fell and smashed on to the path. He propelled the man back until his foot caught against the step and they both fell backwards against the door, crashing together in a horrific sort of embrace. He was too close to hit him. He struggled and tried to strike him with his forehead, but Verrall brought up his knee and pushed him over onto his back, and then he was too exhausted to do anything, and the pain had risen once more and taken the place of the fury, and all that was left was a sob that sounded a little like, ‘Harriet.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean by this?’

  George Verrall got to his feet carefully, feeling the bruised flesh on his calf and his shoulder and brushing the dirt from the seat of his breeches. At his feet, Tom Churcher was sprawled, panting. The man had clearly had some sort of fit. He had not smelled the drink upon him when he wrestled him to the floor, but to all appearances he looked drunk. His eyes, in the dull light from the pantry, looked wild, staring, tear-filled; his lip curled back, showing his teeth.

  ‘You killed her,’ Churcher said, and then again, louder, ‘You killed her, you bastard!’

  ‘For God’s sake, man,’ Verrall said, ‘what language is this? What are you talking about? Killed who?’

  ‘Harriet,’ Tom said, and again it sounded like a cry of pain.

  ‘Harriet? But she is alive and well. I saw her in the chapel, not half an hour ago.’

  Then the cold reality of the situation, of Churcher’s behaviour, seemed to drench him, and he shook. There was no doubt in his mind that he had left Harriet alive. She had been living and breathing and upright, leaning back against the wall of the chapel against which he had just gripped her around the throat, lest she try to move away, and fucked her into a stunned sort of silence; but she had definitely been alive. He had had money with him, two half-sovereigns – a token amount – which he had offered her in exchange for, as he termed it, ‘the honour of your Holy Fire, one final time’. She had thought about it and nodded her assent, lifting her skirts and spreading her legs like the good, pious, desperate little whore she was.

  So he had done it, waited for the rush of joy and inspiration as the Holy Spirit doused him. But it did not come. Twenty shillings for nothing. And she had snivelled in his ear, at the end.

  Perhaps it was the feel of her hard belly against his stomach, the swelling of it; the thought of the child inside her. Whatever it was, the route by which he obtained his spiritual ecstasy had vanished.

  ‘I say to you, Churcher: she is alive. Unless you have done something to her?’

  The thought had just occurred to him in that moment, seeing the man in such a very bad way. If Harriet was indeed harmed, Churcher had done it himself and now was here to try and place the blame at his door, to make him a scapegoat. Yes! That was the size of it.

  He reached down and grasped Churcher’s jacket, and hauled him to his feet. ‘Let us go together, then, and see it, whatever it is.’

  He strode up the path to the lane and turned back to the town, not even caring to look if Churcher was following him or not. Perhaps the man had gone mad. Perhaps he had seen something in the darkness, and mistaken it, and in his peculiar little brain he had conjured up the image of a dead girl. There were explanations aplenty, but none that could be dealt with from the front step of his own home; he had to go and look.

  After a while he heard Churcher hurrying to catch up, and then the younger man fell into step beside him, and without a word the two continued along the moonlit roadway, the lantern hanging outside the Three Compasses the only other illumination, some distance away, at the end of the lane.

  Churcher must have acted in a fit of anger, and hurt her; perhaps he had overheard the fucking, and taken his fury out on Harriet? But why, then, would Churcher run to the house and blame him for it?

  The gate to the chapel was open wide. Both men went through it, and Churcher followed Verrall round to the back door, which was shut. For a moment they stood in silence. The door was in deep shadow. For the first time, Verrall felt afraid.

  Then he turned the iron ring that served as a handle, and the door opened.

  Inside, the single candle that Churcher had brought from the porch burned low and guttered at the sudden draught. It illuminated a shape on the floor, which looked to Verrall like nothing so much as a bundle of laundry. He approached and crouched, as Churcher had done, and lifted the candle to look at the face.

  ‘Good God,’ he said. ‘What on earth can have happened?’

  ‘You did not do it?’ Churcher asked.

  ‘No, I did not. Was it you?’

  ‘No, sir, no! I found her just as you see her now.’ His voice rose to a shout. ‘Just as you left her, not a couple of minutes before. I saw you go!’

  ‘I assure you, Tom, she was in fine good health when I left her. If it was not you, then perhaps she was overcome with a fit – or perhaps she took something – see, here, her mouth is bloody.’

  ‘Took something?’

  ‘I don’t know. But look at her! Something happened, did it not? Sometimes people do terrible things when they are sad, or unhappy, when their troubles seem to leave them no way out.’

  Churcher, crouched beside him, had begun a low, animal-like moaning. His mouth was open wide, ugly, a fine line of spittle trailing from his lip. Verrall could not bear to look at him.

  ‘Pull yourself together, man!’

  The younger man made no response, rocking gently on his heels, staring into the face of the dead girl.

  ‘Churcher!’

  At last his eyes turned, unfocused, on to the reverend.

  ‘Listen to me. Go and find some more candles, or a lantern – there is one in the vestry, on the windowsill behind the door. Fetch it now. Go on!’

  Given a task, Tom Churcher seemed to come to his senses; he got to his feet and scrambled off down the aisle towards the vestry. Verrall lifted the candle and searched the floor around the body for the glint of a coin; there was none. He found the pockets of her gown and pulled out what he found: a letter, a penknife. Thimbles. Ah! A purse! But inside, just a few coins – loose change. The half-sovereigns had gone.

  The chapel was illuminated then by the wildly swinging lantern carried aloft by Tom Churcher. He did not come all the way but hung back, casting a sickly yellow glow over the ghastly scene.

  ‘Did you steal from her?’ Verrall asked. ‘She had money. Did you take it?’

  ‘No! No! Of course not!’

  He believed the boy, in spite of everything. Perhaps the coins had been dropped; he would search again, in daylight. Think! He had to think – to get matters straight in his own head. Something terrible had happened. Whatever it was, he had been the last man to see Harriet Monckton alive, and Churcher had been the first man to see her dead. Whatever had happened in those intervening minutes, the two of them would be the ones to fall under the greatest suspicion.

  ‘We have to move her,’ Verrall said.

  Churcher’s voice, high, almost a wail: ‘What?’

  ‘She can’t be found here. In the chapel, of all places! We have to move her.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Put the lantern down. You lift her shoulders. I will take her feet.’

  He did as he was told, but made a noise about it, crying and snivelling.

  ‘Stop it, Tom. Pull yourself t
ogether, I say! That’s it – now, lift.’

  She was heavier than she seemed, the deadest of dead weights.

  ‘We are going to carry her outside. To the Cage, yes? Ready? Watch the step!’

  Between them they carried her through the back door of the chapel, awkwardly, her right hand swinging free and hanging beneath her, knocking against the door frame. Down the steps. Out into the moonlight. Churcher was gasping and sobbing like a girl.

  ‘Stop that!’ Verrall hissed. ‘Someone will hear!’

  They went down the path, Churcher stumbling on the uneven path for he was walking backwards, and then a leg slipped from Verrall’s grasp and the lower half of her tumbled to the ground. From the lane, just a few yards from where they stood, there came the noise of a woman’s laughter and a man saying something in response. Both men stood motionless, staring at each other in panic. Somewhere, a door slammed. Silence.

  ‘We can’t take her out into the lane,’ Verrall whispered. ‘Someone might see. We’ll have to conceal the body here.’

  ‘Why?’ Churcher whispered back. ‘Why hide her, if you’ve done nothing wrong?’

  ‘Because she was in the chapel!’ Verrall said, frustration building inside him. ‘Don’t you see? We have worked so hard to build the reputation of this place, and a girl decides to kill herself in it? Why, we should lose everything!’

  The realisation of it seemed to dawn on Churcher. ‘But if we can’t take her out there,’ he said, waving vaguely at the gate, ‘what is to be gained by leaving her? Can I not just run for the constable now?’

  Verrall stepped over the body and met Churcher, eye to eye. ‘And say what, exactly? That I had a private meeting with her at eight o’clock? That you had a private meeting with her after that? And now she is dead? I – I am a respectable minister, but you would be arrested immediately, Tom, and hanged within a week! Don’t you see it? I am trying to protect us both. Now, we need to move her, and quickly, before someone else passes by and sees us both standing here with a body lying between us!’

  All the questions seemed to sag from Churcher’s body, then, and without another word he bent and put his arms under Harriet’s neck, and another under her knees, and lifted her. Her head lolled and he let out a whimper.

  ‘The privy,’ Verrall said. ‘She will be out of sight, at least.’

  He held open the wooden door and Churcher shuffled through the narrow gap with some difficulty, before placing her gently upon the floor. He was still making that sound, a low keening, and in between breaths he was muttering, ‘Sorry, sorry.’ The whole thing was a terrible, terrible mess. Verrall could scarce believe that he was doing this, that the night had unfolded so dramatically from his slightly disappointing fuck and his walk home in the dark, during which his only concern had been that he was two half-sovereigns poorer for it. He remembered thinking that he might as well find a proper whore and be done with it; it would be much less expensive to do so, and likely more effective.

  Churcher made to shut the door, but Harriet’s foot blocked it. He opened the door again, and pushed up her knee, and tucked it behind the door, whimpering. And the door was shut.

  Churcher took a deep breath, and straightened, and said, ‘I’m sorry. It’s better now I don’t have to look.’

  ‘Come inside. We need to think.’

  Verrall took the lamp back to the vestry and lit the candles, so that it was light enough for them to see each other properly. Churcher’s face was a red mess of tears and mucus and dirt. Verrall thought perhaps he did not look much better. He sat behind his desk, and closed his eyes, and thought of all the possible things that might happen the next day, and how they should best be managed, and what the consequences of each choice might be. When he believed he had as clear a vision of the day as he could possibly see, he sat forward in his chair.

  ‘Tom, you are going to do exactly as I tell you. If you do it, you will be safe, and I shall be safe, and the chapel will come to no harm. You will need to be very strong, and keep to the same story every time you are asked, and then all will be well. Can you do it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He was sullen now, his head bent.

  ‘If you don’t, there is a good chance you will hang, whether you killed her or not. Do you understand?’

  Perhaps Churcher had not been listening, for he did not move; but then, eventually, he nodded.

  Harriet was dead.

  Thomas could think of little else, even the instructions given to him by the reverend, and repeated, committed to his memory; those had faded, and her face was back. The eyes dulled, still open a slit; the dark blood bubbling from her lips.

  She had still been warm! If he had come in a moment sooner, he might have saved her. If he had gone into the chapel when the reverend did, if he had waited in the shadows inside the chapel and not out on the lane as he had promised, he might have saved her. If he had told her the truth, that he loved her more than he had ever loved Emma Milstead, and that he would do anything for her, he might have saved her. So many mistakes, heaped upon mistakes, and each one of them his fault. He had failed her at every turn.

  Even distracted as he was, his feet carried him swiftly to the Market Place, keeping to the shadows cast by the moon, although nobody was about. Earlier in the evening he had seen Mrs Humphrey, and the Hopperton girl standing at her window, and others, too – but now there was nobody. Nothing but the Devil himself to notice as he slipped through the gate that led into the back yard, wincing at the noise made by the bolt, and through the back door. The family were all in bed. He crept up the stairs and into the bedroom he shared with James and his father. Both of them were already asleep. He got into his narrow, creaking bed, and lay there, his eyes open, thinking of her. So many things had happened in such a short space of time, he should never sort it all out in his head enough to understand. And at the heart of it all was the poor, dead girl, whom he had loved, and who was now gone.

  In a nearby bedroom he heard his sister stir, and he quickly closed his eyes.

  Verrall had watched Tom Churcher until he turned the corner into the Market Place, and then gone back and closed the gate behind him. He had made to lock it, and then thought better of it. It should be left unlocked; for Harriet would have made her way into the chapel of her own volition. She would have gone alone, for the purpose of ending her life, and perhaps whoever had used the gate last had neglected to lock it behind them. Such carelessness was not uncommon.

  He made his way up the lane at a more sedate pace than his previous two walks this evening, still thinking of the instructions he had given Tom Churcher and hoping that the lad would be able to follow them. He was not certain of it, but it was their only hope. He would need another plan, of course, for if Churcher broke down and tried to blame him for it he would need to be ready to prove that Churcher was unstable, mentally deficient, and a liar. Between the two of them, Verrall liked to think he was more readily to be believed.

  Sarah would be in bed, asleep. He’d thought she might have woken with the racket that Churcher had made against the door, but it was not unheard of for a member of the congregation to call upon him urgently, late into the evening, to offer comfort to the sick and the dying.

  As he walked up the path, he saw that the front door was slightly ajar. Had he left it like that? He saw an odd shape at the edge of the path; as he went to it, his shoes crunched on something and he realised it was broken glass – his lamp, smashed by Churcher in their struggle. He picked up the remains of the lamp and a few bits of glass, before giving up. He would attend to it in the daylight.

  The lamps were still lit in the kitchen, as he had left them, for the pounding at the door had interrupted his intention to heat some milk upon the stove – and, to his surprise, his study door stood slightly ajar, and he could see light coming from within. That was definitely something he had not done; the study had been left in darkness, with the door closed.

  His brow furrowed, he pushed at the door. Nobody was in the room, a
nd everything looked as he had left it. He turned to go, and then stopped.

  Wait. Not everything … something was different. Something had been moved. There was an odd smell in the room, too; a sweetish smell, not unpleasant. Almost as if someone had baked a cake, and the scent of it had lingered.

  He went into the centre of the room and looked about him, trying to determine what it was that seemed out of place. The fire was swept and laid, ready to be lit by the maid first thing in the morning. His desk was tidy, although piles of papers, sermons and notebooks, were stacked neatly upon it. On the centre of his desk was the previous day’s copy of The Times, roughly re-folded, just as he had left it.

  On top of the newspaper was a bottle, a glass bottle, and another, smaller, beside it. He went to it and almost picked the larger bottle up, but something stopped him. He bent to look at it more closely, and to examine the label upon it.

  HST: ACID

  HYDROCYAN:

  It was half full of a colourless liquid. Beside it, a smaller bottle, with a label that he had to squint to read:

  THE CORDIAL BALM OF SYRIACUM

  For treatment of those who have fallen into a state of chronic disability.

  Nervous disorders of every kind, sinkings, anxieties, and tremors which so dreadfully affect the weak and the sedentary will, in a short time, be succeeded by cheerfulness and every presage of health.

  Provided by R. and L. Perry, and Co.

  PERRY’S PURIFYING SPECIFIC PILLS

  19, Berners Street, London

  This smaller bottle was entirely empty. Between the bottles, neatly stacked, were two half-sovereigns.

  Verrall heard a sound from the hallway behind him. He looked back, startled, and saw that Sarah had entered the room. The first thing he noticed was that she was fully dressed. The next, that her face was fixed upon him with a smile, such as he had never seen before. She looked almost elated.