The Murder of Harriet Monckton Read online

‘I will pray for you, Tom. I will pray for all of us.’

  That seemed to alleviate some of his distress. I went back to the house for dinner. The house was echoingly quiet, and I sat alone in the cold dining room wondering if everyone had left. At length I heard footsteps coming up the corridor and the door opened. Even though her presence was expected, she startled me with it. Sarah came in, and without speaking a word placed a plate upon the table in front of me. A mutton chop, and potatoes. She made to leave the room.

  ‘Where is Mrs Burton?’

  ‘Her sister is ill. Again. She has gone to Sydenham; she said she would be back in the morning.’

  ‘That’s probably for the best. And Ruth?’

  ‘Visiting Miss Gent. She has another chill.’

  ‘You’re not eating?’ I asked her.

  She paused in the doorway, her back to me. ‘Lost my appetite,’ she said, and left, closing the door behind her. Footsteps retreated back towards the kitchen.

  I offered my thanks to the Lord, and, almost as an afterthought, asked Him to bestow His Grace upon Tom. After a moment’s reflection, I prayed for Harriet’s soul. Then I ate the mutton, which had the unusual quality of being both tough and greasy at the same time. The potatoes chased each other around the plate. My breath caught in my chest.

  Lord grant me thy peace

  why will no one look me in the face any more?

  I ate half of the potatoes and the cutlery clattered on to the plate. I wiped the grease from my lips with my handkerchief, folded it and replaced it in my pocket. I took out my watch and observed that it was two o’clock exactly. The watch ticked, hard and fast.

  Frances Williams

  At two o’clock Thomas Steers came with a note from Mr Campling:

  There has been no word from Miss Monckton. Mrs Campling has been kind enough to take the girls this morning, but please ensure that you attend the school tomorrow at the usual hour. I should like to discuss the matter with you before lessons begin. No further absence will be tolerated.

  I sent the boy back again with a message to say I had understood. What else should I say? Perhaps the fever would take hold once more; perhaps I would be dead by tomorrow. Perhaps at any moment Harriet would stroll in, smiling, telling me she had gone to this friend, or that friend, and she had told me as much last night, and how very silly I was, for worrying so. I still wanted so very much to believe that all was well.

  But the hours continued to pass without her, and the evening grew dark again, and I lit the lamps and told myself that she must, surely, be safe and warm some where. There comes a moment when you stop lying to yourself, and you start to think about the secrets you’ve buried, the truths you’ve discovered, the ones you keep close to your heart.

  The truth that there was not one Harriet, but two: the Harriet you knew and loved; and the other Harriet, the girl with the secrets, the girl you did not really know at all.

  Reverend George Verrall

  By half-past five, it was dark. I had been out intermittently, visiting church members, asking after Harriet. The opinions were varied: that she had left the town, for some nefarious reason; that she had gone to Arundel early. Several were of the belief that some ill must have befallen her.

  ‘We can none of us know the will of the Lord,’ said Samuel Taylor darkly.

  indeed

  ‘I will pray for her, that she is found swiftly,’ said Elspeth Taylor, crossing herself like a Papist. She has never quite got the hang of nonconformism. I let her get away with it, because she is generous with her tithing. Not all of them are.

  pray for her, I will pray for her

  Echoes throughout the town. No real sense of the urgency, not yet. Missing was just that: missing. She might have changed her plans at the last minute. She might have gone for a walk, lost track of the time … maybe she has turned her ankle, taken shelter in a barn. Fallen asleep.

  But, by then, everyone had retreated inside. Fires were lit, although the weather was still mild. Candles flickered in windows as night descended.

  I walked the short distance to the Churchers’ workshop. James Churcher was at the counter, noting the day’s business neatly in his ledger. Through the doorway at the back I saw Tom sitting on a bench, his hands hanging between his knees, a cat twisting its skinny body around his ankles.

  ‘What can I do for you, Reverend?’ said old man Churcher.

  not so very old

  less than ten years on me, although he looks older

  looks worn

  ‘No word yet on the Monckton girl,’ I said. ‘It’s very perplexing.’

  ‘She’ll be found in a ditch somewhere,’ he said, adding, ‘God rest her soul,’ as if that made it less blunt.

  Tom Churcher stared. ‘Good evening, Tom,’ I said.

  He nodded, in response. ‘Perhaps I can help with the search,’ he said. ‘Seeing as I’m done here.’

  James Churcher frowned. ‘If you must. Although what you’re going to see in the dark I couldn’t say. Better off waiting for first light, if you ask me.’

  Tom took up his hat.

  ‘Take someone with you,’ I said to him. ‘Take Sweeting. He will be at home, if you go there now.’

  As he passed me, he took a deep breath in.

  now he is over the worst of it

  he is stronger than he looks

  he can bear the weight of the world upon his shoulders, that boy

  Thomas Churcher

  George Sweeting did not want to come with me. His wife was cooking a stew, he said, and his youngest was unwell. He had better things to do.

  ‘Reverend bade me come,’ I said. ‘He told me you would go with me.’ He pulled a face at me and collected his cap.

  I had thought about where to go, in advance. Up Widmore Lane, across the fields towards Farwig and her mother’s house. Then back down past the workhouse and the college, back to the Market Place. It should not appear planned. It should be thorough.

  ‘Funny business,’ was the first thing he said to me.

  I had not trusted myself to speak up to then. What did you talk about, anyway, when you were looking for a girl that had gone missing?

  ‘Yes it is,’ I said.

  ‘I reckon she’s gone to London,’ he said, out of breath. We were in the field at this point, Sweeting’s lantern swinging shadows across the bare earth, although the moon was full once more and we could see lamplight in the windows of the houses up ahead. He was looking for a body, a collapsed pile of clothing, somewhere in the field. If she had been there, someone would have seen her in daylight. ‘Or that mad Williams woman has done something foolish. If you ask me, she don’t belong in Bromley. All of this happened since she turned up.’

  ‘All what?’

  He ignored my question, and asked me one in its place. ‘And she said nothing to you?’

  ‘No,’ I said. Then I added, ‘Why should she?’

  I could hear the smirk in his voice. ‘You and her were close. By all accounts.’

  I stopped walking then. It took him a moment or two to react, before he stopped too and looked back at me, holding up the lantern.

  ‘I’ll not hear you say that,’ I said. ‘It’s untrue, for a start. Such things hurt those I care about.’

  ‘Like who?’ he laughed. Then, ‘Ah. Yes. Emma. Well, she’ll be glad Harriet’s gone, if gone she is. They’ll not be fighting over you any longer.’

  ‘Nobody’s been fighting.’

  I heard him chuckle at it. We carried on. There was no point talking to him. He thought himself better than I. Why had the reverend prompted me to bring him, of all people? We had never been friends. Even the reverend knew that …

  I stopped walking again. That was why he had told me to bring Sweeting. Had I taken a friend, I should perhaps have found myself with someone to confide in. There was no way on God’s green earth I would share what I knew with this man.

  ‘Hurry up, man,’ Sweeting said. ‘What you dawdling for?’

  At la
st we came back down the High Street and into the Market Place. Still busy, people everywhere. And the White Hart with the late coach outside it, the light above the door showing the steaming horses and the people stepping down, the smell of warm bodies and beer, laughter because there were still people who were happy, even if I was not.

  ‘Well, that’s that,’ Sweeting said, looking at the pub. ‘We’ve done our bit. No sign of her. Now you can go ’ome, and so can I.’

  ‘We should look in the chapel,’ someone said. Perhaps it was me. It sounded like my voice. ‘The Lord Himself knows she spent enough time there.’

  ‘The gate’ll be locked,’ Sweeting said. ‘She can’t have got in.’

  Despite his objection we walked down through the Market Place and turned left into Widmore Lane, back to where we had started. In front of us stood the brick building that housed the parish fire engine, and beyond it the Cage, now defunct. It would have been a good place to hide a body: two cells, opposite each other, dank and cold and open to the elements. It had not been used since the police station had opened in the Market Place, a couple of years ago.

  Sweeting shone his lantern inside: it was empty, of course.

  The chapel came into view, pale in the moonlight, ghostly, hiding behind the beech tree and the horse-chestnut in the churchyard, both of them almost bare of leaves.

  The gate was not locked. I pushed at it, and it swung open.

  ‘Who was last in there and didn’t lock it?’ Sweeting said. ‘We should make enquiries. Beezley will know.’

  ‘Mr Beezley isn’t the only one with a key,’ I said.

  ‘You mean the reverend? He is most meticulous about locking up, and I should know; you remember last summer when I was clearing up the books, and he locked me in? Four hours I was in there, till Eliza went to enquire of me at the Manse.’

  Sweeting handed me the lantern and tried the main door of the chapel, but that was locked. I thought he would give it up at that point, turn back to the road, but then, without my even having to prompt him, he led the way up the path to the side of the chapel.

  Back here, in the shadow of the chapel, it was properly dark. I kept behind him and tried to use the light from the lantern to pick my steps carefully between the potholes and uneven slabs.

  He was at the back door, then, twisting at the handle. He banged it with the flat of his hand. ‘See? Proper locked, both doors. Nobody in there.’

  ‘Perhaps I should go and get the key,’ I said. ‘She might have gone in to pray, got locked in as you did. Perhaps she fell asleep.’

  Sweeting guffawed at this. To make a point, he knocked again. ‘Harriet!’ he called. ‘Harriet Monckton, are you there?’

  No reply, of course, although from the road outside the Three Compasses I heard a woman laugh and a man pass some comment.

  ‘Check round the back,’ someone said, with my voice. ‘Now we are here.’

  And so I let him take the lead once more, towards the privy, knowing what lay there, waiting for us. For a moment I believed my own lies. I thought perhaps we should open the privy door and find nothing. That perhaps she was not dead at all, but in a faint; that she had recovered and wandered off somewhere, or got on the coach to London; nothing to worry about, nothing of any consequence. Harriet was alive and well, just somewhere else. Somewhere far from Bromley. Maybe she had never existed at all.

  But then Sweeting pushed open the door, and I heard him shout, ‘Hi, what’s this?’ or something like that, and then he screamed like a girl and I knew it was true and she was really dead and nothing would ever be the same again.

  Reverend George Verrall

  Churcher came to the Manse, out of breath.

  ‘Harriet’s been found,’ he said. Wild-eyed. ‘In the privy, at the chapel.’

  ‘Lord have mercy,’ I said.

  ‘Sweeting has gone for the surgeon.’

  ‘Have you told the police?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  fool, you should have gone there first

  ‘I will go with you,’ I said. ‘Sarah! My coat, my hat.’

  She was there anyway, listening in the hallway, standing motionless, frowning.

  I went to the police station and raised the alarm. Together we walked quickly back to the chapel with the benefit of the sergeant’s bull’s-eye lantern to light our way. The surgeon was already there and the narrow path running beside the chapel was crammed full of people. Sweeting was there, and George Butler too for some reason, and another figure, and Jasper Tarbutt the drayman, Jenner, Alfred Garn, and then all of us besides. I could not see her, just glimpses through the dark mass of bodies. Her boot, beside the door, a tiny snail clinging to the edge of it. The corner of her dress.

  the blood all black in her mouth

  dear God

  And all the while my heart hammering as if it should burst from my chest, muttering prayers and not even aware of what I was saying.

  dear God have mercy

  ‘Someone get me a light, for God’s sake!’

  The sergeant pushed forward and illuminated the scene for the benefit of the surgeon, who was crouched over. I saw her bonnet, pushed down over her face. Perhaps it was a good thing, for her face was obscured. It might be a pile of rags, a boot, propped up as a facsimile of a human being.

  ‘What’s that, in her hand?’

  ‘How did she fall, thus? Did she strike her head?’

  ‘In the privy, of all places …’

  And one of them was sobbing. Girlish gasps, shudders. I could not see which of them it was but at least it was not Tom Churcher, who was beside me, tall and still, the side of his face lit by the moon, carved from marble.

  get a grip, man

  whoever you are

  The surgeon stood up. ‘I shall need a strong man – Jasper, you’ll do. And the sergeant. The rest of you should go home.’

  Nobody moved for a moment, but then Tom turned and walked back down the path, and Sweeting followed and then Butler and the others and then it was just the few of us remaining.

  ‘Reverend,’ the surgeon said, noticing me at last. ‘A terrible thing to happen here.’

  ‘A terrible thing to happen anywhere at all,’ I said. ‘I should like to go to her mother.’

  ‘Of course, of course. We need to move the body to allow a proper examination. You are willing to inform her family, then?’

  ‘I am willing. A sorry business, but I am the man for it.’

  They agreed to follow at a slower pace, once a blanket had been obtained to cover the body. I set off across the fields for Farwig, thinking of the words I should use to break the sad tidings. I had done this before, of course, many times. Informing people of a death in the family is a sorrowful duty to have as a pastor but I relish it, for it is a privi lege, seeing people at their most raw. Fathers who have lost sons; children killed, illnesses, accidents. Mothers, howling at their loss.

  I did not know Harriet’s mother well. She did not attend chapel, and rarely came to the town. What would be her reaction? Harriet was fond of her as a dutiful daughter should be, but she was a little afraid of her. Her father had died two years ago, and since then her mother had hardened.

  And this, the worst of all news to bring to a family home. It was right and just that I should be the one to bring it.

  ‘Mrs Monckton,’ I said, as soon as I had been granted entry. ‘I am most sorry to inform you that your daughter is found, but the Spirit has fled.’

  They both stared at me; the mother and the daughter, dark-eyed like Harriet. Not as pretty.

  ‘What?’ said the girl, rudely. ‘What are you talking about?’

  I addressed the older lady, sitting still beside the fire. Had she even heard me? ‘My sincerest condolences, madam. They are bearing her home to you as I speak.’

  ‘She’s dead?’ the girl asked.

  ‘She will be here presently,’ I said.

  ‘But she’s dead?’

  ‘Yes, I am afraid so.’

 
; ‘How? How did she die?’

  ‘The surgeon should be able to inform us, once he has had a chance to examine her more closely.’

  ‘Was it an accident?’

  is this girl stupid?

  ‘I’m afraid it’s impossible to say.’

  ‘Where was she found?’

  I coughed. ‘Outside the chapel,’ I said.

  ‘Outside? But how was she not seen? We’ve all been looking, all day. Someone looked at the chapel. Someone would have seen her.’

  dear God grant me patience

  ‘She was – forgive me – somewhat concealed from view.’

  That shut her up. Something about the word ‘concealed’, it implied a third party. Dangerous. Her mouth shut tightly; she would say nothing else. Nothing at all. She did not trust me.

  And then, the knock at the door, the sound of shuffling and breathing from outside, and from the girl a wail like an injured beast; and Harriet came home.

  Thomas Churcher

  My mind was empty. I poured it out like milk, all those thoughts, the picture in my mind of Harriet lying there. I poured it all out into the gutter and walked home with a mind clear and dry like a washed pot.

  They all looked at me as I came through the door and something broke; perhaps I had not poured it all out as well as I thought I had because it was all there again, and I could smell her dress and her hair, how it felt damp in my hand and how her eyes had looked at me in the chapel those times when she was supposed to be praying but her eyes were open all the same.

  ‘Thomas,’ my father said.

  And I could hear her calling me that, Thomas, Thomas, and laughing with her small white teeth and the dimples in her cheeks that you only saw when she smiled.

  ‘Thomas,’ he said again. ‘Take off your coat, lad.’

  I could still move; I could still hear them. But in my head it all swam together like mud in a puddle, swirling and mixing. Harriet at Miss Williams’s room, looking at me while she was drinking tea and listening to me – not like they do, properly listening to what I told her like I was teaching her something, and not the other way around; and Harriet with her smile at the tail end of the summer in the fields, the smell of the harvest and the turned earth, and then we went by the river and into the shade, and the pine needles underneath us warm and springy and smelling like a perfume.