The Murder of Harriet Monckton Read online

  ‘She’s dead, then?’ she asked. She sounded cold.

  Thomas Churcher

  ‘The reverend is here to see you, Tom,’ Clara said. She closed the door behind her.

  The room was dark with the curtains drawn but she pulled them aside. I blinked at the light. Just for a short while, I had slept, and she had disturbed me. I wanted to cry like a child at it.

  ‘Get up,’ she said, her voice low. ‘Wash your face. I’ll make the reverend some tea, and so help me, do not leave me to speak to him on my own. You be quick.’

  My sister does not use that voice often but when she does, even with my head a writhing mess of thoughts and aches, I listen. I washed and dressed and ran my hands through my tangled hair, and came through to the parlour.

  Mr Verrall stood when he saw me. ‘Ah, Tom,’ he said.

  ‘Reverend.’

  I shook his hand, and we both sat. Clara disappeared into the back room. He waited until the door closed behind her. I felt dizzy, perhaps through lack of sustenance, perhaps from fear.

  ‘Let us pray,’ he said, with no warning.

  I bowed my head. Kept my eyes open, looking at his shoes, wondering who made them. Some London bootmaker, no doubt; they were well-tooled, polished.

  ‘Our heavenly Father,’ he said, ‘who loves us even when we are mired in sin, look upon us both as sinners and grant us your grace, and your mercy, and your forgiveness. Bless us with your Holy Spirit, so that we may learn from the terrible events of the past few days, and that we may use them as an opportunity to witness to the good people of our town, to bring them closer to Christ. Grant us strength to fight against the Enemies of the Cross. And we ask that you receive the soul of our dear sister, Harriet; we ask that you forgive her for her sins, and take her to your right side. Bless and comfort her family, Father; may they grow closer to you through the power of your Holy Spirit. In the name of Jesus Christ, your son … Amen.’

  I moved my lips but could not quite form the word. If he noticed, he did not say.

  The house was silent. The reverend stared at me, his eyes keen. ‘How are you, Tom?’

  ‘I’m afraid I do very ill, Mr Verrall.’

  ‘And why is that, boy?’

  I wanted to tell him I was a man, but I was afraid to. That he should call me boy, at the age of three and twenty … I had no words, not even angry ones.

  He sighed. ‘The deacons are all worried about you, Tom.’

  He leaned forward, placed his hand upon my knee. The feel of it burned. He gripped me tightly, so that I should listen, so that I should pay close attention. I felt his breath upon my face. I could not look at his face, so I looked at his hands, at the white knuckles, at the brown hairs that were on the backs of his fingers. Thought of where those fingers had been. What they had done.

  ‘You must be quiet, but not silent. You must be as you always are, Tom. Just a little sadder, perhaps. A very little bit sadder. That is the only way we shall all get through this terrible, terrible time. Do you understand?’

  I stayed silent. I breathed.

  His hand gripped still tighter. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, at last.

  ‘Good,’ he said, and relaxed his grip. ‘Good boy.’

  And he smiled, and patted my knee, as if in comfort where he had just injured me.

  Frances Williams

  Forty-nine girls in attendance today. The Jessop girls are still absent, although I saw three of the girls playing in Beezley’s yard this morning. They ran off when they saw me, before I could speak to them. The Harrises were all absent without explanation, so I sent one of the Judd boys with a note for their mother. Lizzie Finch took the girls for needlework whilst I took the younger ones for arithmetic. They have all fallen behind and seem to be distracted; the whole class had an uneasy feeling about it today. Many of the girls were disruptive; I had to speak to several of them about whispering.

  The jury has been sworn in. Beezley told me, this afternoon. I have no particular desire to have the details of the inquest relayed to me by a man of questionable morals and dirty fingernails, yet he feels it is his duty to keep me informed.

  How quickly one becomes accustomed to circumstances! Less than a week ago, Harriet was here with me, sitting in the chair beside the fire, reading through my schoolbooks. I had brought them home with me, so that she could look them over and decide which particular ones she might require for her work with the infants at Arundel.

  ‘You will need a simpler copybook,’ I remarked. ‘They won’t be able to read, or write, when you first take them.’

  ‘I understand some of the older girls are quite advanced, Mr Jackson informed me.’ Then she turned to me with the brightest of smiles. ‘I hope they are not more intelligent than I am, Frances, can you imagine?’

  ‘I am quite sure that will not be the case.’

  She was so excited, so thrilled to be going. My heart was heavy with it, with the loss of her, my dear Harriet. How much my life had been brightened by having her in it! I went out to the market to get potatoes and some vegetables to make a soup. When I returned, Harriet was seated at the table, writing in her diary. She was so distracted with it, she did not acknowledge my greeting.

  She wrote everything down. Sometimes she would show me a page wherein she had written down a lively conversation she had had, or an intriguing event at the chapel. ‘Do read, my dear. I’ve expressed it so much better on the page than I can hope to relay in speech.’

  She had a skill with words. I saw it from the start, how she could be persuasive, charming; how she was able to hold an intelligent conversation with all who chose to address her. And she had a talent for poetry, too. She showed me some verse she had written about the school, about my girls.

  The first time I saw her I adored her.

  There, I have admitted it. Perhaps that might help me to understand how this has happened, to admit to my feelings. To admit that when I saw her my heart beat faster. That, when we became friends, my whole life became brighter and more worthwhile.

  I should have met Harriet soon after I arrived in Bromley, but circumstances had worked against us. I was to begin work at the National School on the Monday morning, taking the girls’ room alongside Mr Campling in the main room. Clara, who had been teaching the girls of the town at Sunday School for some time, had been instrumental in encouraging the subscribers of the school to advertise for a schoolmistress, and she had written to me in advance of my arrival, to tell me how much she was looking forward to meeting me. Mrs Campling had been taking the girls for lessons, but then only intermittently, as she was often unwell.

  Harriet had been at the Churchers’ the very same day that I had been invited for tea with Clara, just a few hours before. I was told of her in passing, that she was a friend who was also a teacher, and that she had secured a position at a school in Hackney. That she was leaving for Town that very afternoon, and that she should be very sorry indeed to have not had the opportunity to make my acquaintance. That was all I heard of her. I stored the information vaguely in some part of my brain, this person called Harriet who existed and had lived in the town, but now she had left and therefore was of no importance to me.

  If only I had known! How very different things might have been, had she tarried a little and taken tea with Clara in the afternoon rather than in the morning. Or, if I had been a little earlier in my arrival, perhaps I should have met her.

  And what then? No. Things happen for a reason, albeit not one dictated by some mythical deity. I may not publicly call myself a Christian, but I do see patterns in my existence and the world at large that suggest purpose. Fate, perhaps. Let us call it that. Thus I did not meet Harriet for eighteen months; but it was time in which I learned the town, the people in it; I grew in confidence as a teacher, loved and cherished my girls, even during the times I disciplined them with a hard hand and a harsh voice; and, perhaps most important of all, it was a period in which I learned about myself. Who I was. What I n
eeded.

  I arrived with no expectation, but Bromley was larger and busier than anywhere I had lived or worked before. I had come directly from a village school in Leicestershire, a classroom of twelve boys and girls of all ages from five to fourteen; most of the children attended irregularly, depending on the season, or on the requirements of the home, or on the availability of money to spare for their pence.

  Whilst Bromley was still some miles from London, it was busy with coaches back and forth to town; there was a thriving market, attended by tradespeople from the surrounding area. There were six public houses in the town itself, three of them coaching inns offering accommodation. The main thoroughfare which took travellers to London to the north, and Tunbridge Wells to the south, snaked through the Market Place, where there were businesses bordering all sides of the square. I had never lived in a place with so many opportunities to spend money.

  Besides the shops, there were some good houses further out, along the Widmore Lane, and to the north, in parks of their own. The Bishop of Rochester had his palace there, with fine gardens surrounding it. The church held a strong grip on the town with its various denominations, but the focus for the residents of Widmore Lane and the Market Place was the Dissenting Chapel, a new white building in a Gothic Tudor style, with turrets at the corners. It looked beautiful, and oppressive.

  Of course, it’s easy to find it thus in hindsight. At the time, I thought it was almost magical, bright, beside so many squat redbrick buildings. Like a palace, perhaps.

  In advance of taking up my position I had arranged a room at a boarding house in Mason’s Hill, a hamlet close to the school, which itself was in a location south of the town commonly known as the Gravel Pits. The school board had made the necessary introductions; the house was owned and occupied by two spinsters, the Misses Mercier, who were related in some capacity to one of the subscribers.

  The house went by the confusing name of Hill House Farm. The land which must once have belonged to it had long since been sold off, leaving behind a rough acre of lawn bordered by a tall yew hedge. At the time of my arrival the grass was yellowed and tussocky; the yews, the darkest of green, were overgrown, and patchy with some type of blight. The house was built of grey stone and in need of some attention. The guttering was broken in two or three places, which meant rainwater ran down the exterior walls and had stained them a darker grey. It looked as though the house was crying.

  Inside it was even more dismal. The house was draughty, dark and cold, smelling of damp, with several rooms unoccupied and shut off; besides the spinsters, there was a maid of all work, Amelia Carpenter, and another lodger who at the time of my arrival was away visiting a sick aunt.

  I did not much like the house, nor the obsession the ladies had for prayer and contemplation. It was bad enough that I was expected to educate my girls first and foremost with the catechism and the Bible, but to be forced to continue with the charade outside of school was harder to bear. Before we were served meals in the evening we were expected to pray. Afterwards, the ladies would retire to the drawing room for an hour before bed, where Miss Lucy Mercier would read aloud from the Gospels whilst Miss Mary Mercier would sew shirts to send to missionaries in Africa. It was made clear to me that I was expected to lead a contemplative Christian life whilst living under their roof: absolutely no callers, gentlemen or otherwise. Worse still, I was to attend the parish church with them, twice on Sundays.

  I then learned that the schoolmaster and his wife, Mr and Mrs Campling, not to mention their brood of eight daughters and one son, lived in a house adjacent to the school, and directly opposite Hill House Farm. I could see their front door from my bedroom window.

  Before I had even passed a single night in the house, I had resolved to seek alternative accommodation, even if this would take me an inconvenient distance from the school. My tea party with Clara Churcher was the ideal opportunity to set this plan in motion; I had resolved to recruit her to assist me in escaping from the virtuous Misses Mercier.

  Clara was a fine, tall woman with a pale complexion and an earnest demeanour. She made efforts to put me at ease and smiled when I told her that Hill House Farm was perhaps a little farther from the town than I had anticipated. ‘I take a long walk every day, and it does me the power of good. Being so close to the school, and to Mr and Mrs Campling … I feel I should like to be a little further away. I should be very happy to walk from the town, and back again. You understand my meaning, Miss Churcher?’

  ‘Indeed I do. Please call me Clara.’

  Clara had two elder brothers and one sister already left home, and two younger brothers, Thomas and James, who still lived at the house. Their mother had died some four years past, and Clara’s chief occupation was to keep house for their father. Running the Sunday School at the chapel was her solace; a responsibility that kept her sane. I liked her immediately. Her opinions, on all matters other than religion, accorded so much with my own that I felt I had made a firm friend. She promised to look for a room to let in the town, and assured me that we should be able to pay each other visits and enjoy lively conversations much more easily than if I remained at Hill House Farm.

  I recall that, as I left the house to walk back to Mason’s Hill, Clara said to me, almost in passing, ‘To be honest with you, Frances, I have no idea how Miss Frisnell can bear it.’

  ‘Miss Frisnell?’

  ‘Your fellow boarder. She is away at the moment, I believe. No matter. You’ll meet her soon enough.’

  Matilda Frisnell. It was a week before she returned; and of course, once she was there, I had no desire to move closer to Bromley after all.

  It pains me still to think of Matilda. It was a difficult time in my life, one I have preferred to try and put aside, and yet, if there had been no Matilda, it seems likely that there would also have been no Harriet.

  On the following Sunday, I had reluctantly attended the parish church with the Misses Mercier, and sat through a silent meal of beef stew. My attempt at conversation was met with silence and glares; apparently talking on the Sabbath was discouraged. After luncheon we sat together in the drawing room reading whilst the grey light was still sufficient to see the text. At length I excused myself, claiming to have a headache. Miss Lucy told me to be downstairs at five o’clock sharp; the evening service began at half-past.

  Thus was I upstairs when the front door received a hammering. After a minute of peace the hammering started again, and, assuming Amelia to be indisposed, I made my way downstairs to answer the door myself. I was halfway down the stairs when Amelia rushed across the hallway to open the door and Miss Matilda Frisnell entered.

  ‘Where on earth is everybody, Milly? Need I ask. Are they both praying again?’

  She caught sight of me at the same moment I saw her. Her gown was muddy at the bottom. I noticed this because it was bright, peacock-blue, her shawl orange with a gold fringe. Her hair, underneath a fancy straw bonnet with a feather, was golden and shiny. And her smile – radiant.

  ‘Well, hello there. Who are you?’

  I reached the bottom of the stairs, offered my hand. ‘How do you do? Frances Williams.’

  ‘Matilda Frisnell. How do you do, Miss Williams? Delighted to meet you. Are you the new girl?’

  I must have blushed. ‘I suppose I am.’

  Matilda turned to Amelia, who had a strange little smile on her lips. ‘Can we have some tea? What do you think, Milly? Shall we take it in the kitchen, where we can talk?’

  I cast a glance towards the drawing room. Surely the Misses Mercier could hear this exchange between us?

  ‘Oh, don’t mind them. They can carry on with their holy business; let’s go and have a proper chat!’

  Matilda was also a schoolteacher, and three years older than myself. She had been a governess, and had subsequently taught at a finishing school in France. She spoke French like a native, and Latin and Greek; she also had some German and a little Russian. She had been to most countries in Europe, having toured with friends
. For the past year she had been employed as a schoolmistress at a private school for the wealthy families of Beckenham; she had charge of eighteen girls, and had additional responsibility for foreign language tuition. She was glorious, and clever; witty, and colourful. I found her by turns alluring and frustrating; she made my heart sing for joy, and cry out in despair. Our friendship almost immediately became something intense; that first night we sat awake in the warmth of the kitchen, long after Amelia had retired for the evening, discussing art, literature, the role of women in society; the pressures of finding a husband when there were no men attractive or intelligent enough to satisfy us.

  Eventually I went to my room but hardly slept. When it was barely light I was dressed and making my way to the school. That evening, the Monday, I retired to bed after supper and not long afterwards Matilda knocked softly upon my door. I recall how my heart thudded in my chest as I let her in. How I looked at her, expecting her to enquire after my health, or demand that I return to the kitchen so we could converse some more; how I thought she would laugh or ask me about my day, or tell me about hers. How she did none of these things but instead took my hand in hers and lifted it to her face, her eyes never leaving mine, and placed her lips tenderly upon the inside of my wrist. And then how she smiled, questioning, as if asking for my permission for something I scarcely understood. And how I nodded, because I felt that nothing would progress without my doing just that, and knowing without understanding that whatever it was she proposed was something I wanted desperately.

  If Amelia noticed that Matilda’s bed was no longer slept in, she never remarked upon it.

  My room was smaller, and warmer because it was above the kitchen; hers, at the front of the house, was next to that occupied by the Misses Mercier. I often thought it odd that they shared a room, and a bed. Hill House Farm had any number of bedrooms, most of them no doubt perfectly pleasant. Perhaps, as sisters, they always had and therefore found it difficult to sleep alone; perhaps it was in the interests of economy. But, with my new experiences of the delights of sleeping with another, a new curiosity at their odd sleeping arrangements emerged. Perhaps they were not sisters at all; who was to say? And their religious devotion – was it real, or a pretence? They certainly seemed completely unconcerned by Miss Frisnell and her liberated opinions. Perhaps the rule concerning gentlemen callers had discouraged a certain type of lodger?