The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte (33 page)

Under the terms of the Will, Nicholls was the sole beneficiary unless his wife left children. Had that been the case, he would have had only the interest on the money invested at his disposal, with the principal passing to any progeny on his death. It was fairly standard wording, and had caused Nicholls no problems. He had known that there would be no offspring, and had agreed that those provisions be included merely to humour Charlotte in her imagined pregnancy. What if, though, despite all the evidence to the contrary, there was the slightest possibility in his mind that Charlotte
might
be pregnant? That would have been a strong additional motive for getting on and killing her as quickly as possible before the child was born.

Making the Will was a fatal mistake on her part because Charlotte Nicholls, née Brontë, died just six weeks later – in the early hours of Saturday, 31 March 1855. The accommodating Dr Ingham certified the cause of death as being ‘Phthisis 3 months'.

Not being a medical man, I had to look up the definition of ‘Phthisis'. Apparently it means ‘wasting', and is a general term applied to the progressive weakening and loss of weight occasioned by all forms of tuberculosis, especially that of the lungs. There is, however, absolutely no evidence that Charlotte was suffering from tuberculosis; not even the possibility is mentioned anywhere. I think, therefore, that we may take it as read that, relying upon the family's medical history, Nicholls planted the idea of tuberculosis in Dr MacTurk's mind, just as Charlotte had done with the doctor called to Anne, and that either MacTurk or Nicholls did the same with Dr Ingham.

It would have suited Nicholls very well to attribute his wife's illness and death to consumption – but only after she had been disposed of safely. He had not wanted well-wishers beating a path to the Parsonage while he was poisoning her, and that may be why he never referred to tuberculosis in any of his correspondence. For just the same reason, the probability is that he persuaded the doctors not to distress his wife by mentioning the then deadly disease, and encouraged her in the idea that she might be pregnant.

Obviously, Dr Ingham was not sure of what had killed Charlotte. He guessed, and he guessed at tuberculosis because he had been pointed in that direction. However – and as in the previous deaths – there was no postmortem examination, nor were any official questions asked. One cannot help but wonder what would have happened had someone in authority acted upon what Martha states her father was saying.

Nicholls must have been elated after his wife's death. Not only had he rid himself of her, but it was only a matter of time before he would have his hands on her money and other possessions. There was also the possibility of more, once he had had the opportunity to go through the papers of her siblings at his ease. However, he had his priorities, and one in particular gave him great pleasure. He could not wait to tell Ellen Nussey of Charlotte's death, and wrote to her only a few hours after it occurred!

I read his letter with a sense of incredulity. No mention was made of tuberculosis, instead he told Ellen that: ‘Charlotte died last night of exhaustion. For the last two or three weeks we had become very uneasy about her, but it was not until Sunday evening that it became apparent that her sojourn with us was likely to be short. We intend to bury her on Wednesday morning.'

That letter was written on 31 March. Charlotte's ‘illness' had started at the beginning of January, and by mid-February she was ‘completely prostrated with weakness and sickness and frequent fever'. A week later she wrote of her ‘skeleton emaciation', and of blood being mixed with her vomit. Nevertheless, according to Nicholls, it was to be at least another two weeks before ‘we' became ‘very uneasy'.

It makes me wonder what it would have taken to
worry
him!

It will also be noticed that, although he had had five clear days in which to do so, Nicholls had not told her closest friend that his wife was at death's door – that news came to her from Mr Brontë on the day before Charlotte died.

Ellen arrived at the Parsonage just before lunchtime on the Sunday, and was asked by Mr Brontë to stay over until the funeral. That she did, but she left Haworth immediately after and never saw Mr Brontë or Nicholls again.

From Nicholls' point of view, the situation after Charlotte's death was very satisfactory and at last he was able to contemplate his future with equanimity. In fact, only one thing prevented him from being a completely happy man. That, of course, was the fact that, try as he might, he had been unable to find Anne's book. He had searched for it high and low, ransacking Charlotte's possessions, the room in which she had died and, later, the rest of the house, but with no success. Whilst he was doing so he must have wondered whether the so-called diary had simply been something that Charlotte had invented in order to substantiate what Anne had told her, or whether Martha had come across it after Charlotte's death and now had it hidden away. She had never mentioned it though, and he did not like to raise the subject in case, by doing so, he told her what she might otherwise not have known, so he decided to let sleeping dogs lie for the moment.
Should
Martha have it he would be no worse off than he was already, because he felt sure that she would never act against him unless he crossed her – and that was something that he did not intend to do. If, however, the book was still hidden away somewhere in the house he would have plenty of opportunities to continue to look for it because, if possible, he intended to be around for some time to come.

Nicholls had no vocation, and he was not ambitious. All that he had ever wanted was a quiet, comfortable life, and he had been considering how that might now be achieved. He had no great love for England or the English, and his first thoughts had been of returning to Ireland. There he would have been amongst his own kind, and away from all the unhappy and unpleasant memories of Haworth, the Parsonage and the Brontës. However, he knew that he would still have to earn his living, and that was easier said than done for a Protestant clergyman in the south of Ireland. It was true that he had Charlotte's money, but that would not keep him for life, and it was not enough to make an adequate investment in a business.

Thinking things over, he obviously realized that he could, however, really scoop the kitty if he stayed at the Parsonage and played his cards right.

There were two main considerations which led him to that conclusion, and the first was old Mr Brontë. He was nearly seventy-nine years of age, and not very robust. Seventy-nine was a good age, even by today's standards, and he could not have been expected to last for much longer. With his own savings and from what the deaths of Emily and Anne had yielded him – for both had died intestate – he had a reasonable amount of capital. There was also the furniture, and other possessions, in the Parsonage, plus some potentially valuable memorabilia which had belonged to his family. Nicholls reasoned that all could be his if only he could also persuade the old man, somehow, to make a Will in his favour.

The other matter which I think gave him food for thought was his, then largely intuitive, feeling that, in some way or other, there was still a lot of money to be made from the works of the Brontë sisters.

He therefore decided that, were he allowed to do so, he would stay.

‘Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches.'

Psalms 73:12

W
hat happened next was that, of all things, I began to feel very tired – almost as if life was draining out of me. It was hard work to put one leg before the other, and I could hardly keep my eyes open. Looking back, I see now just how much the things that had happened had taken out of me. What with looking after the Parsonage, Mr Brontë, Miss Aykroyd and Madam, and being ill myself, it had all been too much for me.

Once again, Mother was the first to notice how quiet I was and said I looked as if I needed a rest. Then she must have had a word with Father, because the next thing I heard was that he was going to have a word with Mr Brontë. The upshot of it all was that it was arranged that I should go to stay at Mrs Dean's Almshouses in Leeds for a while, and Mother said that she was going to see to it that everything in the Parsonage was taken care of whilst I was away.

I must say that it was not a prospect that pleased me greatly, for I felt too tired to go anywhere and I had looked forward to some time alone with Mr Nicholls, but even he said that I should go, and so I did.

When I came back I felt different again, but there was a shock awaiting me because, of all people, Father had taken to his bed. I had never known him do that before and so I knew that something must be badly amiss, but even so, when I saw him I could not believe how ill he had become in such a short while. He was as white as his pillow-case, and was having great trouble in breathing, with the air making terrible sounds as it went in and out. Not only that, he had a bowl by him and was all the time coughing and spitting into it, so that I felt sick to watch him and to hear it.

Of course, it all meant more work for Mother, but she made no complaint, although it was evident to me that
I
should have to go back to work straightaway as she had enough on her plate. That did not bother me though, because I felt quite my old self again – and I was dying to see Mr Nicholls.

It was lovely when I did, and he hugged me so close that I thought he would never let me go, and one thing led to another so that us meeting again was all that I had looked forward to.

Then it was a case of getting the Parsonage back to rights as I liked it, and for that I needed help. Mother and my sister Eliza had done their best whilst I was away, but a lot of the little jobs had been left to one side, and I knew that it would take it out of me again if I tried to do it all myself,

I spoke to Mr Brontë about it, with Mr Nicholls there, and it was agreed that I could keep the young girl from the village who had been taken on so that I could deal with Madam when she was ill. That is what I had hoped for because she was one of my friend Milly Oldfield's young sisters, and I knew she needed the money. Before I went away there had been talk of getting rid of her after Madam's death, and I had half-expected her to be gone when I got back, but Mr Brontë saw that I needed the help and Mr Nicholls would back me up in anything.

So we kept young Emma on, and me and her worked wonders. She was not very big for her age, but she was strong and willing and was a great help to me. I made sure that she was treated a lot better than
I
had been at her age, and she paid me back by being cheerful and ready for anything. Most of all, although Mr Nicholls and me were always careful, I felt sure that she would keep her mouth shut – even with Milly – if she saw or heard aught that she should not have done as she was so grateful to me for keeping her job.

The weeks went by, and once the Parsonage was as I wanted it life became very pleasing and I was content for the first time in a long while. Only Father gave me anything to worry about for he seemed to be getting worse every time I saw him, and he had shrunk away to only half the man he was, and it seemed such a shame to see him lying there in bed with the weather outside so lovely. The doctor kept coming in, but he did little or no good, and in the end we all knew that Father was not going to get better.

He died on the 10th of August, 1855, when he was but 51 years old. The Doctor said he died of ‘dust in his lungs', and that was hardly surprising because of his work. His going hit us all very hard indeed for he was a very gentle and fair man, and always heard us out and, even though Mother gave us hard smacks from time to time, he never laid his hand upon us – not like most of the fathers in Haworth who seemed to be very heavy-handed. But that was only a part of it for he was a man who was very much above the others in the village and looked up to by most. For a start, he had had a very good schooling and had more books than I have ever seen outside of the Parsonage. Even after me and my sisters had left school he took it upon himself to give us lessons, and made sure that we could read better than any of the other children.

I had never really thought of him properly until I saw him lying there in his coffin, and then I was so overcome that I just burst out crying and I sobbed so much that it seemed as if my tears had been bottled up for years.

Oddly enough, Mother showed little of what I knew she must be feeling, and I put that down to how worried she must have been about money, and I am so glad now that I was able to help her with that. Father's younger brother William took over his job as Sexton, and I know that he helped Mother from time to time as best he could, even though he was married and had 2 young lads of his own.

Needless to say, the funeral was a very sad affair, but we were all surprised by the number of folk who turned up, which was far more than for any of the Brontë funerals, due, in part, to the many Freemasons who came, some of them from Lodges quite a way away. Mother was overcome by the number who spoke to her and shook her hand, especially as some of them were far above our station in life.

Once I got over Father's death a bit, I think that the rest of that year of 1855 was the happiest time of my life, especially as everything had been so awful at the start of the year with me so full of troubles of different sorts. Even after Madam was dead I had thought that Mr Nicholls might leave Haworth and, though he told me he would like to stay, I knew that Mr Brontë did not like him and I had wondered if he would be told to go.

Nothing happened, though, and we all settled down to a life that, after a few months, seemed as if it had always been the same. If anything, Mr Nicholls was more loving towards me than he had ever been. He was always putting his arm around me or holding my hand, and our lovemaking just got better and better now that we could be together longer and there was no need to watch out for Madam or anyone else coming. I still felt that it was grand to share a bed with Mr Nicholls for a whole night, instead of just a short time for making love, and at those times I felt that we were
really
together. Sometimes I would awaken very early and just lay there looking at him sleeping, with his hair all anyhow and, the beard apart, looking quite like a young lad. At times like that I often wondered what was in store for us both, and how things would end up – but then I put such thoughts from me and just took enjoyment from life as it was at each moment.