Damn His Blood (24 page)

On Tuesday 1 July 1806, a week after Parker’s murder, Pyndar finally had John Barnett and Captain Evans summoned before a meeting of seven magistrates at the Crown Inn in Worcester. The number of magistrates, all important men from prominent Worcester families, was a reflection of the seriousness of the crime. Barnett was the first of the two to be examined, being questioned alone while the Captain waited in a side room. He was not asked to take an oath. The case against Barnett rested on his failure to join the chase, his meeting with Captain Evans and his known hostility towards Parker, as shown by Clement Churchill’s and Joseph Colley’s evidence. For Pyndar this was an informal chance to scrutinise the farmer and record his evidence in writing.

Barnett spoke with freedom and at length, first describing his movements on Midsummer Day. He explained that when Lench had requested he go to Parker’s body, he had replied, ‘No, James [he meant Tustin] – you had better go.’ He was then quizzed about his refusal to visit Mary Parker at the rectory. At first he denied this, stating ‘to the best of my knowledge I was not desired to go’, but then shifted his position subtly. ‘I knew that if I had gone down,
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she would have shut the door against me,’ he admitted.

Barnett’s evidence was precise. He remembered that after seeing Lench and Tustin at a quarter past five he had gone into Pound Farmhouse and eaten his tea. About 5.45 p.m. he had set off down to Church Lane to find Captain Evans. The walk would have taken around 15 minutes, and Evans did not appear at Church Farm until Barnett had been there for around half an hour. At around half past six Barnett said that they settled down in the parlour to talk. There were four of them there, he recalled: the Captain, Mrs Banks, Miss Banks and himself, and they ‘were talking over the murder before Green came in’. He stuck firmly to the story he had given Pyndar before. There was a conversation about the income tax, he said; Miss Banks brought a bottle of wine in and then Green had appeared.

‘When Green came in to ask Captain Evans if he had heard of the unfortunate news’, he recalled, ‘to the best of my recollection Captain Evans said that I had just told him.’

Barnett’s evidence was not delivered in a long monologue, as it might seem from the records, but in response to a series of leading questions from the magistrates. The scope of such enquiries was not tightly moderated, but magistrates were forbidden from posing direct questions which, if answered, would lead a suspect to accuse themselves of a crime. Set within these boundaries, the questioning dwelt on the content of the conversation between the Captain and Barnett after Green had left, and during the later part of his interview the magistrates elicited a steady narrative from Barnett regarding what had happened.

Barnett explained that after Green had departed he had been left alone in the parlour with Evans and the two Banks ladies. He had stayed for about fifteen minutes or a half-hour ‘during which time much conversation passed between them respecting the murder’. Heming’s name was not mentioned, he said, nor had he ever heard Captain Evans make any threats against Parker nor had he, himself, promised five guineas to any man who would shoot him. John Barnett made just one admisson, accepting that he had drunk to Parker with his left hand. A transcript of his evidence was then passed to him. He read it through and signed two copies. The farmer was excused from the room and Evans summoned.

In comparison with Barnett, the Captain’s testimony was uptight, dismissive and opaque. Unlike the farmer, the Captain was asked to deliver his evidence under oath, swearing the truth on the Book of Common Prayer, which contained the Epistles and the Gospels. The case against him was based on his contact with Heming before the murder, his curses directed towards Parker and the fact that he was the master of Church Farm, a place Pyndar was increasingly viewing as a centre of operations for the farmers. The Captain recoiled into a stout defence in a setting which – as a sitting magistrate himself – must have been eerily familiar. The clerk recorded his statement.

Richard Heming has twice been employed by me
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to make Hurdles. I paid him the wages due to him on the 6th May last and I have not seen him from that time till the morning of the 24th June last, and I do not know of his having been employed by any persons since the 6th of May in the Parish of Oddingley. That in the morning of the 24th June, Heming called at my house between seven and eight in the morning and he pulled out of the Pool some of the Poles that were to make Hurdles and I thought that he had been coming to make Hurdles in a day or two. He had a Mug of Drink at my house but I had no conversation at all with him and that he afterwards went away and I did not think he staid [
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] half an hour.

Evans delivered each of these facts with firmness, producing exact dates and flat denials that he had anything more than the most fleeting contact with Heming. The Captain spoke throughout with cool precision. He all but dismissed his link to Richard Heming, treating him as one of any number of labourers, villagers and trades-persons who flitted in and out of his life. He was then pressed on his meeting with John Barnett. This too he dealt with as matter of fact: he had only learnt of Parker’s murder when Green entered and ‘mentioned it’, he explained.

None of the magistrates was satisfied with his account, and before Evans could leave they requested that he testify in more detail. A further sheet of parchment was produced by the clerk and the Captain was asked to begin with an explanation of the income tax form to which Barnett had referred. What was its significance?

A paper about the Income Tax lay upon my table when Mr Green came in, but I do not recollect any conversation passing between myself and Mr Barnett about it. I knew nothing of the murder until Mr Green followed me into the room and said ‘Good God, have you heard the news?’ I said ‘What news?’ Mr Green said ‘Mr Parker is shot.’ I believe when Barnett and Green left me they went away together or very nearly so. Heming was mentioned as being the man who was suspected of being the murderer and that the Butchers were in pursuit of him and that they had no doubt but that he was taken. But I do not recollect whether it was Mr Barnett or Mr Green who mentioned it.

For a final time Captain Evans was asked who told him about the murder. He replied with certainty, ‘Mr Barnett did not first mention the murder to me, and Green was the first person who mentioned it to me.’ The seven magistrates – Pyndar, Anslow, Tuberville, Sayer, Hakeman, Bund and Gresley – all scribbled their signatures across the clerk’s record of the day and allowed Captain Evans to leave. It had been a bold and forthright but jittery performance that left serious doubts about his innocence.

The inconsistencies between Barnett’s and Evans’ statements were obvious. The men had different versions of who had first mentioned the murder in the parlour, whether Heming’s involvement was known and at what time Barnett and Green had left. It was difficult to find anything in common between what the men said, and yet there was no obvious reason for them to contradict each other. The only conclusion Pyndar could possibly arrive at was that the farmers were desperately trying to conceal what they had talked about that night. Most surprising was that after a week they had still not got their story straight.

Before Pyndar took further action he decided to call at Heming’s house in Droitwich to interview his wife. The plight of the two women most affected by events had been lost amid the hunt for the killer and the terrible details of the attack. Mary Parker had been left widowed and penniless by her husband’s murder, with her companion and financial security wrenched from her in an instant. Her rectory home would soon follow. Elizabeth Heming’s situation was a sad echo of Mary Parker’s. She too had been abandoned, caring for three infant daughters. Her partner had vanished and was featured in all the newspapers under suspicion of a horrific crime. If Heming was captured then he would surely be hanged, and if he was innocent then why had he disappeared?

‘I saw him last on the morning of Midsummer Day,’ she told Pyndar. ‘He left home early on that day
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and was dressed in a dark long blue coat and leather corduroy breeches.’ Heming had got out of bed and told Elizabeth that it was late, she remembered. He had then asked her for ‘his old blue coat and said that he was going to do a dirty job for Captain Evans of Oddingley Church Farm’. It was around half past five in the morning when he left their house. She had neither heard nor seen anything more of him before Allen, the constable, came to the house enquiring whether or not he was at home.

It was now that Reverend Pyndar unearthed the most damaging piece of evidence yet against Evans. Elizabeth Heming was as careful and ordered as Richard was not, and she had kept a little accounts book on his behalf, listing in separate columns dates of payment, his billed hours and total amounts. For the past month Captain Evans’ name dominated the pages.

As Evans had claimed, Heming had worked for him on 4 May, and that day he had billed him for four days’ work at 6s. 8d., a bag of nails which had cost a shilling, and two further days at a rate of 5s. But what Evans had concealed in his conversation with Pyndar and his statement to the magistrates was that Heming had worked frequently for him since. On 20 May he had billed Evans for five days’ work at 12s. 6d. On 7 June he had collected 7s. 6d. for three days’ work, and on 13, 20 and 21 June respectively he had charged the Captain for 11 additional days for a total of £2 7s. 6d. All in all, according to Elizabeth Heming’s account book, in the six weeks before Midsummer Day Evans had paid Heming on six occasions for work he claimed Heming had not done.

It was a breakthrough discovery: clear evidence that Captain Evans had concealed information from the magistrates, or worse, lied under oath, which added weight to the theory that Heming had been paid to stalk the lanes, waiting for a chance to strike at Parker. In any case Heming had been paid handsomely – the money he had collected from Evans in the previous month (almost £4) was around half the annual wage of a dairymaid. It was hard to believe that the Captain would have forgotten about such an amount.

Pyndar’s investigation was gathering momentum, but he was about to run up against a problem. A statute passed more than a century before, during the reign of Queen Anne, in 1702, stated, ‘no accessory can be convicted
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or suffer any punishment where the principal is not attained’. So although Pyndar had evidence suggesting that Captain Evans was guilty as an accessory before the fact (‘one who being absent at the time the crime is committed, doth yet procure, counsel, or advise the commission of it’) and had further reasons to believe he had paid Heming to kill Parker, no action could be taken against him until Heming – the principal offender – had been captured and tried.

This increased the importance of the manhunt further still. Having done as much as he could to alert those outside the parish and county, Pyndar now fixed his attention back on Oddingley. There was a final slim chance that Richard Heming had not left the village at all, but was concealed somewhere within it. If the farmers had promised Heming money to kill Parker, then it made sense that he would return to collect it or to meet them at a prearranged point. One possibility was that a rendezvous had taken place at Pershore Fair one day after the murder as several farmers including George Banks and Thomas Clewes were known to have attended the event. A second possibility was that Heming had returned to Church Farm, where he had been hidden in the spacious farmhouse or one of the barns, sheds or workshops. Already some villagers had suggested this was the case. Mary Chance, a servant, had told Perkins that she had noticed ‘a Knife and Fork and Plate took upstairs
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… that the Captain and Miss Banks said was to cut Bacon’.

William Chance, Mary’s son, also had his suspicions. Before dawn on 25 June, the day after the attack, he had arrived in Church Farm’s rick yard to find several men already hard at work – George Banks, the carter and the carter’s son. They had already got two loads of clover onto a set of staddles much to Chance’s surprise. ‘It was a very unusual hour to do so,’ he remarked, also recalling how no more clover was cut that day and every effort was put into building the rick. Later, while Chance and his father were working with Banks, the three men had fallen into a conversation about Parker’s murder and how Heming was responsible. Chance had exclaimed ‘what a cruel thing it was’ – and Banks had responded, ‘it was no matter if Heming
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was not catched’.

The Chances were not the only people to think that something was going on at Church Farm. Baker, the thief taker, was the first to act on the growing feeling that something was concealed at the farm – a telltale object perhaps, or even Heming himself. On 1 July, shortly after the Captain’s appearance at the Crown Inn, he secured a warrant to search the property.

Elizabeth Fowler saw Baker arrive unannounced the next day, accompanied by three others. They surrounded the farmhouse, two at the back to cut off any escape, Baker and another man at the front. When they were all in place, Baker knocked, demanded entry and began a search for Heming. Their failure to find him did not surprise Elizabeth Fowler. She later swore that he had never been in the farmhouse after Midsummer Day. ‘If he had,’ she explained, ‘she must have known it
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[for] there was no room in the house but what she went into.’ Fowler made no mention of the clover rick, which remained untouched.