Damn His Blood (25 page)

Pyndar’s reaction to this latest disappointment is not recorded. It was generally considered, however, that he had spearheaded a competent investigation. The latest issue of
Berrow’s Worcester Journal
was supportive in its tone, describing the inquest rather inaccurately as ‘a minute observation of the business’ and dwelling on Pyndar’s ‘strict search for Heming’. The
Worcester Herald
was much more profuse in its praise, declaring, ‘For the detection of this flagitious [wicked] offender
¹⁴
the magistrates have evinced determined and laudable zeal.’ But despite what was written, the magistrates’ efforts had added up to very little. The key point was that Heming had escaped and, until he was captured, there was little point in pursuing the case against the Captain or John Barnett. Pyndar was left with the option of charging the men with the lesser crimes of making threatening toasts and using abusive language in public, although these hardly seemed to fit the severity of the case. His best hope still lay with Heming’s apprehension, and on 4 July he received news of a compelling sighting.

Mary Chance’s evidence was hurriedly taken down by Pyndar under oath.

That on Wednesday the day after
¹⁵
the murder of Mr Parker, about three o’clock in the morning I was making clover in a field in Oddingley belonging to Mr Perkins when I saw a man in a blue coat, whom I believe to be Richard Heming, come over a hedge (where there is no path) and run as fast as he could towards a wood in Crowle Parish, wrapping his coat over his left arm. In about ten minutes I went to my husband and son who were mowing in an adjoining field for Capt. Evans and told them I thought I had seen Heming. Capt. Evans was there and said: ‘Damn your blood why had you not went after him, as all the Country need to be after him, but neither he nor either of the men moved a step.

If she was telling the truth, then Heming had returned to Oddingley as Pyndar had speculated. Heming was known to the villagers, especially those like Mary Chance who spent time at Church Farm, and it seemed likely that she would be able to recognise him from a distance. The little detail of him wrapping his coat over his arm appeared to fit too, matching what Thomas Colwell had described before, and the wood in Crowle she mentioned was almost certainly Trench Wood.

But why had she not mentioned the incident sooner? More than a week had passed since the sighting, and throughout the early days of the investigation, the inquest, the newspaper reports and the search of Church Farm she had remained silent. The clear inference was that Mary, like her husband and son before her, had been intimidated into silence by Captain Evans, who had mentioned nothing about this. Mary’s evidence raised a further issue too. At three o’clock in the morning it would have still been dark. Why should Evans have been in the clover field at such a time? Could he have been waiting for Heming himself?

It was another piece of evidence against the Captain, but it was ultimately useless. Reverend Pyndar had already played his hand. Trench Wood and Church Farm had been searched; letters had been dispatched to Bristol and London; testimony had been gathered from as many villagers as possible; rewards had been promised and announced. Pyndar had devised a motive, a probable scenario and even had evidence; the only part of the puzzle missing was the principal suspect. Until he was found the situation remained deadlocked.

Over the next few weeks reports of the suspect lingered in the newspapers. On 12 July the
Worcester Herald
¹⁶
noted there had been a sighting of Heming sheltering in a wood about five miles north of Evesham. The following week a man named Thomas Pritchett, who had been arrested on suspicion of stealing 70 rolls of flaxen cloth, was mistaken for Heming. Then at the end of July Pyndar received a message from the keeper of the gaol at Aylesbury. He informed Pyndar he had a man in custody whom he believed to be Heming. The prisoner had been arrested after threatening to stab a woman, and although he had initially refused to give his name, he had at length admitted to being a Mr Humphrey Heming – a weaver from Worcester. ‘[He] appears to be a most desperate fellow,’ the gaoler had written, and he had worn ‘a blue coat which he tore to pieces, as also his hat – when taken’.

Among all the many sightings this seemed the most plausible. But after some initial excitement it too proved a false alarm. A month had now passed since the murder, and it was generally accepted that Heming had got clean away. As a result, Pyndar was forced to relax his investigations into Evans and Barnett, but he did manage to increase the county reward from 50 to 100 guineas and keep the notice in the newspapers for several weeks. In Oddingley the farmers returned to their harvests as the parish slipped back into its familiar summer rhythms of steady work and little rest. A further storm ripped across the county in the middle of July.
Berrow’s Journal
described it as a ‘tremendous storm of thunder and lightning, accompanied by a heavy torrent of rain’. Trees were uprooted, lanes submerged and horses killed when they stood. The tempest was felt as far away as London.

The harvest, though, was brought in reasonably well and prices remained stable at Worcester market. As August passed, the colours of Oddingley’s meadows softened under the summer sun, blackberries appeared in the hedgerows and heather in the farm gardens. The lanes remained busy as ever with travellers and labourers walking from farm to field and one parish to another. One day John Perkins met George Banks, who was leaning on a gate by one of Captain Evans’ meadows. Perkins asked, ‘What do you think of those toasts
¹⁷
at the Plough in Tibberton now Mr Parker is gone?’

‘Who would have thought it?’ Banks said.

‘Those who performed it,’ Perkins answered.

Banks’ response to Perkins is not detailed, but it is clear the majority of the villagers were with Pyndar, reckoning that Captain Evans, the two Barnett brothers, Thomas Clewes and possibly Banks knew more than they were telling. This added layers of meaning to seemingly innocuous events, as if a hidden truth would at an unexpected moment suddenly reveal itself – in the sharp glance of a farmer’s eye, the dramatic emergence of a new piece of evidence or the disturbing possibility that Heming would reappear in the lanes.

Such thoughts were never far from the minds of workers like William Chellingworth, who had been employed as a reaper by Captain Evans in 1806. A short time after the harvest had been brought in and stored Chellingworth was working in Church Farm’s granary. At the foot of a bay the bottom of a bag caught his eye. There was no reason for it to be there. He pulled it out. It was far heavier than he had expected. Opening the bag he found a rusty saw and an adze, a tool resembling a hooked hammer used for smoothing rough-cut wood. For some reason he couldn’t quite pinpoint, he instantly knew that they belonged to Heming. ‘I gave them to the Captain and never saw them after,’
¹⁸
Chellingworth later said.

^fn1
During Charles II’s reign a sum of £10 (an enormous amount for the time) was promised to any informant whose evidence led to the arrest of a robber or burglar. In 1692 the first statute to formalise the reward process was passed, designed to counter the growing threat of highway robbery. Men who apprehended highwaymen who were later convicted were offered rewards of £40 along with the offender’s horse, arms and money.

CHAPTER 12

The Horrors

1806–1830

ON FRIDAY 23 June 1809, almost precisely three years to the day after Parker’s murder, a little crowd of farmers, yeomen and artisans gathered in Church Farm’s fold-yard. They had come to attend an auction which had been advertised in the last two editions of
Berrow’s Worcester Journal
. ‘The valuable FARMING STOCK
¹
and EFFECTS of CAPT. EVANS, at Church Farm’, read the announcement, which gave a list of his livestock: two full-tailed geldings, mares, colts, sheep, pigs, cattle and a well bred Herefordshire bull. Also for sale were farm tools and various supplementary items, including wagon timber, old tarpaulins and several empty hogsheads. It was one of the major farm sales of the summer. Church Farm was to be gutted. Captain Evans had retired as a farmer and he had no intention of coming back.

This meant a sharp change in circumstance for Evans. He had spent 76 years seeking activity, stimulation and status, but now he was retreating from the spotlight. He may have decided that the uncertainty and stress that accompanied running a large farm was too much for a man of his age or he might have wanted to spend more time on his magisterial duties in Droitwich. But he had not retreated from the parish entirely. By the date of the auction he was already living in New House, a fine red-brick property in a secluded corner of Oddingley, surrounded by a little land, tangled holly hedges and a row of elms that arched darkly over his driveway. His old residence was acquired by William Barnett.

The Captain, though, had parted with more than Church Farm. Mrs Mary Banks, who had at the very least been a close and constant companion for more than two decades, chose not to accompany him to New House. Shortly before, George Banks had also left the Captain’s household. There were rumours of a rift between the men, and later Banks would complain that he had been driven out of Church Farm ‘by his [Evans’] cruel treatment of me’. For years to come the men, whose relationship had been so close it was speculated they were father and son, would remain estranged. For the first time George Banks was forced to fend for himself, but on his side he had youth, experience and skill. His time at Church Farm had given him the chance to learn much about farming and, still only in his mid-twenties, he had his best years before him. He soon found a new post in the nearby parish of Hanbury, where he worked as bailiff for a landowner named Mrs Parks, whose favour and friendship he soon won.

In the three years since Midsummer 1806 Oddingley had almost recovered its anonymity. In August 1806
Berrow’s Worcester Journal
had pulled the reward notice from its pages, tacit acceptance that Heming was unlikely to be captured anytime soon. At the end of the same month John Marten Butt was installed in Oddingley Rectory as Parker’s replacement, bringing with him a fast-expanding family and a careful diplomatic style which helped rebuild links between Church and farmers. He stopped increases to the tithe at once and in 1807 conducted a special sabbath of contrition, intended to heal divisions still further. Butt slotted effortlessly into parish life in a way that George Parker never had. He was to stay for many years.

Reverend Parker’s murder, though, was not forgotten. Rumours blew about the countryside and from time to time surfaced in snippets of evidence relayed to Reverend Pyndar, who continued to brood over the case at his home in Hadzor. One of the first accounts to reach him after the initial wave of investigations had ceased came from a Mrs Morris, of Droitwich. Her evidence diverted attention away from the Captain and John Barnett, refocusing it on Thomas Clewes. Morris told Pyndar that she had seen him at Heming’s home shortly before Midsummer Day. She had been minding the infants when Clewes had knocked at the door. He was looking for Heming, who was out. On learning this he had told Morris he would wait nearby in the Red Lion. Clewes asked her to send Heming when he returned.

A far more significant development followed in July 1808. In the weeks after Parker’s murder Pyndar had ordered many local properties to be searched in an effort to root out Heming. One man suspected of concealing him had been John Rowe, who lived in a house called Briar Mill in Ombersley parish, a few miles west of Droitwich. Rowe was a horse dealer, one of the slipperiest of nineteenth-century trades. Much like the modern-day used-car salesman, horse dealers had a reputation for mysterious bargains, hollow promises and opaque chains of supply. At worst they were seen as dangerous charlatans, at best they were useful business contacts. In both cases, they were almost always thickly embroiled in local affairs. As Pyndar’s investigation stalled in late July 1806, one of his final acts was to order a search of Briar Mill. The warrant had been passed to John Perkins for execution, but Perkins – who by that point was being treated as a deputised constable – failed to uncover anything. Two years later, though, Rowe came forward on his own initiative. He gave Pyndar a tantalising account of a plot orchestrated, so he claimed, by the Oddingley farmers.

On Midsummer Day 1806 Rowe was riding through Droitwich on his way to Bromsgrove Fair. He told Pyndar that as he passed through the centre of town he was stopped in the street by James Taylor, a farrier. Taylor was well known in Droitwich, with one uncharitable pen sketch depicting him as ‘a little dark short man,
³
who usually rode a little brown horse’. Taylor called Rowe over and told him, ‘if he would shoot Mr Parker he might get £50, which was collected and lay in Clewes’ hands’. Rowe asked Taylor on whose behalf he spoke, and the farrier replied, ‘Mr Evans, Mr Barnett and Mr Clewes.’ He added that the job was easily enough done. All he had to do was creep up to a window behind the rectory and shoot Parker at eight o’clock as he was taking his supper.

Rowe warned Taylor that if he mentioned ‘such a thing again to me, I will knock your brains out’. It was a truculent response but did little to stop the farrier from approaching him once more, later that afternoon. Rowe was returning from the fair when Taylor ran out of the White Hart Inn. ‘Rowe! The money is ready for you!’ he called. As before Rowe angrily reproached Taylor. When he arrived home that evening and learnt that Parker had been shot, he told his wife that all the farmers in Oddingley would be hanged. Ever since he had maintained that ‘Had the murder been stirred into at the time, I’m sure it [the plot] would have been found out.’