Damn His Blood (22 page)

Pyndar performed much better than this. While limited in experience and expertise, he was gifted with a natural sense of duty, a talent for organisation and an inquisitive streak. He was untrained but he had guile, and in the days following the murder he applied himself to the case with diligence. He sought out villagers, interviewing each one alone, and instead of committing facts to memory, he made records of everything on scraps of parchment which he stowed away for future reference.

One of his first moves was to engage John Perkins, who was proving a tractable ally, to lie in wait for Heming on the foot road between Droitwich and Oddingley. Perkins was instructed to seize the fugitive if he saw him. The letters to Bristol and London left Worcester in Wednesday’s post and by now the handbill was in wide circulation. Pyndar knew that the chances of Heming still being in the neighbourhood were slim, but the possibility could not be completely discounted. In the first few days of the investigation he had received news of a number of potential sightings. Two came from nearby parishes: one in Tibberton, one in Warndon, just a mile to the west. Other reports arrived from Whittington and Pershore, villages further to the south. None, however, proved to be correct. As Pyndar waited in Oddingley for a lucky turn in events, his collection of notes began to mount. His pithy observations were often no longer than 50 or 60 words in length, but they showed that he was unearthing far more than Barneby had achieved before him.

Constructing a plausible narrative was chief among Pyndar’s concerns. He was already convinced of Heming’s guilt and from the start of his investigation set about discovering as much as he could about the labourer’s movements. Working backwards he hoped to discover just where he had been on Midsummer Day, and to reveal the route that had wound from Heming’s Droitwich home to Parker’s glebe at five o’clock.

First he established that there was a working relationship between Heming and the Captain. Several labourers told Pyndar that Heming had laboured for Evans for some months as a carpenter and wheelwright, sawing wooden rails from local elms, mending buckled cartwheels and treating hurdles in the pool. Pyndar learnt that Heming had been at Church Farm on Midsummer Day, doing work for the Captain. He visited the property and found Evans. In his notes, he wrote, ‘Cap. Evans says:
¹⁴
That he paid Heming his wages of 6th of May & has not employed him since nor to the best of his recollection seen him till 24th June when he called at his house in the morning and pulled out some poles, that he had a mug of drink, but had no conversation with him.’

Evans’ evidence seemed precise and emphasised how thin the ties between Heming and himself were. It did, however, include an admission that the suspect had visited his house on the morning of the murder, a fact that suggested to Pyndar the Captain’s role was worth examining in more detail. He underlined the point in his notes with a bold, thick stroke of his quill.

Pyndar then questioned George Greenhill, a 15-year-old labourer rumoured to have been the last villager to see Heming before he vanished. Greenhill had been working for John Barnett in a meadow behind the rectory. At between nine and ten o’clock in the morning he had encountered Heming, who climbed over a stile into the field. Heming told the farmhand that he had been ‘drinking a cup of ale’ at the Captain’s. He didn’t seem to be carrying a weapon.

This scrap of evidence corroborated what the Captain had already said, but it also raised the question of what Evans had been doing the morning Heming had called. The Captain’s claim that ‘he had no conversation with him’ seemed to settle one point, but it did not account for his movements. It seemed that, as he had not attended Bromsgrove Fair with Clewes and the other farmers, he must have spent the day at Church Farm. But then the Captain’s story became more difficult to square. As a serving magistrate, he would have been expected to have been far more involved in the evening’s events and yet he had played no part. It seemed perplexing that the Captain, so often the dominant parochial figure, would remain so detached from the action.

Pyndar’s suspicions hardened when he talked to Thomas Green, the tailor from Upton Snodsbury. Green told Pyndar about his visit to Church Farm shortly after the murder, explaining how he had found Barnett and Evans in the parlour drinking. Green said that they both reacted with surprise when he told them about Parker’s murder. Pyndar had already assembled enough facts to know that this was contrived. John Lench had testified at the inquest that he had informed Barnett of the murder only minutes after the attack, and according to Susan Surman’s later evidence Pyndar had confronted Barnett an hour before Green saw him in the Captain’s parlour. It seemed inconceivable that Barnett would not tell the Captain that the man they both despised had been shot dead. Pyndar returned to Church Farm and questioned Evans on this point.

‘Barnett did not mention it,’ the Captain declared flatly. He told Pyndar that the first he had heard about Parker’s murder was from Thomas Green, who had burst into his parlour and exclaimed, ‘Good God! Have you heard the news?’ Evans had asked him what he meant. ‘Mr Parker is shot!’ the tailor had replied. Evans told Pyndar that he had then turned to Barnett, saying ‘Surely it was not true?’ ‘It was too true,’ Barnett had replied.

This account appears almost impossibly bizarre. Pyndar did not challenge him on the point, but the truth about the evening meeting at Church Farm was clouded further when he found John Barnett at Pound Farm. He asked Barnett whether he had spoken to the Captain about Parker’s murder on Midsummer Day. Barnett replied that he had ‘informed Captain Evans of the murder before Green came in’, and also that Mary and Catherine Banks had joined the Captain and himself in the parlour, and had been ‘talking over’ the news ‘before Green came in’.

It was a glaring contradiction. Pyndar may not have been trained in the art of deduction, but he was a long-serving magistrate with experience of distinguishing truthful evidence from false statements. It was clear to Pyndar that the Captain was lying, and in doing so was attempting to hide the details of his conversation with Barnett. It was a first slip and an early indication to Pyndar that his investigation was leading him into darker territory than he had encountered before. As the search for Richard Heming stretched out across the country, in Oddingley Church Farm and the role of the Captain were coming increasingly into focus.

^fn1
A ship breaker dismantled old vessels, salvaging what he could and selling it on, and disposing of the rest.

^fn2
Such questions fuelled the discipline of phrenology, which in 1806 was gaining popularity due to the work of Dr Joseph Gall (1757–1828). Phrenology focused on the size and shape of a human skull, which were taken as indications of the mind contained.

CHAPTER 11

A Dirty Job for Captain Evans

Oddingley and Worcester, June, July 1806

ON SATURDAY 28 June an advertisement appeared in the
Worcester Herald
. Under the sensational title ‘
A most Barbarous and Inhumane MURDER!
’ it read:

Whereas on Tuesday Evening,
¹
the 24 instant, about five o’Clock the Rev. GEORGE PARKER, Rector of Oddingley, in the County of Worcester, was most cruelly MURDERED, in a Field within the Parish of Oddingley, and within a short distance of his own Dwelling-house, by receiving a shot from a Gun – which entered the right Side of his Body, near the short Ribs; his Skull fractured and his head otherwise very much beaten with the butt End thereof …

And whereas RICHARD HEMING, late of the Borough of Droitwich, but heretofore of the Chapelry of Norton, near Bredon, in the same County, Carpenter and Wheelwright, stands suspected as being the Perpetrator of such cruel and inhuman Murder. The said Richard Heming is about five Feet four of five inches high, tight made, large Features, a large bald or high Forehead, dark brown Hair, inclined to curl, black Beard, round Face, rather a wide Mouth, sharp Nose, dark hazel Eyes, ruddy Complexion, but looked pale when pursued immediately after committing this most diabolical act; had on at the time such Murder was committed, a dark blue Coat, with white metal Buttons, which appeared too long for him, an old fashioned Hat with a low crown.

Four days had now passed since Parker’s murder and three since Barneby’s inquest. Heming was still at large and the authorities were changing their tone. This was an official announcement, not a piece penned by a journalist. It featured prominently in the middle pages of the newspaper, in the popular column on home news. The elusive ‘man’ who had appeared in
Berrow’s Journal
was now being named as Heming. The tone of the piece was urgent and the detail it gave impressive. It marked a new phase in the investigation. Whereas Pyndar had seemed to be working alone for much of Tuesday evening and Wednesday, it was now clear that he had the support and attention of other powers.

‘Whoever will apprehend the said Richard Heming, and lodge him in any of his Majesty’s Gaols in the United Kingdoms, and thereof give Information to George Harris, attorney at Law, Edgar Street, Worcester,’ the announcement concluded, ‘will be handsomely rewarded for their trouble, and all reasonable expenses paid.’

On the same day, 50 miles to the east of Worcester, the initial report from
Berrow’s Worcester Journal
was republished in
Jackson’s Oxford Journal
. And at some point over the weekend the article must have caught the attention of a newspaper editor in London. On Monday morning, 30 June, a lightly edited version was reprinted once again, this time on the third page of
The Times
in London. News of Parker’s murder was featured alongside reports of a gentleman who had tragically drowned in Hyde Park and the arrest of a surgeon’s assistant accused of bodysnatching in Bermondsey.

But as the story drew glances from as far away as London, in Worcestershire there was still no trace of Heming. Many were beginning to treat the labourer’s disappearance as almost as curious as the crime itself. There had been no confirmed sighting of him since the night of the murder, and it was assumed that he must be lying low in some woods or undergrowth, or being offered protection by a friend or confidant. The greater worry was that he had escaped either the county or the kingdom, evading the attention of the authorities in Bristol or London.

On 28 June Pyndar received responses to the two letters that he had written three days before. The first was a nimble note from Mr J. Read, chief magistrate of the Bow Street Office. He acknowledged receipt of Pyndar’s letter, promising to ‘take care that the description of Heming shall be circulated among the different Police Officers’. Read signed off optimistically, ‘if he should make his appearance in London I dare say we shall get him and in that case you shall have immediate notice of it’. At the bottom of the letter, as an afterthought, he promised Pyndar he would have the description of Heming inserted in the next edition of
The Hue and Cry and Police Gazette
, a popular circular published each Saturday and sold for 3d. Heming’s name would appear alongside those of wanted forgers, housebreakers, footpads, smugglers, rustlers and escaped convicts.

Read’s response was prompt and had been written with a confidence that perhaps reflected his urban surroundings. In 1806 London was already a vast smouldering metropolis, developing with furious speed and on the verge of becoming the first British city to boast a million inhabitants. The tens of thousands of migrants drawn to the capital each year came both to find work and escape the countryside’s hardships. Many of the poorest slipped invisibly into the labyrinth of London’s slums or ‘rookeries’ like bees into a honeycomb. Such areas were stews of skinny alleys and gnarled tenements thronged that day and night with innumerable people, among them the poor and destitute, petty and career criminals, and it would have been the most obvious destination for a fugitive, a place where they could dive into the crowds and disappear without trace.

But Read’s letter brought hope. Although there was no recognised police force in Britain, London was organised far better than the regional towns and cities. It was divided into seven administrative sections, each governed by police magistrates answerable directly to the home secretary. Within these areas a relatively high density of constables and watchmen was deployed, many with keener eyes than those of their counterparts in the countryside. Read’s office at Bow Street had grown in stature and reputation over the past few years to become the most important among the embryonic policing units. Three different magistrates operated out of it; 60 Bow Street Runners patrolled the roads that fed into London, and there was even a special team of Bow Street Thief-Takers, who hunted down known criminals for the rewards offered privately or by the government. If Heming had decided to head to London, the authorities had been warned and lay in wait.

The news from Bristol was equally optimistic. Mr Richard Ward, the magistrate who had received Pyndar’s letter, had immediately carried it to Richard Vaughan, the mayor, who had ordered his officials to use every means in their power to apprehend the murderer. Bristol was a busy port and only 50 miles to the south of Worcestershire. Here spry colliers and lumbering freight boats navigated the River Avon night and day, carrying cargoes of woollen cloth, tea, muslin,
²
coal and spices along a stretch of water deep enough to allow ships of 1,000 tons to pass. Their destinations ranged from Dublin and the east shores of Ireland to the West Indies and the Americas. Almost 11,000 Bristolians were employed at the port, and if Heming could convince any of them to engage his services, or allow him a berth on a ship, then almost all chances of capture would be lost.