Authors: Peter Moore
‘How long before Midsummer Day was this?’
‘It might be a fortnight or three weeks before.’
‘And what did you see the men doing?’
‘Clewes was treating and urging Heming to drink. He said: “Here’s to the death of the Bonaparte of Oddingley!” This was the last time I saw Clewes and Heming together.’
‘Did they say anything else?’
‘Heming was a bad one. Heming said he had a nasty job to do at Oddingley but it was then too late to go as it was half past five,’ Colley replied.
Smith then asked Colley why he had not volunteered this evidence before. Colley replied that he did not know why the previous coroner had not examined him, for he frequently told people what he had just said to the courtroom. ‘I have no spite against Clewes and have worked for him since the murder,’ the labourer concluded.
The next witness, William Rogers, was the father-in-law of a labourer called Henry Halbert who had worked for Captain Evans in 1806 and had claimed to have seen Heming at Church Farm on the night of the murder. Halbert was dead and Rogers was little troubled by the coroner’s questions. The courtroom was already anticipating the next witness, William Smith, who had laboured for Clewes in 1806. Smith had been at Netherwood on Midsummer Day, and his evidence was expected to provide the first account of Clewes’ movements at the time of Parker’s murder.
From the start there was something suspicious about Smith’s testimony. Rather than responding to the coroner’s questions with clear statements, he shuffled nervously between forgetfulness and ambiguity. Only when asked whether Clewes had attended Bromsgrove Fair did he deliver a straight answer, swearing that his master had
not
gone to the fair on Midsummer Day. But if Clewes had not been to Bromsgrove Fair on 24 June then Susan Surman could not have encountered him waiting for Hardcourt by his gate, thus casting doubt upon the dairymaid’s claim that Clewes had wished to find a dead parson on his return to the parish. The coroner lingered on the point.
‘What was Thomas Clewes wearing on Midsummer Day?’
‘He was dressed as usual,’ Smith said.
‘Could he have attended Bromsgrove Fair without you knowing it?’
‘He was not absent from me long enough to go to Bromsgrove that day.’
‘Did your master often attend Bromsgrove Fair?’
‘I cannot tell whether my master was in the habit of going to Bromsgrove Fair or market.’
Here the coroner paused. Clearly intrigued by the labourer’s capricious memory, which had wavered on so many matters yet was so clear on this point, he departed from his line of questioning and asked Smith bluntly whether he had spoken to Clewes in the last few days. His enquiry elicited an unconvincing reply. Yes, he had seen Clewes this morning in the Talbot. No, nothing had passed between them. Yes, Clewes’ brother and his son were also there.
‘Would you swear before the court that Thomas Clewes did not ask you to declare that he had not attended Bromsgrove Fair?’ the coroner asked.
‘No, I will not swear,’ the labourer replied.
It was a jumbled account that made little sense, and for some moments it threw the courtroom into disorder. At length the labourer admitted that Clewes had spoken to him before proceedings began that morning and had reminded him that he had not been at Bromsgrove Fair. It was a brazen case of witness interference and for Clewes an ill-considered move. The coroner ordered that Clewes be kept apart from witnesses henceforth, under the care of a constable. William Smith the labourer was ordered to leave the court with another constable so he could properly and carefully rearrange his thoughts.
For those journalists encountering the case and its characters for the first time, the labourer’s reluctance provided an insight into why the initial inquest had gone so badly wrong. Proceedings were still dogged by sly whispers in the ear; facts were still being bent, stretched or distorted and vital questions avoided by malleable witnesses. Many years had slipped by since William Smith had worked for Clewes, but it was noticeable that he still insisted on referring to him as ‘master’ throughout his testimony. Was this reflective of an old allegiance or a sign of respect, or fear?
Smith having left the courtroom, Thomas Colwell, who along with Lench was the only surviving witness from Barneby’s original inquest in 1806, was called. He told the court how he had seen Heming on Midsummer Day, fleeing from the murder scene. His evidence was delivered quickly. The emphasis had now shifted away from Parker’s murder and towards Heming’s.
John Collins was called with an air of expectation. Like Smith he had worked at Netherwood during the summer of 1806 and had been employed there on 24 June. Having seen his old workmate admonished by the court just moments before, Collins began his testimony by revealing that Clewes had also approached him that morning. Their meeting had been brief, Collins said, and the content of their conversation inconsequential. The labourer then began his evidence. He said that he had left Netherwood Farm at Michaelmas in 1806 and had not seen Thomas Clewes since. It was clear any emotional ties to his old master had long since faded, and his evidence appeared carefully recalled and objective.
Collins told the court that he had been out working in the fields on Midsummer Day and had arrived back at Netherwood at 9 p.m., finding the barns and the brewhouse shut up and the curtains drawn as usual. He had his supper and retired for the night.
‘Did you know Richard Heming and have you ever seen him with Thomas Clewes?’ the coroner enquired, changing the subject.
‘I know Heming,’ Collins replied. ‘I have seen him at Clewes’. He was there on the Sunday morning before the murder.’
‘What was Heming doing?’
‘It was between breakfast time and church time. I saw Heming and Thomas Clewes on a footpath leading into the inside of Trench Wood.’
Collins explained that they had not seemed surprised to see him, but when he approached they had walked away. It was the first time he had ever seen them by the wood. It was about midday when Clewes returned home, he added.
‘When else have you seen Heming?’
‘Heming had been at Clewes’ backwards and forwards, a fortnight or three weeks before.’
‘Did Heming ever work for Clewes?’
‘No. To the best of my remembrance he did not.’
The importance of Collins’ testimony and his willingness to speak was lost on nobody. It was becoming increasingly clear that Clewes had been central to arranging Parker’s murder. Whether doing so on Captain Evans’ orders or of his own accord was unclear, but the evidence that had been growing since Burton’s spade had hit Heming’s shoe was now looking almost conclusive. Collins had now been questioned for around half an hour, and with his efforts still being rewarded, Smith continued, turning his focus to the barn.
This part of Collins’ evidence turned out to be the most revealing. He remembered the barn being almost empty on 24 June 1806, but for ‘some rough straw’. A few weeks later Clewes had asked the labourer to dig some marl from the field nearest the house, which was carted away and put into the barn. ‘I went to work between six and seven in the morning, we drawed [
sic
] six cartloads,’ Collins said. He could not remember who put the marl into the barn, but reasoned that ‘Clewes would have had time to shoot the marl and level it, as well as cart it whilst I was away at the pit.’
‘Did you ever hear any odd noises coming from the barn, Mr Collins?’ Smith asked.
‘I never heard any moaning or cry of murder,’ Collins concluded.
The day had progressed as badly as it possibly could for Clewes. A clear narrative had emerged from the evidence. It began with Clewes’ visits to Heming’s Droitwich home, continued with the drinking session at the Red Lion and the surreptitious meeting in Trench Wood on the Sunday before Parker’s murder. Finally, on Midsummer morning Clewes had wished to find a dead parson on his return, and that is exactly what he got.
By Collins’ estimation it was a week before harvest when the marl was tipped into the barn, giving Clewes about a month to commit the second murder. Around this same time, Collins then remembered, a field of vetches – tall climbing plants – were also ‘put in the bay next to the pool’. Each incident flowed neatly, like a series of tributaries into a widening river, into the main thrust of the theory – that Clewes had arranged Parker’s death and then murdered Heming.
The remainder of the afternoon passed amid such conjectures. Clewes had also attempted to interfere with the next witness, William Crockett, needlessly as it transpired, as he had little to say. Then a further witness remembered riding to Worcester on Midsummer night with the parish clerk, John Pardoe, who was now dead. He recalled Pardoe saying that he had heard Clewes making many threats against Parker.
John Perkins, so long a thorn in the other farmers’ sides, then delivered a typically scathing account of life in Oddingley in 1806. It included an account of the quarrel at the Plough in Tibberton, Captain Evans’ vicious oaths and curses directed at Parker, and his memory of Clewes and Heming drinking together at Droitwich. He finished darkly, ‘Clewes paid for Heming’. The coroner had heard enough. At five o’clock in the afternoon, as the jury broke for refreshments, Smith called Mr Bass, the foreman of the jury, and Reverend Clifton, a city magistrate, into a private room and stated his conviction that ‘such evidence had been adduced … to believe that Thomas Clewes had guilty knowledge of Richard Heming’s murder’. Under common law this was sufficient for an arrest, and Smith recommended that he be taken into custody until the inquest had concluded. Clifton and Bass agreed. Clewes was summoned into the room and informed of their decision.
‘He betrayed not the slightest agitation; he protested himself entirely innocent of having been in the slightest degree privy to Heming’s death, and when told that he was about to be sent to prison, said he should go there without any fear as to the result,’ one journalist later recorded. Clewes was led from the Talbot by two constables who escorted him the short distance to Worcester County Gaol.
All evidence now seemed to strengthen the case. It even seemed oddly distracting when others rose to speak later that evening. Thomas Green testified about the perplexing meeting between Captain Evans and John Barnett that had so preoccupied Reverend Pyndar; Thomas Langford reminded the jury that Heming had been at Church Farm on Midsummer morning; and Betty Perkins delivered a stinging attack on John Barnett for not joining the chase.
Such matters seemed of secondary importance. Captain Evans was dead, and Barnett had not been inconvenienced by the sudden appearance of a skeleton in one of his barns. More interesting was the evidence of Thomas Arden, another labourer who had worked at Netherwood in 1806. He remembered Heming visiting before the murder. Even the appearance of George Banks, now a respectable bailiff in his mid-40s, did little to capture the attention of the room, which had been distracted by Clewes’ arrest.
The day had been a spectacular success, even eclipsing the thrill of identifying Heming’s skeleton three days before. It was to end, however, on a poignant note. The final witness was Mary Parker, who along with Elizabeth Newbury was perhaps the individual who had been most touched by the case. She was now approaching her seventieth birthday and had travelled to Worcester accompanied by her daughter from their home in Lichfield, Staffordshire. As a mark of respect, in a gesture of sympathy not extended to any other witness, she was excused from testifying before the court. Instead the evidence she gave in 1806 was read aloud in her presence. She listened to it carefully: to the reports of the stones against the window, to Captain Evans’ curses and, finally, her dead husband’s tragic epitaph: ‘I know not what they want, unless it is my life!’ She indicated that it was accurate and then stood down.
It was half past nine at night when Smith adjourned the inquest for the second time. Exhaustion mixed with exhilaration as those present tramped out into the street in the knowledge that on Tuesday the inquest would reconvene yet again. As the courtroom candles were extinguished and the skeleton gathered up for safekeeping, a quarter of a mile away Thomas Clewes was in a cell at the gaol on Castle Street, left to endure the memory of a ruinous day.
‘This is an altogether strange case,’ mused a journalist from the
Morning Chronicle
,
4
setting down his thoughts that night for his readership in London. A double murder, ‘the second arising out of the first, is a singular event’. Stories of tithe disputes and parish quarrels were familiar enough, ‘though they seldom reach the height of inducing the parishioners to offer a purse for the assassination of the parson’. In this respect, he concluded, the affair at Oddingley was unique. In this unhappy parish a quarrel had culminated in two successive flashes of violence. The case was a terrible one, and over the past few days it had been gaining notoriety in the British newspapers, which were now publishing their reports under the stark headline: ‘The Case of the Murdered Murderer’.
8
CHAPTER 15
In the Words of Thomas Clewes
The City Gaol, Castle Street, Worcester, 29 January–2 February 1830
THE WORCESTER COUNTY Gaol
1
was a formidable structure, a tangible symbol of power and punishment that stood on Castle Street, north of the city centre. Opened in 1809, this building had replaced the previous prison, which had been derided in the press as unfit for purpose. It had cost the county a total of £19,000 and catered for all types of inmate from thieves and debtors to murderers. Its cells, walls and yards were concealed behind a 20-foot wall of palisaded Bath stone, which radiated all the menace of a fortress. The entrance to the gaol – through which Clewes was escorted at half past five on Friday 30 January in the careful company of two constables and Reverend Robert Clifton, the arresting magistrate – was through a neat arch flanked by two battlemented turrets. Clewes was apprised of his rights by the governor, Mr Lavender – he was still only a suspect and would therefore enjoy more privileges than most of the other inmates. He was then conveyed to his cell.