PARSON-DETECTIVE
KENTISH VICAR WHO SOUGHT TO SOLVE
MYSTERY OF VILLAGE MURDER
FROM A CORRESPONDENT
The famous amateur detectives of fiction have followed a wide variety of professions, trades, and callings; but so far as I am aware a village parson has never figured as the central character in a series of detective stories. There was Chesterton's Father Brown, of course, with his pipe and his intuitions. But this sensible and sensitive little priest seems to have no Church of England counter- part, which adds point to the criminal investigations carried out by the Rev. Richard Jordan, vicar of Hoo, St Werburgh in the county of Kent.
HOO EXHIBITS
The Hoo murder exhibits many of the features of a typical detective story crime; and Mr Jordan set to work, as all good amateur detectives should, after the professionals had failed. On a Sunday night, December 11, 1808, one of his Parishioners, William White, the owner-occupier of Cockham Farm, had been shot through the head as he sat beside his living room fire. He had died instantly. The Rochester coroner had returned an open verdict. Two Bow Street runners had come down to Hoo, had asked a great many questions, and after a couple of days had thrown in their hands. The field was open. The planning of the murder had been ingenious. Someone, after dark on the evening in question, taking a loaded gun with him had erected a hurdle in the back garden of the farmhouse so that if the gun was rested on it, it could be aimed through an open scullery window and through the open scullery door straight at the farmer's fireside chair. Someone with local knowledge had chosen a Sunday evening since on Sunday evenings none of the farm or domestic servants would be around the house. Someone had come to that hurdle shortly before 8pm, had picked up the loaded gun that had been left lying handy on the ground, had knelt down, had taken aim resting the gun on the hurdle and had waited until the nightly 8pm salvo was fired from the convict hulks that lay in the Medway nearby.
TRIGGER PULLED
Under cover of this din the trigger had been pulled - and then the someone taking the gun with him (it was later found hidden in a barn) had disappeared into the night, leaving the discovery of the crime to be made by the victim's younger children whose cries and lamentations drifting across the hedgeless fields, had been heard in Hoo village at about 8.05 or 8.10pm. Local suspicion had immediately fastened upon George White, the murdered man's eldest son. He had been heard to threaten his father, he was known to covet the farm and William White had told several people that he was proposing to make a new will. But George White, 24 years old and unmarried, had satisfied both the Rochester coroner and the Bow Street runners that, during the vital half-hour between 7.45 and 8.15, he had been in Hoo Village, a good mile away from the farmhouse. It was this “cast iron alibi” that Mr. Jordan was determined to break, for he, too, believed that George White was the murderer. He set about his investigations in a most purposeful fashion putting down his findings in a notebook which he labelled Memoranda on the death of Mr.(William) White. The original notebook had disappeared but a local historian saw it in the 1890s and made a copy of its contents. This copy came into my [The Correspondent’s] possession some years ago.
On January 26 Mr. Jordan preached a bloodcurdling sermon in the course of which he told his congregation that he had placed a book in the vestry in which each male parishioner must enter his name stating (with the name of a witness) where he had been at 8pm on December 11. A week later the vicar distributed a printed broadsheet requesting information from “strangers” who might have been in or near Hoo on the fatal evening. On March 9 he began a systematic questioning of the villagers. On March 26 he ordered George White to call a vestry meeting for the purpose of “clearing himself from the suspicion entertained of his having murdered his father”. On April 3 – Easter Monday when 40 of the villagers dined together at the Bells Inn for the purpose of settling the parish accounts he forced the unwilling George to make another public statement.
The young man’s original statement story was severely shaken by these investigations. Mr Jordan was able to prove – at least to hi own satisfaction - that George White, on leaving the farmhouse at 6.50pm. to walk to Hoo village with the Wagoner’s mate, had not turned back, as he had claimed, to fetch a handkerchief from his bedroom but, had in fact nipped into the back garden and had set up the hurdle, leaving a loaded gun beside it – George had had no – handkerchief, the vicar noted, when he had accompanied him to the farm after the murder. The young man, on seeing his father’s corpse, had cried, and had wiped his eyes on the back of his hand.
BAG OF NUTS!
George White had declared that he had bought a bag of nuts at the village shop at 7.45 - but the vicar was able to produce a witness who had seen him cracking and eating nuts at 7.40. George had stated that at 8pm, when the salvo had been fired, he had been standing at the yard gate of the Bells. Mr Jordan was able to show that he had been seen walking away from the Bells yard just before 7.45. George White had declared that he had run down the village street and had knocked on the back door of the vicarage as soon as he had heard cries coming from Cockham Farm.
There were plenty of witnesses ready to swear that these cries had been heard in the village five minutes, or at the latest 10 minutes, after 8pm. George White, it transpired, had not reached the vicarage until 8.20. Plenty of people had seen George White in the village between 7.15 and 7.45. No one had seen him there between 7.45 and 8.20; which meant, as Mr. Jordan pointed out, that this active young fellow could have left the village street at 7.45, could have run the mile to the farm, could have crouched down behind the hurdle, could have waited for the covering fire from the hulks, could have fired the fatal shot and could then have doubled back to the village - the vicar's housekeeper had noticed that he was out of breath and panting when he came to the back door of the vicarage.
In spite of these inquiries George White was never brought to trial. Before the year was out he had emigrated to Australia. Detective story writers might, perhaps, note with advantage the peculiar opportunities for sleuthing which the vicar enjoyed, and the excellent use he made of them.