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and on his return Hunt and Thurtell reproached each other for missing the appointment. It didn’t matter, said Thurtell off-handedly, he had killed Weare on his own: the pistol had misfired, so he had bludgeoned him to death, ‘turning [the pistol] through his brains’, and then slitting his throat.
    Hunt poured all of this out at the magistrates’ hearing. When more than one suspect was arrested for a crime, only one could be given immunity from prosecution by turning king’s evidence. This frequently produced an unseemly scramble to be the first person to ‘peach’. Hunt’s ‘natural pusillanimity’ encouraged his pragmatism, and he revealed all. After the three men met up at the cottage, he said, they ate the pork chops Hunt had brought with him for supper. (At the trial, Probert’s servant was asked, ‘Was the supper postponed?’ ‘No,’ she replied innocently, ‘it was pork.’) * Telling Mrs Probert that they had to visit a neighbour after supper, they collected Weare’s body from where Thurtell had stashed it, took what valuables he had on him, and put the corpse in a sack. Back at the cottage, Thurtell presented Mrs Probert with a gold chain. Mrs Probert, greatly wondering, later watched from a window as Thurtell and Hunt, who said they would sleep in the sitting room, instead took a horse from the stable. When they returned, having dumped Weare’s body in a nearby pond, she overheard them dividing the money they had found on Weare’s body, which was a wretched £15, instead of the legendary £2,000. The next day Thurtell and Hunt took the gig back to London, together with some of Weare’s clothing. They returned the following day, Hunt bringing a newly purchased spade. Probert was anxious about the proximity of the body to his cottage, so soon Weare was on the move once more, this time to a pond near Elstree.
    As soon as the authorities located the body, Thurtell was committed for trial, with the other two remanded as accessories. Things were not looking good for them – some of Weare’s belongings had been found in Hunt’s lodgings, and a shirt marked ‘W’ in the stable near Probert’s cottage. The gig and the unusual horse were identified at various pubs along the route between Gill’s Hill and London, as were its passengers. At the inquest Hunt claimed that he had no connection with Thurtell and Probert, that he had only been hired to sing (he was a modestly successful tavern performer; his more famous brother sang at Covent Garden). He agreed that he had bought a sack and rope before he left London, but said they were for the game that Probert and Weare planned to shoot. Probert too tried to claim that Thurtell acted alone, but the jury found that Weare had been murdered by Thurtell, while Probert ‘counselled, procured, incited, and abetted the said John Thurtell the said murder and felony to do and commit’. Thomas Thurtell meanwhile was arrested for conspiracy to defraud the County Fire Office.
    In November, Probert’s wife, sister-in-law and brother were all arrested. Mrs Probert’s brother Thomas Noyes had played cards with the men after the murder, and she herself had received what was now identified as Weare’s watch-chain. Noyes and his sister were soon released, but Mrs Probert remained under arrest, while the authorities approached Probert to turn king’s evidence. Hunt had proved an unreliable witness, clearly terrified, happy to agree with anything anyone suggested. The main reason to use Probert, however, was that if he were indicted, Mrs Probert’s evidence of what had passed at the cottage could not be heard – a wife could not testify against her husband.
    In the run-up to the trial the newspapers whipped themselves into a frenzy. At the end of the French wars, a 4d. tax had been added to the price of a newspaper, ensuring a hefty cover price – at the time of Thurtell’s trial, the
Morning Chronicle, The Times,
the
Morning Herald
and the
Observer
each cost 7d.