Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Seek

by Anthony O'Neill

  ‘Look closely at this handwriting,’ Utterson said to him now, sliding across the authentic article, ‘and tell me if you recognise it.’

  ‘Why yes, sir, that’s Dr. Jekyll’s hand—I’d know it anywhere.’

  ‘Particularly distinctive, is it?’

  ‘The doctor had a singular flair for most things. You can see it in the confidence of his curls, and the firmness of his strokes.’

  Utterson grunted. ‘Then cast your keen eye over this one,’ he said, sliding across the envelope that he had been clutching all night.

  Guest studied it for much longer than Utterson expected.

  ‘Well?’ the lawyer said.

  ‘Well … I’m not sure, sir.’

  ‘It’s a plain forgery, is it not?’

  ‘It’s difficult to say.’

  ‘What about the curls and strokes—you’re not saying they’re the same in both samples?’

  ‘Not quite … this script lacks the other’s confidence—’

  ‘Of course it does.’

  ‘But, if I may say, sir’—Guest still seemed hesitant—‘there are many more similarities than differences … and it’s not uncommon, after all, for a man’s writing to evolve with the passage of years.’

  ‘With the passage of years? How do you …’

  But Utterson stilled his tongue. It struck him that Guest might be indicating that he, like Sir Palfrey Bramble before him, was already acquainted with the news of Jekyll’s return. But if so, why had he not mentioned it? Why had he not asked Jekyll’s oldest and dearest friend—Utterson himself—if it could possibly be true? Disconcerted, he collected his two envelopes and locked them in a drawer.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Then he rose, buttoning his coat. ‘I’m heading out for a while.’

  Guest looked surprised. ‘What about your nine o’clock appointment with Mr. Spurlock, sir?’

  ‘Spurlock’s needs can be adequately served by Mr. Slaughter. Or even by you, for that matter.’

  Utterson collected his hat and umbrella—there was a fine rain swirling about—and set forth into the streets. Near Drury Lane he was buffeted by a malodorous drunk; he barely noticed. Near Trafalgar Square an overworked carthorse had collapsed, half-crushing a child; he walked straight past. When he arrived at Scotland Yard he asked to see Detective Inspector Newcomen, half-expecting, even hoping, to hear some sort of excuse—that the inspector had been called out of town or some such thing—but to his alarm he was directed to the detective department. Here he spent fifteen minutes staring blankly at the noticeboards before Newcomen appeared and directed him to his desk.

  ‘I s’pose you’re here about the Jekyll business.’

  ‘I am,’ said Utterson, already disliking the inspector’s tone.

  ‘Hm, well.’ Newcomen thrust out his chin. ‘I made a visit there yesterday, as I said I would. And I saw this chap you spoke of, the servant fellow Baxter.’

  ‘Ah yes, Mr. Baxter.’

  ‘Says he used to be a boxer. And a sailor. And a circus strongman. Interesting fellow.’

  ‘And what about the master of the house? Did you happen to meet him?’

  ‘Well yes, I met him too. And we had a very revealing chat, as it happens. Spoke about a good deal of things, we did.’

  Utterson blinked. ‘And you ordered him to vacate the premises immediately, naturally. You warned him he would be arrested otherwise.’

  Newcomen sniffed. ‘And why would I do that, exactly?’

  ‘Why?’ Utterson could scarcely believe the inspector’s attitude. ‘Because the man is a charlatan, of course!’

  ‘Now see here, Mr. Utterson, that remains to be seen, does it not? His story held water, it seemed to me. And he spoke with a saint’s conviction. So I decided to let him be for now.’

  ‘You decided to let him be!’

  ‘Until I have more reason to doubt him, yes. He’s going to be collecting affidavits in the next few days, he says, from friends and the like. And once he’s done that, and established his credentials, he’ll make moves to reclaim his estate.’

  ‘Oh he will, will he?’

  ‘He mentioned you, too. Something about his old lawyer friend being sure to help him out.’

  ‘He mentioned me by name?’

  ‘“That dear fellow Utterson”, he said. Has a lot of time for you, the doctor has, even after all these years.’

  To Utterson it was increasingly preposterous. ‘But really, Inspector, you’re not saying you believed him? That you truly believed him?’

  ‘Why would I not?’

  Utterson drew a breath. ‘Now wait a minute, Inspector. Now that I think of it, you never did meet Dr. Jekyll, did you? I mean the real Dr. Jekyll—you never met him as Jekyll. If memory serves, you only met him when he was … I mean to say, you only met Mr. Hyde. After Sir Danvers Carew was murdered, you accompanied me to Hyde’s lodgings in Soho. But you never actually met Jekyll in the flesh, did you?’

  Newcomen stiffened. ‘Maybe not, but I know the doctor’s appearance well enough. I was the one who put out his description when he was declared missing.’

  ‘Yes, but you never looked him square in the face, did you? You never shook his hand. Conversed with him. You never knew him as an acquaintance, let alone a friend. So you have no grounds on which to judge, do you, whether this impostor is Jekyll?’

  Newcomen grunted. ‘And neither do you, Mr. Utterson, if you’ve not yet seen him, as you fully admit.’

  ‘But I don’t need to see him,’ Utterson insisted. ‘I don’t need to …’ But again he trailed off.

  ‘Seems to me, Mr. Utterson,’ Newcomen said, stroking his moustache, ‘that you would do well to re-introduce yourself to the fellow. He’s holding a dinner on Saturday, and inviting all his friends. So why not delay your judgement until then? If he’s a charlatan, as you say he is, then I’m sure he’ll trip himself up sooner or later. And if he’s not, well, at least we won’t see an innocent man in chains.’

  ‘An innocent man?’ Utterson scoffed. ‘In chains? Let me tell you, sir, this fellow …’

  But he bit his tongue. His emotions were getting the better of him again. So he forced himself to mumble an apology to Newcomen and effected a swift retreat.

  But that night, huddled into his greatcoat, he returned to Jekyll’s street, the landscape he had watched like a thousand-eyed Argus in the days when he was trying to unravel the mystery of Mr. Hyde. Finding refuge in the door of a barbershop—it used to be a draper’s, just as the place next door had been a map-seller’s—he waited until he saw a shadow fall across Jekyll’s curtains, then marched across the square and pounded on the door.

  ‘Mr. Baxter,’ Utterson said, when the butler appeared. ‘I trust that you remember me?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I’ve come to speak to your master.’

  ‘My master is absent.’

  ‘Absent, is he?’

  ‘Visiting friends.’

  ‘Balderdash,’ said Utterson. ‘Your master is upstairs. I saw him moments ago at the bedroom window. Now allow me to speak to him or—’

  But again, to Utterson’s astonishment, Baxter simply shut the door.

  Reeling—for he had been foolish enough to accept the impostor’s apology for his butler’s insolence—Utterson stepped back onto the pavement and looked up. But the light was no longer burning above.

  For a moment he considered returning home and licking his wounds, holding off until the Saturday dinner, exactly as Newcomen had suggested. But in the end he retreated only as far as the barbershop door, waiting for some new development.

  He was there for perhaps three hours, diving into the shadows whenever a PC or a tradesman strolled past, but he saw nothing untoward until close to two o’clock, when a ragged little man in knee-length trousers and a calico cap came trudging through the square. Utterson did not pay much attention to him at first—the fellow, who was bearing a bulging sack over his shoulder, looked like a common
rag-and-bone man—but when the fellow rounded the corner into the by-street Utterson noticed the flash of a key being drawn from his pocket.

  Startled, he raced across the square and down the street, but by the time he reached the dissecting rooms the little man had already opened the dreadful door and was heaving his bag inside.

  ‘Who are you?’ Utterson demanded.

  But the little man, like Baxter before him, threw the door shut with a resounding clang.

  Though not before Utterson had glimpsed, under the flare of a nearby street lamp, the most sooty, snarling, thoroughly evil visage he had seen since the days of Mr. Edward Hyde!

  A Scouring Storm

  THE POSSIBILITY THAT a man disguised as Jekyll had been joined by a man disguised as Mr. Hyde seemed to Utterson utterly absurd. But the idea that the impostor was transforming himself into a distorted mirror image, as Jekyll had done, seemed equally preposterous. So in the end Utterson had to reassure himself that the man he had seen disappearing into the dissecting rooms, while indisputably malevolent, was neither Jekyll nor Hyde. It was simply not the same man—or men.

  Nevertheless, the speculations were all so unsettling that Utterson made no immediate attempt to return to the Jekyll home. Nor, however, did he spend much time at the premises of Utterson & Slaughter. His explanation to the firm’s junior partner, Gideon Slaughter, was emphatic:

  ‘Urgent business. A private matter.’

  He visited Sir Palfrey Bramble in Park Lane, where the celebrated adventurer resided in a palatial mansion crowded with porcelain icons, Hindoo sculptures and mummified hunting trophies.

  ‘Utterson, dear fellow! Come join me! I’ll have some victuals brought in.’ Bramble clapped hands to summon his silk-costumed servants.

  Utterson shook his head. ‘In normal circumstances I should enjoy nothing more, Sir Palfrey. But I have only a few questions to ask, and then I must be on my way.’

  ‘Well take a seat, at least, old chap! Sit yourself down next to Pierre.’

  Pierre was a stuffed Congolese gorilla with a missing left eye. The explorer himself, also missing a left eye, lowered his considerable bulk into a rattan armchair under a rhinoceros head.

  ‘There was something you said in the street yesterday, Sir Palfrey.’

  ‘Something I said indiscreet?’ Years of rifle-blasts had deadened the old man’s hearing.

  ‘In the street,’ Utterson repeated, more loudly. ‘I believe you said something about Henry Jekyll.’

  ‘Jekyll, you say? Well yes, quite remarkable, is it not? Quite remarkable!’

  ‘May I ask what you have heard exactly?’

  ‘Well, just that he’s back in London of course—alive and well; back from the jaws of … whatever jaws he escaped from.’

  ‘But who informed you of this news?’

  ‘Who?’ Sir Palfrey frowned. ‘Well, I can’t rightly remember, you know—these things get about by themselves, do they not? How did you find out?’

  ‘I went to the Jekyll home,’ Utterson said, ‘only to have the door slammed in my face.’

  ‘You don’t say! Well, that’s a bit rude of the old boy. Not some ill-feeling between the two of you, is there?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Utterson said. ‘Jekyll himself—or at least the man calling himself Jekyll—assured me in a letter that we are still the best of friends.’

  ‘But he’s not yet paid you a visit?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘That’s a bit rum, isn’t it? When he’s visited just about everyone else!’

  A chill raced through Utterson. ‘Are you saying, Sir Palfrey, that the man going by the name of Jekyll has done the rounds of the doctor’s friends?’

  ‘Dundered round the doctor’s ends? What?’

  ‘Has he visited his friends?’ Utterson said, leaning forward. ‘The men in Jekyll’s circle?’

  ‘Why yes—he was here not fifteen minutes ago! In this very room!’

  Utterson felt dry-mouthed. ‘He was here, you say?’

  ‘Sitting where you are now.’

  Utterson shifted uncomfortably; he had thought, upon sitting down, that the seat seemed warm. ‘And what had he come to talk about?’

  ‘What’s that?’ Sir Palfrey cupped a hand to his ear.

  ‘I asked what the man calling himself Jekyll was talking about when he was here.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Just reacquainting himself, I suppose. Hadn’t been here for so long that he barely remembered the place. Very interested in my collections, he was.’

  ‘Did he by any chance prevail upon you to sign an affidavit? Or any other papers?’

  ‘Nothing of the sort. He was very good about the whole thing. Just invited me to his dinner on Saturday. Only I shan’t be going—my constitution and whatnot, you know. But Jekyll seemed not to mind.’

  ‘Jekyll …’ Utterson said, then shook himself. ‘I assume you got a good look at the man?’

  ‘Oh yes, yes.’

  ‘And to your eyes did he resemble the real doctor?’ asked Utterson—well aware that Sir Palfrey’s vision was little more reliable than his hearing.

  ‘Oh, well, you know … a fellow who’s endured all that he has—you wouldn’t expect him to look exactly the same, would you?’

  Utterson leaned further forward. ‘So he’s not the same person, is he? He doesn’t look like Henry, does he?’

  ‘Oh, it’s Henry all right,’ Sir Palfrey said. ‘I have a sense for such things. And so does Pierre. Between the two of us, with our two good eyes, we’d know if a man was a charlatan, wouldn’t we?’ And he winked—or blinked—at the stuffed gorilla.

  ‘Well, of course you would.’ Utterson rose, clapping on his hat. ‘Then I’ll waste no more of your time.’

  ‘I say,’ said the explorer, ‘you’re not put out by all this, are you? It must be difficult, I imagine, with all you had planned.’

  ‘Planned?’ Utterson repeated. ‘And what, pray tell, am I suppose to have planned?’

  But Palfrey, visibly self-conscious, got to his feet and muttered something expediently incomprehensible.

  Utterson then headed for the book-crowded home of Professor Edmond Keyes in Cavendish Square. Of all the surviving members of Jekyll’s circle it was Keyes, an historian of ancient mythology, who seemed to Utterson the least likely to be hoodwinked by a fraudster.

  ‘Yes, I heard the news.’ Keyes was studying the proofs of his new monograph on Achelous. ‘Though I can’t say I gave it much credit at the time.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ said Utterson. ‘You know as well as I that it cannot be true.’

  ‘Now see here, Utterson, I said I didn’t credit it at the time. But I’ve since met him in person. He called here, to this very room, and we spoke together at some length.’

  ‘The fiend was here too?’ Utterson asked, appalled.

  ‘Fiend, Utterson? I’m not prepared to call him that.’

  ‘But he was right here in this house?’

  ‘Only an hour ago. Very persuasive he was, too. He knew things that only Jekyll could possibly know.’

  ‘Such as what, may I ask?’

  ‘Incidental details. Private details. About our mutual past. I shan’t say more.’

  Utterson elected not to pursue it. ‘But he doesn’t really look like Henry, does he?’

  ‘Oh? Who told you that?’

  ‘It’s … just what I’m led to believe.’

  ‘Well, I beg to differ. In fact, I’d have to say the resemblance was compelling.’

  ‘Compelling?’

  ‘Decidedly. And I’d be surprised if anyone thought differently. I’d be surprised if you did.’

  Utterson was exasperated. ‘But he’s not Jekyll, don’t you see? Whatever he looks like; however persuasive he might be.’

  ‘Hmph,’ Keyes said. ‘The weight of numbers should tell a story. I’ll be at his dinner on Saturday evening, as should you, Utterson, and if others of Jekyll’s acquaintance are convinced he is who he clai
ms to be, then I for one shan’t be mounting a challenge. Nor should you, come to that. Vir prudens non contra ventum mingit.’

  Utterson grunted. ‘And what if I unmask him at the dinner, by the same token? I take it you will stand beside me then. You will not leave me to fight the beast alone?’

  ‘If there’s a Gorgon to be slain,’ Keyes said, straightening his manuscript, ‘then you can rely on me, dear fellow, to be the first to unsheathe my sword.’

  But to Utterson he did not look like a man who was preparing for any sort of battle.

  Utterson then visited Dr. Chauncey Wiseman in Henrietta Place; Dr. Hubert Frost in Savile Row; and Gareth Sessions, the eminent member of parliament, in Haverstock Hill; and in each case he found that the Jekyll claimant had already swept through like a scouring storm. Each of these men had conversed with him for some time; each seemed more or less satisfied as to the man’s credibility; and each indicated that he was prepared, when the time came, to endorse him in whatever way necessary.

  ‘But he’s not who he claims to be,’ Utterson insisted again and again. ‘If he’s anyone he’s Dr. Guise—that’s all he is. So why does everyone want to believe that he’s Dr. Jekyll?’

  ‘And why,’ returned Sessions pointedly, ‘do you so passionately want to believe that he’s not?’

  Utterson made one final visit to his home in Gaunt Street, lest the impostor had dropped in on his rounds of Jekyll’s friends. But Poole seemed surprised.

  ‘Visitors? Why no, sir. Is there anyone I should be expecting?’

  ‘Just be on your guard,’ Utterson told him. ‘And be especially careful about believing in fairy tales.’

  At the telegraph office, just before closing time, he dispatched a cable to Richard Enfield:

  STRANGE COMPLICATIONS STOP IMPOSTOR OCCUPYING JEKYLL HOME STOP DESCRIPTION NECESSARY OF INQUISITIVE MAN MET AT YOUR CLUB STOP GRATEFUL IN ADVANCE UTTERSON

  It was a wild bid. He knew that before embarking for France Enfield was passing several days in Dover—possibly renewing acquaintances with an erstwhile lover—but he was not certain of his lodging place (on a hunch he addressed the telegram to the Lord Warden Hotel, which his kinsman had mentioned favourably). Nevertheless he was oddly convinced that the prying stranger whom Enfield had encountered at his club was somehow related to the claimant, if indeed he were not the claimant himself; and now his only regret was that he had not enquired further while he had the opportunity.