‘Not at all, sir.’
‘Then I am not a killer after all?’
‘Not that I know of, sir.’
‘And the potion did not transform me?’
‘It only made you writhe and sweat, sir.’
But now Utterson was faced with a prospect just as disagreeable as that of being a murderer—the appalling possibility that Jekyll’s formula had never transformed anyone, and Jekyll was not Hyde.
Again shame and fear flooded over him.
‘It was the impure salt!’ he exclaimed.
‘Sir?’
‘The impure salt! Clearly the potion needs the impure salt!’
He stared at Poole, daring him to disagree. But Poole’s expression, it seemed to him, had transformed from patronising pity into withering disdain.
Utterson bolted for the door.
The Burning Key
WILD-EYED AND DISHEVELLED, Utterson spent much of the following morning visiting every pharmacy in a three-mile radius of the Jekyll home. But only a few could remember the doctor and none would admit to selling an impure salt. There was but one fragment of hope, when he learned of an elderly chemist named Enoch Fell who, not unlike Mr. Halliday, had completed some of the doctor’s more eccentric orders. But unlike Mr. Halliday the whereabouts of Enoch Fell were unknown; it was even assumed that he had passed away. Utterson, vaguely aware of the intimidating effect his appearance was having on those he questioned, chuckled bleakly.
It was perversely amusing, in fact, the number of obstacles that were being strewn in his path—enough, certainly, to make the most rational man question his faculties. There were now just two days left until he should by rights assume full control of the Jekyll estate, and he was still the only man in London standing in the way of the impostor’s designs.
Back at his office in Bedford Row he was unsurprised to discover that the claimant had now engaged the services of the highly credentialed solicitor Mr. Aubrey Bent, formally ending his association with Utterson & Slaughter.
‘He thinks he’s won,’ Utterson breathed. ‘He thinks he’s already won this terrible game.’
‘Game, sir?’ said Guest.
Utterson snapped out of it. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Do you remember, by any chance, the recent death of Teddy Jekyll, Henry’s half-brother?’
‘Thomas Jekyll, sir.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘His name was Thomas Jekyll, sir. My name is Teddy.’
‘Of course,’ Utterson said. ‘Nonetheless, I want you to find for me the firm that handled his affairs.’
‘It was Kemp & Beatty of Essex Street, sir.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I remember very well, sir, because I followed everything to do with Dr. Jekyll very closely—even the affairs of his half-brother.’
‘You did, did you?’ Utterson should not have been surprised—Guest was like a magpie with insignificant details—but he could not help but suspect some sinister motive. ‘In any event, that’s where I’m heading now—to Kemp & Beatty. Whether they’re ready for me or not.’ He picked up his hat.
‘But what about the—’
‘I don’t care about … whatever it is. Slaughter can take care of it.’
‘Mr. Slaughter, if I may say so, sir, is very concerned—’
‘Slaughter can go to blazes!’ Utterson spat. ‘If I do not go there first!’
Utterson had time to register his clerk’s look of alarm, even astonishment, before hastening down the back stairs. But here, by unhappy coincidence, he chanced across Mr. Slaughter himself, emerging from the water closet.
‘Ah, Mr. Utterson,’ said the junior partner. ‘I wonder if I might have a further word with—’
‘No time!’ exclaimed Utterson. ‘Out of my way, for the love of God!’
Threading his way among clerks and carts, Utterson arrived at Essex Street and demanded to see Rupert Kemp, whom he knew from the Law Society.
‘Oh, I was close enough to Thomas Jekyll,’ the leonine lawyer admitted a few minutes later, in the comfort of his wood-panelled office. ‘I considered him a friend above all else, much as you did Henry. And, rather as in matters between you and Henry, I could not, in the end, prevent his fall. Why do you ask, though, Utterson? Is it something to do with the sudden return of his brother?’
Kemp was a most reliable man, as sharp as a rapier, and Utterson felt little hesitation in being as honest as possible.
‘It’s a complicated business,’ he replied, mopping his brow. ‘But lately I have been given to wonder if Jekyll’s brother—your old friend Thomas—is in fact dead.’
Kemp smirked. ‘My dear fellow, you’re not suggesting that Thomas Jekyll might have taken his brother’s place, in some bold attempt to claim his estate?’
Utterson grunted. ‘It seems my suspicions have preceded me.’
‘Well, there’s been some talk in legal circles, as you might expect. But whatever your theory, I can put your mind at rest. For a start, Thomas looked only faintly like Henry—they were half-brothers, as you know—and as for his death, I can verify it categorically, for I was the one who was called in to identify him.’
‘You saw him with your own eyes?’
‘And smelled him with my nostrils. Moreover the parlous state of the body alone indicated that Thomas would never be rising from the dead.’
‘Decayed?’
‘And mutilated.’
‘Was there no clue to the identity of the assailants?’
‘Well, Thomas kept some questionable company, there’s no doubt of that. I often feared for him, and quite justly as it turned out. But no,’ said Kemp, ‘there were no obvious culprits. And in any case the trail had gone completely cold by the time the body was discovered. Thomas had been due to travel to America, you see, and for a long time his absence was not regarded as suspicious.’
Utterson thought about it. ‘Due to go to America, you say?’
‘For weeks after his death everyone believed he was merely out of the country.’
‘And does that itself not sound to you like the work of professionals?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, to dispose of a man at the most advantageous time … when he is due to be abroad … when no one would suspect foul play until it was too late?’
‘It’s an intriguing possibility.’
Utterson thought some more. ‘In fact, do you not think it possible that a well-prepared criminal—or even a team of them—might spend months, perhaps years, cobbling together the habits and history of a missing gentleman, with a view to assuming his identity at some stage?’
Kemp shrugged. ‘It’s an arresting notion,’ he admitted, ‘and not without precedent, I suppose.’ He shook his head and chuckled. ‘But really, Utterson, you have developed a devious mind in the past few years, haven’t you?’
‘Only in the past ten days,’ Utterson replied. ‘Only in the past ten days …’
He left Kemp’s office with Richard Enfield’s door key burning in his pocket. Though he had all but forgotten his kinsman in his mounting confusion, the mention of Thomas Jekyll’s thwarted voyage to America had raised another terrible possibility. And so, fully prepared for the worst, he scaled the gloomy steps to Enfield’s apartment in Piccadilly with his cane gripped tightly in his hand.
As soon as the door fell open he smelled the decay. Dead flowers, dead air, dead meat. He locked his throat and proceeded catlike through the rooms. It did not take long.
Richard Enfield was lying face down in the drawing room. There was a stain of long-dried blood extending from his head across the Turkey carpet. Travel bags and portmanteaus were piled nearby. A steamer trunk, monogrammed R.E., towered over the body like a headstone.
Kneeling down—blackbeetles scurried from the corpse—Utterson examined a huge depression, filled with maggots, in the side of his kinsman’s head. The result of a heavy blow from a metal bar or hatchet, no doubt—enough to end Enfield’s life in an insta
nt. Killed, conceivably, because he could identify the mysterious man at his club. Killed, quite likely, because he was too close to Utterson. Killed, very possibly, because he was on the verge of revealing something incriminating.
But that he had been killed by the claimant or his hounds—that much, to Utterson, seemed beyond dispute.
For all that, he knew how the others would respond. A mere accident, they would say. Lamentable, no doubt, but much more common than one might think. He tripped and struck his head on the corner of the table—look, you can even see some hair on the marble edge. And there, the bar of toilet soap upon which he slipped …
And as for foul play, they would dismiss any suggestion of it at once. Unless of course they decided that Utterson himself—the only man in London with Enfield’s door key—was responsible. He had been acting very strangely, my lord, and clearly had many things to hide …
In either case, they would be hellishly wrong.
Wouldn’t they?
Utterson took off his hat and said a prayer for his last remaining friend. He recalled the many walks they had shared together, the vigorous debates in which they had engaged, and he vowed with all his heart to rain justice on the impostor and his piratical crew. Because this was no longer a mere personal grievance—it had a sacred purpose now.
Then, resisting the impulse to check for missing valuables, he backed out of Enfield’s flat, made sure the stairway was deserted, and headed swiftly for the street, the brim of his hat pressed low on his head.
A Departing Soul
BY MID-AFTERNOON, UNDER ragged black clouds, Utterson was at B— Municipal Cemetery, where he found the corpulent Irish groundskeeper frantically trying to conceal a flask.
‘Seven years ago,’ he told the groundskeeper tightly, ‘I paid for the internment of a man called Edward Hyde. The man was a criminal—a murderer, in fact—yet I felt compelled to see him given a Christian burial owing to my particular friendship with his guardian, a doctor of some renown. However, I did not myself attend the burial, only paid for the headstone, so I have no idea where in this yard he is resting.’
‘I know the grave well enough,’ the groundskeeper said, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. ‘A common plot—I can lead you there now.’
‘There is more to it than that,’ Utterson went on. ‘You see, I would like to inspect the body.’
‘Inspect it, sir?’
‘In fact, I demand it. I want to see the body exhumed, as soon as possible.’
‘Today, sir?’
‘Right away. And I shall pay whatever is necessary.’
The groundskeeper shook his head. ‘But that requires an order from—’
‘No,’ Utterson said firmly, ‘it does not. I am a lawyer, sir, and I own the man’s plot. The man has no remaining family whatsoever and I am his legal guardian. So I have a right to demand a disinterment.’
In fact, after leaving Enfield’s apartment Utterson had been overwhelmed by the need to see Edward Hyde’s body. He needed to verify, once and for all, that the little monster was really dead. Because, if he could do that, he might quell any remaining doubts that the wretched fellow had really been revived somehow, and Jekyll along with him.
‘Maybe so,’ the groundskeeper went on, ‘but this is not my responsibility. I was not here seven years ago, and had nothing to do with his burial.’
‘That is of no importance to me.’
‘I was not here at the time,’ the groundskeeper insisted. ‘The feller here back then … he was discharged … the gravediggers, too … I was not here, I tell you.’
Utterson held up a placating hand. ‘I am not here to investigate your practices, I assure you. I merely wish to see the body once in order to satisfy myself of its condition. So let us proceed without delay. Here’— he fished around in his pocket—‘have a guinea now, in advance, for your trouble.’
No more than half an hour later they were in an ill-manicured corner of the cemetery thick with listing headstones and witch-chair grass. The gravediggers, humming music hall ditties, shovelled aside the sodden earth and exposed the rotting timbers of Hyde’s coffin.
‘Are you sure you know what to expect, Mr. Utterson?’ the groundskeeper asked apprehensively. ‘After seven years in a grave a body can change, I can tell you.’
‘I shall recognise him, sir, have no doubt of that—from his frame alone.’
When the lid was prised open a gust of wind prickled through the yard, startling the blackbirds in the yew trees. A mist curled out like a departing soul. And everyone, Utterson included, tilted forward.
The gravediggers gasped. The groundskeeper made a rapid sign of the cross.
But Utterson, with a resilience that was becoming second nature, merely chuckled.
The coffin of Edward Hyde was empty.
Blasphemy of Blasphemies
THE FELLER BEFORE me,’ the groundskeeper mumbled, ‘was a bad ’un. He robbed the dead of jewellery and stripped them of their clothes, and if there were no kinsmen he’d hawk the bodies too. It’s by no means impossible that your friend Mr. Hyde did not even make it into his grave, or was dug out soon after. I am much aggrieved to tell you this, Mr. Utterson, and I hope it has not come as too much of a shock to you—but I say to you again, and I vouch for it on the grave of my own dear Ma, that this crime had nothing to do with me.’
Utterson, however, was not even listening. As a Christian, he attended church weekly, observed all the major feast days, read theology, and practised as well as he could the teachings of the testaments. So when the path of life twisted unexpectedly, or when he was forced to weather a storm or two, he armoured himself with the conviction that the vicissitudes of men’s lives were designed to strengthen, not weaken, their pacts with God.
But now, with a blank smile fixed almost permanently on his face, he had begun to wonder if God were not so much testing as torturing him. If he had been singled out for punishment, if not death. If he had become the plaything of higher beings. And if—blasphemy of blasphemies—God and Satan had become one.
By the time he reached Gaunt Street the clerks were filing home from the counting houses. In the entrance hall Poole was waiting with the day’s mail: a letter from Mr. Slaughter, which Utterson ignored; something from Dover—obsolete information relating to Enfield’s whereabouts; and a third letter, written it seemed in some haste, from Mr. Kemp the solicitor.
Utterson was turning this envelope over in his hand when he noticed his butler standing beside him.
‘You have something to say, Poole?’
Poole’s cheeks coloured. ‘It’s about Dr. Jekyll, sir.’
‘What about him?’
‘Well, sir …’ The butler shifted. ‘The doctor has been in contact with me, you see, and—’
Utterson snorted. ‘He has asked you to become his butler again, has he?’
‘Well, sir—’
‘And you wish to be released immediately into his service, is that it?’
‘Well, I—’
Utterson shook his head. ‘Et tu, Brute?’
‘Sir?’
‘It matters not,’ said Utterson. ‘He has planned this, you know. Dr. Guise has planned everything. He thinks you have some knowledge he can plunder. Or he believes that your testimony will prove the most valuable endorsement of all. Whatever the case, he will use you, Poole, as he has used so many others before you, and then he will discard you.’
‘Sir, I’m not sure—’
‘No, he will discard you, I say. He will kill you. He will kill you and not even blink. And when that moment comes, Poole’—Utterson was staring into the butler’s eyes—‘when that moment comes, I want you to think of me, your former master, and I want you to breathe an apology to old Mr. Utterson. And then I want you to walk—no, jump—into the grave you have dug for yourself.’
Poole stiffened. ‘If that is the way you feel—’
‘Oh, get out of my sight, you stupid flunky! Pack your belongings and be off, damn yo
u! A pox on you and all the men you have served—a pox on the lot of them!’
And without waiting for a response he stormed up to his business room, where he tore open Kemp’s letter:
My dear Utterson—
Today you raised the possibility of an impostor, or a team of them, studying the life of a missing person with a view to inhabiting fraudulently the existence of said person.
I claimed that such a crime would not be without precedent, but it was only after you departed that I recalled a remarkably similar case, not ten years old, in Edinburgh. A man called Alexander MacKenzie, a prominent laird, had been presumed dead for close to seven years when a gentleman of strikingly similar appearance showed up in the city claiming to be the missing man. His bearing, his manners, his diction, his intimate knowledge of MacKenzie’s habits and history, proved enough to convince even the most doubtful of men that he was indeed the wayward aristocrat. But just days after assuming full control of the estate he disappeared without a trace, taking the laird’s considerable riches with him, and (to the extent that I am aware) there is no further knowledge of his whereabouts.
I trust this has been some help to you, without causing you further distress.
Sincerely yours,
RUPERT KEMP
Utterson feverishly packed a valise and headed downstairs, where he bumped into Poole, who was leaving with his own carpetbag. The two men said nothing to each other, not even a muttered oath, and at the corner went in entirely different directions—the butler to the house of his once and future master; the lawyer to King’s Cross Station, and from there by the night train to Edinburgh.
A City In Disguise
IN THE MORNING, before the train had even squealed to a halt, Utterson erupted onto the platform and shot up the ramp to Waverley Bridge. He expected roiling clouds, excoriating winds, smoke vomiting from chimney stacks, the stink of brewery waste and coal smoke—everything he knew from previous visits to Edinburgh. But the low-arching sun, stripped of all veils, was gilding the gables of the Old Town, sparkling in the shop windows of Princes Street, and flooding the crescents of the New Town with bronze-flecked reflections. Whole cities, it seemed, had costumed themselves in finery to rattle his mind.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Seek Page 10