He also proved peerlessly supportive and understanding when I was forced to take my dear father, a former bookkeeper from Tavistock, into my meagre lodgings in London. My father’s faculties by this stage had so failed that the task of caring for him occupied my every free hour, and often necessitated my absence from Bedford Row for long periods. Yet even when some in the firm questioned my priorities, and when Mr. Slaughter agitated for some redress, Mr. Utterson was my most resolute guardian and defender. He would not hear of any penalty, neither in salary nor status, and when my father eventually passed on to a better life, Mr. Utterson’s first impulse was to console me like an uncle, to share my grief, and to welcome my return to the office with all the privileges to which I had become accustomed.
Nonetheless, it was through supporting my father in his final years that I became, for better and worse, something of an expert in the frailty of the human condition and the fine lines that separate the strong-minded from the eccentric and the eccentric from the outright mad. It was indeed a terrible thing to witness my father, a man who had been a fund of common sense and practical facts, disintegrate to the point where he was incapable of remembering his activities of minutes previously, was confused as to his own whereabouts, suspicious of others’ intentions, and at a loss to nominate the most important people and events of his life. Incrementally, and yet right before my eyes, a proud man had been shorn of his dignity, indeed his very identity.
In the case of Mr. Utterson, I am inclined to believe that his disintegration, more sudden than incremental (and confined therein to two unexpected surges), commenced about seven years ago amid the mysterious circumstances surrounding the disappearance of his good friend Dr. Henry Jekyll. To that point the closest Mr. Utterson had come to ‘eccentric behaviour’ was through his curious collection of walking sticks, for not a month seemed to pass without his purchasing of a new cane, frequently capped with an animal head, which he would flourish ostentatiously around the office as if to invite admiration. Why he found it necessary to own such a forest of sticks, and what he did with them once they were no longer required, has always been something of a mystery to those of us in the office; but I have always suspected that Mr. Utterson, when still a youth, must have fixed his mind on owning such objects, and endowed them with great symbolic importance, to the extent that all his success never exhausted his need to assert his status, or gain for himself some notional security, through the purchase of a new cane.
Except for this endearing idiosyncrasy, I believe I can say that I have never met a man less whimsical in outlook than Mr. Gabriel Utterson. It was indeed this quality that made him such a model of sanity for all in his circle. He was keenly aware of this—he conceded as much to me openly—and had made something of a plaque of it, for he was justifiably proud of his status as ‘a lighthouse around which other vessels flounder and occasionally wreck’.
Certainly one of those vessels was Henry Jekyll. Of the doctor’s activities immediately preceding his disappearance I know very little, except to say that they were most uncharacteristic. In my dealings with him to that point, through his patronage of the law firm, I had always found him to be a character of exceptional good sense and generosity. This was a man who would pay a bill without even studying it, would never quibble about trivial matters, and would always be ready for a cheerful conversation about subjects far and wide. He was an alchemist as much as a physician, with a great interest in formulating medicines with which he hoped to combat all sorts of maladies, and to this mission he committed himself with a fakir’s devotion. As for Mr. Hyde, I never met him personally, only heard about him through gossip, but like many others I am given to believe that this disagreeable little man, whatever his background, was merely a volunteer who agreed to partake of the doctor’s elixirs and submit to his subsequent examinations for a negotiated payment. He may indeed have had some malign influence on Jekyll, or it could be that the doctor was troubled by the failure of his experiments; whatever the case, there is little doubt that, before his disappearance, Dr. Jekyll became unusually distracted, exhibiting a nature that swung wildly between deep despondence and wild exuberance.
Mr. Utterson clearly blamed Hyde for this disequilibrium and cultivated many sinister theories about him. I myself may have unwittingly encouraged such notions when I was called upon to examine a letter written in Hyde’s hand, whereupon I noted the script’s similarity to that of Dr. Jekyll; and from this innocent observation Mr. Utterson concluded for some reason that Jekyll was forging letters for Hyde (before reaching, it has only recently become evident, an even more fantastical conclusion).
That Mr. Hyde was a murderer there can be little doubt, and that Jekyll gave him refuge, perhaps as a result of his own complicity, also seems possible. Whatever the truth of their relationship, it is certain that Mr. Utterson was deeply unsettled by it, having appointed himself as Jekyll’s keeper if not his guardian angel. Determined therefore to prise the two men apart, he nightly prowled the streets around the Jekyll home, and pursued Mr. Hyde like a hound, and was so dazzled by the spell of this self-appointed mission that he lost sight, for the first time in his life, of his professional responsibilities.
(It should be noted in passing that the walking stick used by Mr. Hyde to murder Sir Danvers Carew had earlier been a gift to Dr. Jekyll by Mr. Utterson, so it is not inconceivable that the very idea that one of his canes had been so inconsiderately passed on to another man, and a common criminal at that, was enough to ignite in Mr. Utterson a great deal of self-destructive umbrage and jealousy.)
In any event, it was around this time that we in the office noticed Mr. Utterson’s unexplained absences, his occasionally dishevelled appearance, his unwonted shortness of temper, his general impatience with quotidian matters, along with his occasional lapses of memory. But we took these to be temporary afflictions, with no enduring consequences—failing to see in them the first flickers of a madness that would ultimately overwhelm him.
Certainly the suicide of Mr. Hyde, together with the disappearance of Dr. Jekyll, brought the more obvious symptoms temporarily to an end, for Mr. Utterson returned to the office and attended to his clients with the dedication for which he was famous. Only those of us who were closest to him recognised a mysterious new cast to his personality, something between that of a man who had survived a great trauma and a treasure hunter after discovering a pirate’s cave.
It is to be admitted here that few of us thought well of this change. In fact, there was considerable disquiet within the firm about some lingering mysteries. Why, for instance, had Jekyll suddenly named Mr. Utterson as his sole beneficiary shortly before his disappearance? And why did Mr. Utterson seem so unconcerned about his friend’s fate (almost as though he knew that the doctor would never return)? Rumours flourished for a while, always behind Mr. Utterson’s back, and may have sent forth shoots in many preposterous directions; it is enough to say that a general suspicion thereafter hung over Mr. Utterson, and caused many to deal with him with studied reserve.
But after a while no more was said about the matter, and the weeds of suspicion without nourishment failed to thrive, and for my part I was too occupied with caring for my father to be exercised by such dark notions.
Approaching the seventh anniversary of the doctor’s disappearance, however, few in the office could not but notice a renewed disturbance in Mr. Utterson. For suddenly this man of flinty asceticism was muttering whimsical philosophies, staring into middle-space for long periods, and rushing away at the day’s end with little concern for his unfinished work. Not only, it seemed, was he speculating about what he would do with his forthcoming riches, but he suddenly had romantic aspirations as well—for he had been spotted around town with a matronly woman, an ostentatious widow said to have ‘a special regard’ for newly prosperous men.
Now as much as Jekyll’s relationship with Mr. Hyde was the cause of much consternation to Mr. Utterson, so this unexpected affaire de cœur proved deeply unsettling to me. For I h
ad long regarded Mr. Utterson as a personal hero, who had forged a path that I was destined to follow; and much of what I found so admirable in the man was his determination to spurn those matters which can so weaken one’s resolve—by which I mean the reading of unedifying novels, the patronage of the meretricious arts and the courting of facile ladies. For most of the time I knew him Mr. Utterson seemed merrily immune to such fancies, with no appreciable debit from his wellbeing—indeed, he seemed proof that one could prosper in life without polluting one’s heart with romantic love.
‘The measure of a man’s unhappiness is the distance between where he is and where he aspires to be.’ This pearl of wisdom, which so impressed me that I recorded it in my day-book, and muttered it like a biblical verse thereafter, was offered to me by Mr. Utterson himself in the days when happiness and unhappiness seemed to him as indistinguishable as flowers in a distant meadow.
And now this man with no time for dreams seemed so stricken with foolish fancies that I could only wonder what damage was being wrought on his mind. A person’s identity (as I discovered with my father) is a fragile abode, pinned together with memories, beliefs, precepts, and perceptions of the self gleaned through the responses of others. But in Mr. Utterson’s case this abode was a veritable palace, with towers, chambers and dungeons built on marble buttresses and huge oaken beams. And now this man, of all men, was trying to replace his palace with a castle in the air: a chimera, a phantom self, a dream of what he wanted to be!
It is precisely in such chasms that insanity breeds.
Now it would be unjust of me, of course, to claim that such dreams alone drove Mr. Utterson mad; but I knew enough to recognise a man who was no longer in complete control of his mind. And once again, together with the others in the firm, I saw in Mr. Utterson a confusion of purpose and dereliction of duty, along with a notable change of personal appearance (sometimes neglectful, sometimes incongruously overdressed).
Still nothing was said openly, and no sentiments shared beyond a few disapproving glances; and if some of our more discriminating clients were quietly steered in the direction of Mr. Slaughter, it was more through tacit agreement than official policy.
Things came to a head, however, with the unforeseen reappearance of Dr. Jekyll just two weeks ago. It suddenly became clear that Mr. Utterson had genuinely believed that Jekyll was dead (and not just missing); and so it was that the Jekyll claimant—who seemed authentic to all those who met him, and whose explanation for his absence proved highly credible—became in Mr. Utterson’s eyes an ungodly charlatan, a thief of Jekyll’s identity, who needed to be unmasked before he got his demonic hands on the doctor’s fortune.
Suffice to say that Mr. Utterson’s erratic behaviour very rapidly took on a darker hue. He was demonstrably agitated at work, with a temper that verged at times on the violent; he was intolerably rude to the company’s clients; he was particularly abrasive with Mr. Slaughter; and he was unusually high-handed with the rest of the staff. He was waxen in complexion and lank of cheek; his fingernails were chewed to the quick; his hair resembled a fringe of ruffled feathers; his clothes were stained with wine; and meanwhile he jumbled names, forgot the most basic details, and to all appearances regarded his professional duties as a hindrance to more important pursuits. At one point he asked me to examine two examples of handwriting, convinced against all evidence that ‘the impostor’ was forging the real doctor’s hand; at another he presented me with two weighty documents, charging me with the responsibility of concealing them lest he be killed or go missing; and on another occasion—the last time we saw him at Bedford Row—he muttered incomprehensible oaths before accosting Mr. Slaughter in the stairwell.
At about the same time we were visited by Inspector Newcomen of Scotland Yard, who revealed that Mr. Utterson was well known within the ranks of the police for prowling the area around Dr. Jekyll’s home, day and night, to the point that it had become something of a sport for the local constables to sneak up on him and engage him in harmless conversation, just to find out what was on his mind. But Newcomen was reluctant to take action owing to Mr. Utterson’s high standing around the Courts, though he admitted to having harboured concerns about the man’s faculties for some time.
So Mr. Slaughter convened a meeting in the office and encouraged the staff to divulge all their concerns; and like wild horses that have been too long confined to a stable the employees revelled in their freedom. It is fair to say that the portrait that emerged of Mr. Utterson was that of a man whose temperament was a flimsy façade for a deeply troubled soul. With much regret, then, Mr. Slaughter resolved to ask Mr. Utterson to step down for a few months, at the end of which time a decision would be made regarding his future.
Mr. Slaughter intended to confront Mr. Utterson on the matter in propria persona but when the latter did not reappear that afternoon, or on the following day, numerous letters were dispatched to his Gaunt Street address, all without response. So I was charged with the responsibility of visiting Mr. Utterson in order to deliver a signed statement informing him of the company’s resolution, and to wait for a suitable reply should Mr. Utterson choose not to return to the offices himself.
Upon my arrival, however, I found Mr. Utterson in such a state of feverish excitement that he would not listen to me. Rejecting all my efforts to make myself heard, he dragged me through the house and forced me to hear his mad diatribe.
He had just returned from Scotland, he claimed, where he had unearthed evidence that the Jekyll claimant had been involved in many sensational crimes, including murder. He warned that I myself was far from safe, as ‘the demon’ might arrive at my rooms at any time to strangle me.
He went on to recount the substance of the secret letters he had previously put in my custody—not to save me the trouble of reading them, he said, but simply to help explain what he was about to do. (For the record, I have since gone through these documents, which I have beside me now pending Inspector Newcomen’s examination, and I am satisfied that they are bald fabrications. While purporting to be recreations of letters penned by Henry Jekyll and Hastie Lanyon, the narratives are so festooned with expressions I know to be idiomatic to Mr. Utterson—‘the provinces of good and ill’, ‘a furious propensity to ill’, ‘the fortress of identity’—that I have little hesitation in identifying Mr. Utterson himself as their author.)
In any case, he claimed that Dr. Jekyll had concocted a magical drink that somehow converted him, like some character in a fairy tale, into Mr. Hyde. He admitted that he had been unable to prove this at first, owing to the absence of a special powder; but now that this powder had arrived—just minutes before my arrival, he claimed—the experiment could proceed with myself as witness.
‘Behold!’ he exclaimed. ‘I am Satan!’—before drinking the bubbling potion.
Still I tried my utmost to stop him, but he forced me back into a chair where, dumbstruck, I watched as the formula took its effect. I saw his face contort, and his eyes roll back into his head; and his hands went to his throat, he gasped and wheezed; his body twisted; and for a few moments I almost believed that I was indeed watching a preternatural transformation.
But when he fell to his knees and began foaming at the mouth, I knew I was witnessing the convulsions of one poisoned, as I had seen the very same reaction in a man who had inadvertently swallowed rat bait in Tavistock (the man died shortly thereafter).
So I rushed from the house and thumped on all the neighbouring doors; finally I was able to locate a doctor and we made at great haste back to the Utterson abode. Alas, we had only made it to the threshold when a figure smashed between us and shot out into the street.
Though at first I feared it was an opportunistic thief who had taken advantage of the open door, it soon became clear that the figure was Mr. Utterson himself, possessed of some maniacal strength. By the time we had reclaimed our wits and set off in pursuit, he had already reached the corner and was heading for the City.
Quickly the doctor and I hailed a
cab and gave chase, gaining ground just as he reached Waterloo Bridge. Now it must be admitted here that, for a man of his years, Mr. Utterson was moving with remarkable agility, capering like a monkey, springing over obstacles, bouncing off walls like a frenzied fly. And yet I had witnessed this phenomenon before, too, in the inmates of the Tavistock asylum, who once escaped and ran riot through the town, many of them performing astonishing feats of short-lived strength.
The streets by this time of night were largely empty, thank God, for I can only imagine what damage Mr. Utterson might have inflicted had his path been blocked. Even as it was, when I reached out from the cab to seize him, he turned on me with his eyes flaring and his mouth a rictus of yellowed teeth, and blasted at me a rank breath, and violently chopped my arm, before galloping down an unlit alley and away.
It was at this point that we lost him completely in a maze of streets, and we might have retired, or at least recruited assistance from a police station, but then an idea, or rather a certainty, took hold of me, which I conveyed at once to the driver of the cab.
For there could be only one place, in light of his obsession, to which Mr. Utterson could be heading—and that was to the home of Dr. Henry Jekyll.
My heart was crashing as we shot through the labyrinth, hoping desperately we would not be too late (for I have always admired the doctor, and was loath to see him attacked, let alone killed).
Alas, when we arrived at Jekyll’s street it was to the sound of an unearthly squeal, half-human and half-bestial. The door to the doctor’s home was flung wide and residents had gathered outside. I heard a frantic commotion, followed by a sickening whack, and when I looked up to the first-floor window (I swear to God) I saw a spray of blood blast across the window sashes, sending a lurid glow across the spectators below. And it was my gravest fear now that Mr. Utterson had already visited upon his nemesis the ultimate revenge.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Seek Page 12