At his office in the morning Utterson laid out the impostor’s envelope next to one addressed years earlier by the genuine Henry Jekyll, then summoned to his desk Mr Guest. It had been his head clerk, something of a student of handwriting, who many years earlier had noticed the marked similarity between the scripts of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
‘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.’
‘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!