Day of Agitation

UTTERSON’S SLEEP THAT night was so profound that he became convinced that something had been stirred into his drink. For how else could he explain it? With his mind as agitated as it had ever been, it was inconceivable that he would plunge so quickly into oblivion. Moreover there had been a metallic undertaste to the wine that in retrospect seemed highly suspect. And Jekyll had always been adept at mixing potions (no—not Jekyll, he forcibly had to remind himself, but the impostor who’s taken his place).

In any case, he remembered nothing in the morning save a vivid dream in which Jekyll had not killed himself in the person of Mr. Hyde, but had survived, confessed his crimes to the world, and engaged Utterson to defend him in the Old Bailey.

‘Gentlemen of the jury’—Utterson was in wig and gown for the first time in decades—‘you see before you a man of peerless integrity, of the highest order, a Fellow of the Royal Society no less, who has been charged with some of the most heinous crimes ever to have been brought before this court. But I ask you, is it really Dr. Jekyll who should be here in the dock today? Or is it the second being, the one who is called Mr. Hyde? For it was Hyde, was it not, who enacted the crimes for which Jekyll is now being tried? It was Hyde who murdered, bludgeoned and thieved. And yet where is this Mr. Hyde I speak of? Is he visible before you? No, indeed, he is not. For Hyde is concealed deep within Dr. Jekyll, and safely imprisoned there at that. He is a scoundrel and a malefactor, true, but no more evil or dangerous than all the other scoundrels and malefactors that today lie hidden in this very court. For whom among you does not harbour his own Mr. Hyde? And who does not sometimes hear his Hyde pounding against the walls of his cell? Who does not daily, hourly, suppress the urges of his horrible Hyde?

‘No,’ said Utterson, ‘Henry Jekyll’s only crime, it seems to me, was to experiment upon himself in order to test the security of the prison; and that Mr. Hyde escaped so violently only justifies the urgency of the inspection. So while you have every reason to deliver a verdict on Mr. Hyde, you can no more condemn Dr. Jekyll than you can condemn yourselves. We are all Jekylls, yea, but equally we are all Hydes.’

Presently the bells sounded nine o’clock. Utterson jolted—he had not overslept in years—and dressed in uncommon haste, buttoning his clothes even as he was stumbling down the stairs.

‘Is sir unwell?’ asked Poole in the hall.

‘Why do you ask, Poole?’

‘I heard you crash around last night, and collapse onto your bed.’

‘I was out of sorts, it’s true.’

‘And afterwards I heard you moving about.’

‘It’s possible,’ Utterson admitted, though he remembered no such thing. ‘But I’ve no time to talk now, Poole—I’m late for church.’

When he arrived at St Mary’s the deacon was already reading from Genesis.

‘And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man; my father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to him a deceiver; and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing.’

But Utterson was not listening. Of all the events of the previous evening, and all the lies that had been loosed, there was one exchange that had taken hold of his imagination. It was the claimant’s preposterous explanation for his failure to visit Gaunt Street: ‘I didn’t want to risk running into the old fellow alone. Poole always thought so absurdly highly of me that I’m not sure at all how he will receive the news of my return.’

At the time Utterson had paid it scant attention, still warding off the claimant’s redoubtable charm. But now, installed in his customary pew in St Mary’s, he found an entirely more plausible explanation: the impostor did not want to face Poole because his butler, of all men, would never be deceived by him. That was the real reason for the impostor’s reluctance—not some sensitivity to the old man’s emotions.

‘A curse on him!’ Utterson hissed, before coming to his senses and nodding apologetically to his fellow worshippers.

Nevertheless he sprang to his feet as soon as the blessing was over and marched resolutely back to Gaunt Street, where he found Poole scrubbing wine stains from the stairs—not that he could remember spilling anything.

‘Never mind that, Poole, I want you to come with me.’

‘Sir?’

‘Put down that bucket, I say—we’re going for a ride.’

‘A ride, sir? In a carriage, sir?’

‘I know this is a surprise’—in fact, the two men had not travelled together in years—‘but there’s no need to change your clothes. I merely want you to see something.’

Fifteen minutes later they were bowling along through the frost-pinched streets. ‘Is it something to do with your illness, sir?’ Poole ventured.

‘Illness?’

‘You said you were feeling out of sorts, sir. I wondered if it had something to do with your dinner last night.’

‘I suppose you could say that.’

‘Something you ate, sir?’

‘No … something …’ Utterson glanced at his butler and resolved to tell the truth. ‘We’re going to Jekyll’s, Poole, that’s where we’re going—to the home of Henry Jekyll.’

‘Sir?’

‘In response to a rather disagreeable complication.’

‘What has happened, sir?’ the butler asked, genuinely concerned.

‘Well, first of all I must own that I’ve not been completely honest with you, Poole. Do you remember that letter I received on Wednesday—the one you thought was in Jekyll’s handwriting?’

‘I remember.’

‘What if I were to tell you that it was a clever forgery—the work of a man claiming to be the missing doctor?’

‘A man claiming to be Dr. Jekyll!’

‘Indeed. And what if I were to tell you that this shameless impostor has moved into the Jekyll home, which he claims is his own?’

‘You mean to say there is a man is pretending to be my master? And he has taken over his house?’

‘Precisely so.’

‘The devil!’ Poole said, sitting forward in his seat with fists clenched. And Utterson remembered, with considerable satisfaction, that this was the same man who seven years earlier, fearing Mr. Hyde had harmed his master, had taken an axe to the laboratory door with frightening fury.

‘The devil is right, Poole,’ said Utterson. ‘As you will shortly see for yourself.’

Above Jekyll’s street a flock of ravens was circling like buzzards. Milky sunlight was straining through gauze-like clouds. Utterson, inflating his chest like a pigeon, ascended the stairs and rapped on the door with his ostrich-headed cane. Then he turned to Poole.

‘The impostor has a butler,’ he warned. ‘A scoundrel called Baxter.’

‘A butler!’

‘Who does not even pretend to look like you, Poole. Still, you should prepare yourself lest—’

But then the bolts clicked and the great door squeaked open. Utterson wheeled around, expecting to find Baxter on the threshold. But instead, to his unwelcome surprise, he saw it was the claimant himself, resplendent in a mulberry coat and beaver-skin hat.

‘Utterson!’ the man exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’

‘I’m about to head out, dear fellow—why?’

‘Why?’ Utterson snorted. ‘Because I’ve brought someone with me, that’s why—a man you seem determined to avoid!’

And with that he peeled aside, holding one arm extended lest Poole make an indignant charge, and watched as the claimant’s face squinted momentarily before igniting with delight.

‘Poole!’ the man cried. ‘My good man Poole!’

Utterson turned, expecting to find the old butler suitably enraged. But to his chagrin Poole merely looked disconcerted.

‘Master …?’ The butler was agape.

‘Poole!’ the claimant said again. ‘My word, it’s good to see that ugly mug of yours.’

‘Master … is it truly you?’

‘Your old guv’nor, Poole, back in his London castle!’

The claimant stepped forward and seized Poole’s hands and shook them vigorously; and Poole, to Utterson’s mounting dismay, simply stood there, dumbstruck, with a tear glistening in his eye—as if it really were Henry Jekyll who was greeting him on the steps.

‘I’m sorry I’ve not yet come to visit, old bean.’

‘Think nothing of it, master!’

The salutations, the grinning, the shaking of hands and the chuckling continued for what seemed an eternity; and it was only fifteen minutes later, when they were returning home in the cab, that Poole belatedly acknowledged some regret.

‘I don’t know, sir,’ he admitted sheepishly. ‘He did look like Dr. Jekyll … and all his expressions and such, they were exactly the same. Exactly the same, sir.’ He sighed. ‘Well, we were very close, my master and me, and well, we were twenty whole years together … and, well, you know how it is, sir.’

Utterson just stared out of the window, his eyes narrowed to slits.