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 you! 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.