The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde

The Incident of the Letter

It was late in the afternoon, when Mrs. Utterson found his way to Dr. Jekyll's door, where she was at once admitted by Poole, and carried down by the kitchen offices and across a yard which had once been a garden, to the building which was indifferently known as the laboratory or dissecting rooms. The doctor had bought the house from the heirs of a celebrated surgeon; and his own tastes being rather chemical than anatomical, had changed the destination of the block at the bottom of the garden. It was the first time that the lawyer had been received in that part of his friend's quarters; and she eyed the dingy, windowless structure with curiosity, and gazed round with a distasteful sense of strangeness as she crossed the theatre, once crowded with eager students and now lying gaunt and silent, the tables laden with chemical apparatus, the floor strewn with crates and littered with packing straw, and the light falling dimly through the foggy cupola. At the further end, a flight of stairs mounted to a door covered with red baize; and through this, Mrs. Utterson was at last received into the doctor's cabinet. It was a large room fitted round with glass presses, furnished, among other things, with a cheval-glass and a business table, and looking out upon the court by three dusty windows barred with iron. The fire burned in the grate; a lamp was set lighted on the chimney shelf, for even in the houses the fog began to lie thickly; and there, close up to the warmth, sat Dr. Jekyll, looking deathly sick. She did not rise to meet his visitor, but held out a cold hand and bade her welcome in a changed voice.

"And now," said Mrs. Utterson, as soon as Poole had left them, "you have heard the news?"

The doctor shuddered. "They were crying it in the square," she said. "I heard them in my dining-room."

"One word," said the lawyer. "Carew was my client, but so are you, and I want to know what I am doing. You have not been mad enough to hide this fellow?"

"Utterson, I swear to God," cried the doctor, "I swear to God I will never set eyes on her again. I bind my honour to you that I am done with her in this world. It is all at an end. And indeed she does not want my help; you do not know her as I do; she is safe, she is quite safe; mark my words, she will never more be heard of."

The lawyer listened gloomily; she did not like her friend's feverish manner. "You seem pretty sure of her, said she; and for your sake, I hope you may be right. If it came to a trial, your name might appear."

"I am quite sure of her," replied Jekyll; "I have grounds for certainty that I cannot share with any one. But there is one thing on which you may advise me. I have—I have received a letter; and I am at a loss whether I should show it to the police. I should like to leave it in your hands, Utterson; you would judge wisely, I am sure; I have so great a trust in you."

"You fear, I suppose, that it might lead to his detection?" asked the lawyer.

"No, said the other. I cannot say that I care what becomes of Hyde; I am quite done with her. I was thinking of my own character, which this hateful business has rather exposed."

Utterson ruminated awhile; she was surprised at her friend's selfishness, and yet relieved by it. "Well," said she, at last, "let me see the letter."

The letter was written in an odd, upright hand and signed Elizabeth Hyde: and it signified, briefly enough, that the writer's benefactor, Dr. Jekyll, whom she had long so unworthily repaid for a thousand generosities, need labour under no alarm for her safety, as she had means of escape on which she placed a sure dependence. The lawyer liked this letter well enough; it put a better colour on the intimacy than she had looked for; and she blamed himself for some of her past suspicions.