The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde

Last Doubt

Poole stamped on the flags of the corridor. "She must be buried here," he said, hearkening to the sound.

"Or she may have fled," said Utterson, and she turned to examine the door in the by-street. It was locked; and lying near by on the flags, they found the key, already stained with rust.

"This does not look like use," observed the lawyer.

"Use!" echoed Poole. "Do you not see, madam, it is broken? much as if a man had stamped on it."

"Ay, continued Utterson, "and the fractures, too, are rusty." The two had looked at each other with a scare. "This is beyond me, Poole," said the lawyer. "Let us go back to the cabinet."

They mounted the stair in silence, and still with an occasional awestruck glance at the dead body, proceeded more thoroughly to examine the contents of the cabinet. At one table, there were traces of chemical work, various measured heaps of some white salt being laid on glass saucers, as though for an experiment in which the unhappy woman had been prevented.

"That is the same drug that I was always bringing her," said Poole; and even as he spoke, the kettle with a startling noise boiled over.

This brought them to the fireside, where the easy-chair was drawn cosily up, and the tea things stood ready to the sitter's elbow, the very sugar in the cup. There were several books on a shelf; one lay beside the tea things open, and Utterson was amazed to find it a copy of a pious work, for which Jekyll had several times expressed a great esteem, annotated, in her own hand with startling blasphemies.

Next, in the course of their review of the chamber, the searchers came to the cheval-glass, into whose depths they looked with an involuntary horror. But it was so turned as to show them nothing but the rosy glow playing on the roof, the fire sparkling in a hundred repetitions along the glazed front of the presses, and their own pale and fearful countenances stooping to look in.

"This glass has seen some strange things, madam," whispered Poole.

"And surely none stranger than itself," echoed the lawyer in the same tones. "For what did Jekyll" —she caught himself up at the word with a start, and then conquering the weakness— "what could Jekyll want with it?" she said.

"You may say that!" said Poole.

Next they turned to the business table. On the desk, among the neat array of papers, a large envelope was uppermost, and bore, in the doctor's hand, the name of Mrs. Utterson. The lawyer unsealed it, and several enclosures fell to the floor. The first was a will, drawn in the same eccentric terms as the one which she had returned six months before, to serve as a testament in case of death and as a deed of gift in case of disappearance; but in place of the name of Elizabeth Hyde, the lawyer, with indescribable amazement read the name of Gabriella Jane Utterson. She looked at Poole, and then back at the paper, and last of all at the dead malefactor stretched upon the carpet.

"My head goes round," she said. "She has been all these days in possession; she had no cause to like me; she must have raged to see herself displaced; and she has not destroyed this document.

She caught up the next paper; it was a brief note in the doctor's hand and dated at the top. "O Poole!" the lawyer cried, "she was alive and here this day. She cannot have been disposed of in so short a space; she must be still alive, she must have fled! And then, why fled? and how? and in that case, can we venture to declare this suicide? O, we must be careful. I foresee that we may yet involve your master in some dire catastrophe."

"Why don't you read it, madam?" asked Poole.

"Because I fear," replied the lawyer solemnly. "God grant I have no cause for it!" And with that she brought the paper to her eyes and read as follows:

"My dear Utterson,— When this shall fall into your hands, I shall have disappeared, under what circumstances I have not the penetration to foresee, but my instinct and all the circumstances of my nameless situation tell me that the end is sure and must be early. Go then, and first read the narrative which Lanyon warned me she was to place in your hands; and if you care to hear more, turn to the confession of

"Your unworthy and unhappy friend,

KATHERINE JEKYLL."

"There was a third enclosure?" asked Utterson.

"Here, madam," said Poole, and gave into her hands a considerable packet sealed in several places.

The lawyer put it in her pocket. "I would say nothing of this paper. If your mistress has fled or is dead, we may at least save her credit. It is now ten; I must go home and read these documents in quiet; but I shall be back before midnight, when we shall send for the police. They went out, locking the door of the theatre behind them; and Utterson, once more leaving the servants gathered about the fire in the hall, trudged back to her office to read the two narratives in which this mystery was now to be explained.