Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The Carew Murder Case

Nearly a year later, in October, London was shaken by a crime of terrible violence, all the more shocking because of the high position of the victim.That night a maid, living alone in a house near the river, sat at her bedroom window dreaming in the light of the full moon, until she noticed an elderly gentleman with white hair coming along the lane.A much smaller man came to meet him, and the maid recognised him as Mr. Hyde, who had once visited her master and whom she had disliked at once.

The old gentleman bowed politely and seemed to be asking the way, but Hyde, swinging a heavy cane, listened with growing impatience.Suddenly he flew into a rage, stamping and waving the cane like a madman, and when the old man stepped back, surprised and hurt, Hyde struck him to the ground and attacked him with such savage fury that the maid fainted at the sounds.When she came to herself at two o’clock and called the police, the murderer was long gone.

The dead man still had his purse and gold watch, and the only paper on him was a sealed letter addressed to Mr. Utterson; beside him lay half of the broken cane, and the murderer had taken the other half.Utterson identified the body as Sir Danvers Carew, and when the officer showed him the broken cane, he recognised it as one that he had himself given to Henry Jekyll many years before.When he heard that Hyde was small and wicked in appearance, he offered to lead the police to Hyde’s house, and the two men set out by cab through the first fog of the season.

The cab crept through the streets of Soho, where the fog turned the day into a nightmare of brown twilight, and Utterson felt afraid even of the policeman sitting beside him.It seemed strange that this dirty street was the home of the favourite of the respected Dr. Jekyll, a man who was heir to a quarter of a million pounds.An old woman with silvery hair and an evil face, smoothed over by false politeness, opened the door and said that Mr. Hyde was not at home, but when the lawyer introduced his companion as an inspector from Scotland Yard, a look of delighted spite crossed her face.

Hyde used only two rooms in the house, but they were furnished with luxury and good taste, with a closet of fine wine, silver plate and a good painting, probably a gift from Jekyll, who loved art.Now the rooms had been hastily ransacked: clothes lay on the floor, drawers stood open, and a pile of grey ashes in the fireplace showed that many papers had been burned.From the ashes the inspector pulled out half of a green cheque book, and behind the door he found the other half of the broken cane, which proved his suspicions.

A visit to the bank showed that thousands of pounds lay in Hyde’s account, and the inspector felt certain of success: money was life to the man, and he would surely come to claim it.But Hyde was not easy to find, for he had few friends, no family that could be traced and no photograph, and the few who had seen him agreed on only one thing: the haunting sense of deformity in his looks.