Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Incident of the Letter

Late on the afternoon after the murder, Utterson went to Jekyll’s house, and Poole led him across the yard to the old building at the bottom of the garden, which people called the laboratory.It was the first time the lawyer had been there: he crossed a gloomy lecture theatre, once full of medical students and now full of chemical equipment and packing crates, and climbed the stairs to a door covered in red cloth.Behind it was the doctor’s cabinet, a large room with glass cases, a tall mirror and three dusty windows with iron bars, and there by the fire sat Jekyll, looking deathly sick.

“You have not been mad enough to hide this fellow?” asked Utterson, and Jekyll cried, “I swear to God I will never set eyes on him again. He will never more be heard of.”Then he showed Utterson a letter signed “Edward Hyde”, written in an odd, upright hand, which said that the writer had a sure means of escape and that his benefactor need not worry about him.Jekyll said he had burned the envelope, but that the note had been handed in, not sent by post.

“And now one word more,” said Utterson. “It was Hyde who dictated the terms in your will about that disappearance?” Jekyll, nearly fainting, shut his mouth tight and nodded.“I knew it,” said Utterson. “He meant to murder you.” Jekyll covered his face: “O God, Utterson, what a lesson I have had!”On his way out, Utterson asked Poole about the messenger who had brought a letter that day, but Poole was certain that nothing had come except by post.

So the letter must have come by the laboratory door, or perhaps been written in the cabinet itself, and Utterson walked home with his fears renewed while newsboys shouted, “Shocking murder of an M.P.!”That evening he sat by his fire with Mr. Guest, his head clerk, who was an expert on handwriting, and over a bottle of fine old wine he showed him Hyde’s letter.“Not mad,” said Guest after studying it, “but it is an odd hand.”

Just then a servant brought in a note from Dr. Jekyll inviting Utterson to dinner, and Guest asked if he might see it.He laid the two papers side by side and compared them carefully, and when Utterson asked why, he said, “There’s a rather singular resemblance; the two hands are in many points identical, only differently sloped.”That night Utterson locked the note in his safe, and his blood ran cold: “What! Henry Jekyll forge for a murderer!”