Nearly a year later, in October of 18—, London was shaken by a brutal murder.
What made the crime even more shocking was the victim’s high social standing.
The story was simple, but horrifying.
A maid who lived alone in a house near the river went upstairs to bed at about eleven o’clock.
Earlier that night, the sky had been clear. The fog did not arrive until later, and the lane outside her window was brightly lit by the full moon.
The maid was a dreamy young woman. She sat on a small box beneath the window and gazed out at the quiet street.
Years later, whenever she told the story, tears would fill her eyes.
“I have never felt so peaceful,” she would say. “I had never felt so kindly toward the whole world.”
As she sat there, she noticed an elderly gentleman with white hair walking along the lane.
Another man was approaching him from the opposite direction.
He was much smaller.
At first, the maid paid little attention to him.
When the two men came close enough to speak, the older gentleman stopped and politely addressed the smaller man.
From the way he pointed and spoke, it seemed he might simply have been asking for directions.
The moonlight fell directly across his face, and the maid found herself watching him.
There was something gentle and old-fashioned about him.
He looked like a man who had lived a good life and felt completely at peace with himself.
Then the maid looked at the other man.
She suddenly recognized him.
It was Mr. Hyde.
She had seen him once before when he visited her employer, and she had disliked him from the very beginning.
Hyde was holding a heavy cane and idly swinging it in his hand.
He said nothing.
He simply stood there, listening to the older gentleman with growing impatience.
Then, without warning, Hyde exploded with rage.
He stamped his foot.
He raised the cane.
He began shouting and acting like a madman.
The older gentleman stepped backward.
He looked shocked and slightly offended by Hyde’s behavior.
That only seemed to make Hyde more violent.
Suddenly, Hyde lost all control.
He swung the cane and struck the old man to the ground.
Then he attacked him with savage fury.
He stamped on the helpless man and brought the cane down again and again.
The blows were so violent that the maid could hear bones breaking.
The victim’s body was thrown across the road by the force of the attack.
The maid could not bear what she was seeing.
She fainted.
It was two o’clock in the morning when she finally regained consciousness.
She immediately called the police.
The murderer had disappeared long before they arrived.
The victim, however, was still lying in the middle of the lane, horribly mutilated.
The weapon was still partly there.
It had been made from unusually strong, heavy wood, but even it had broken in two under the violence of the attack.
One half had rolled into the gutter.
The other half was almost certainly taken away by the murderer.
The police found a purse and a gold watch on the victim.
There were no cards or papers that could identify him.
There was only one sealed and stamped envelope.
It was addressed to Mr. Utterson.
The envelope was brought to Utterson early the next morning, before he had even left his bed.
The moment he heard what had happened and saw the envelope, his expression became extremely serious.
“I won’t say anything until I’ve seen the body,” he said. “This could be very serious. Please wait while I get dressed.”
He ate breakfast with the same grave expression.
Then he took a cab to the police station, where the body had been taken.
As soon as he entered the room and saw the dead man, he nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “I know him. I’m sorry to say that this is Sir Danvers Carew.”
“Good God, sir!” the officer exclaimed. “Are you sure?”
Then the officer’s expression changed.
The case had suddenly become much more important.
“This is going to cause a great deal of excitement,” he said. “Perhaps you can help us find the man who did it.”
He quickly told Utterson what the maid had witnessed and showed him the broken cane.
Utterson had already been deeply troubled when he heard the name Hyde.
But when he saw the cane, he had no doubt left.
Even though it was broken and badly damaged, he recognized it immediately.
Years ago, he himself had given that cane to Henry Jekyll.
“Is Mr. Hyde a small man?” Utterson asked.
“Very small,” the officer replied. “And the maid says he has a particularly evil-looking face.”
Utterson thought for a moment.
Then he looked up.
“If you’ll come with me in my cab,” he said, “I believe I can take you to his house.”
It was now about nine in the morning.
The first heavy fog of the season had descended over London.
A thick, brown cloud seemed to hang over the entire sky.
But the wind kept tearing the fog apart and pushing it from one street to another.
As the cab slowly moved through London, Utterson saw the city change constantly beneath the shifting fog.
One moment, everything was as dark as late evening.
The next, the fog turned a deep, reddish brown, glowing like the light from some enormous fire.
Then, for a few seconds, the fog would break apart and a pale beam of daylight would appear between the swirling clouds.
The miserable streets of Soho looked even worse under this strange light.
The roads were muddy.
Poorly dressed people hurried through the streets.
The street lamps were still burning because the darkness was so heavy.
To Utterson, the whole neighborhood looked like a place from a nightmare.
His own thoughts were just as dark.
And as he glanced at the police officer sitting beside him, he felt something he rarely experienced.
He felt afraid of the law and the men who represented it.
The cab finally stopped at the address they had been given.
The fog lifted slightly.
Utterson saw a dirty street lined with cheap and unpleasant businesses.
There was a gin shop.
There was a shabby little French restaurant.
There was a shop selling cheap newspapers and inexpensive food.
Ragged children crowded together in doorways.
Women of many different nationalities walked out of the buildings with keys in their hands, stopping for a morning drink.
Then the fog closed in again.
Everything disappeared behind a thick brown curtain.
This was the home of Henry Jekyll’s favorite associate.
The home of a man who was supposedly set to inherit a fortune of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
An old woman with a pale, ivory-colored face and silver hair opened the door.
There was something unpleasant about her face, softened only by the false sweetness of her manners.
“Yes,” she said. “This is Mr. Hyde’s house.”
“Is he at home?” Utterson asked.
“No.”
“When did he leave?”
“He came home very late last night. But he left again less than an hour later.”
“Is that unusual?”
“Not at all. His habits are very irregular. He often disappears for days at a time.”
She paused.
“In fact, I hadn’t seen him for almost two months until yesterday.”
“Very well,” Utterson said. “We would like to see his rooms.”
The woman immediately protested.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
“I think I had better tell you who this gentleman is,” Utterson said. “This is Inspector Newcomen of Scotland Yard.”
A sudden, ugly excitement appeared on the woman’s face.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “He’s in trouble, is he? What has he done?”
Utterson and the inspector exchanged a quick look.
“He doesn’t seem to be a very popular man,” the inspector remarked.
Then he turned to the woman.
“Now, my good woman, let us have a look around.”
The house was otherwise empty except for the old woman.
Hyde had occupied only two rooms.
Yet those rooms were furnished with surprising luxury and good taste.
One cupboard was filled with expensive wine.
The silverware was fine.
The tablecloths and other linens were elegant.
A beautiful painting hung on one of the walls.
Utterson suspected that Jekyll had given it to Hyde, since Jekyll was known to have excellent taste in art.
The carpets were thick and expensive, with pleasant colors.
But the rooms now looked completely different.
Someone had recently searched them in a hurry.
Clothes were scattered across the floor, with their pockets turned inside out.
Drawers had been pulled open.
On the fireplace lay a pile of gray ashes.
It looked as though a large number of papers had been burned.
The inspector searched through the ashes.
He soon found part of a green checkbook that had survived the fire.
The other half of the broken cane was discovered behind the door.
That confirmed the inspector’s suspicions.
He was delighted.
Then they visited the bank.
There they discovered that several thousand pounds were still sitting in the murderer’s account.
The inspector was even more pleased.
“You can count on it, sir,” he told Utterson. “I’ve got him.”
“He must have panicked. Otherwise, he never would have left the cane behind.”
“And burning the checkbook was an even bigger mistake.”
“Money is everything to a man like him.”
“We only need to wait for him at the bank and put up the wanted posters.”
But finding Hyde was not going to be so easy.
Very few people actually knew him.
Even the master of the maid who had witnessed the murder had seen Hyde only twice.
No one could trace his family.
He had never been photographed.
And the few people who had seen him described him in completely different ways, as people often do when trying to describe someone they barely know.
There was, however, one thing they all agreed on.
Whenever people saw Mr. Hyde, they felt something deeply disturbing about him.
They could not explain exactly what was wrong with his appearance.
But everyone sensed the same thing.
There was something deformed about him.
Something that he never openly revealed, yet somehow everyone could feel.