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The Carew murder

one night in London, nearly a year later, a servant girl was sitting at her bedroom window, looking out at the moonlit street. She saw a1 tall, handsome old man with white hair coming along the street, and a shorter, younger man walking towards him. The old man spoke politely to the younger one. He seemed, the girl said later, to be asking his way. Then the girl looked more closely at the younger man and recognized him.

‘It was Mr Hyde,’ she said later. ‘He once visited my master.’

Mr Hyde, the girl said, was carrying a heavy stick. He was playing with it impatiently as he listened to the old man. Then suddenly he seemed to explode with anger.

‘He was like a madman,’ the servant girl said. ‘He shook his stick at the old man, who stepped back in surprise. Then he hit the old man violently with the stick and knocked him to the ground. He beat the helpless body again and again. I could hear the bones breaking … It was so terrible that I began to feel ill. Then everything went black and I don’t remember any more.’ It was two o’clock in the morning before she was conscious again, and able to call the police. The murderer had disappeared, but the dead man was still lying on the ground with the murder weapon beside him. The stick had broken in the middle, and one half still lay beside the murdered man. The police decided that the murderer had carried away the other half. A gold watch and a purse were found in the dead man’s pockets, but no cards or papers — except a letter addressed to Mr Utterson.

A policeman brought this letter to the lawyer the next morning. Together they drove to the police station where the body had been taken.

A police inspector showed him the body.

‘Yes, I recognize him,’ said Mr Utterson heavily. ‘He is Sir Danvers Carew.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said the inspector. ‘And do you recognize this?’ He showed Mr Utterson the broken stick and told him the servant girl’s story.

Mr Utterson knew the stick at once. ‘That’s Henry Jekyll’s stick!’ he said to himself. ‘I gave it to him long ago-’

‘Is this Hyde a short, evil-looking man?’ he asked.

‘That’s how the servant girl described him, sir,’ agreed the inspector.

‘Come with me,’ said Mr Utterson to the inspector. ‘I think I know where he lives.’

Mr Utterson led him to the address on Mr Hyde’s visiting card. It was in a poor part of London, in a dirty street full of cheap bars and eating-houses. This was the home of Henry Jekyll’s favourite friend — the man who would inherit Jekyll’s quarter of a million pounds.

An old servant opened the door. Under her silvery hair was a smooth face with a false smile and evil eyes, but she was polite enough.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Mr Hyde lives here. But he’s not at home. My master came in very late last night. He left again after only an hour.’ ‘Was that unusual?’ asked the inspector.

‘Not at all,’ replied the servant. ‘He’s often away, and frequently stays away for months at a time.’

‘We would like to see his flat,’ said Mr Utterson.

‘Oh, I can’t do that, sir—’ began the servant.

‘This gentleman is a police inspector,’ said Mr Utterson.

‘Ah!’ said the servant, looking unnaturally pleased about it, ‘Mr Hyde’s in trouble! What’s he done?’

Mr Utterson and the inspector looked at each other. ‘He doesn’t seem a very popular person,’ said the inspector. He turned to the servant. ‘Now please let us in and we’ll have a look around.’ Mr Hyde had only two rooms in the house. These were extremely comfortable and in excellent taste, with beauti¬ful pictures on the walls and rich carpets on the floor. Everything was wildly untidy, however, and the fireplace was full of half-burnt papers. Among these the detective found part of a cheque book. He also found the other half of the murder weapon.

‘Excellent!’ he said. ‘Now let’s visit the bank and see if they recognize this cheque book.’

Sure enough, the bank heid several thousand pounds in an account in the name of fedward Hyde.

‘We’ve got him now, sir,’ said the inspector. ‘We’ve got the murder weapon, and we’ve got his cheque book. Now we only need his description on the “Wanted” notices.’ This was not so easy. There were no photographs of the wanted man and no two people could agree about his appearance. They all agreed on one thing, however. ‘An evil man, sir,’ the servant girl said. ‘You could see it in his face.’