Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

A year later, another crime is committed by Mr. Hyde, this time even more hideous. A maid goes to bed in a house alone, and, as the moon shines, she sits by the window and falls into a kind of dream as she gazes and becomes very emotional looking at the beauty of the world and its creatures. She watches a meeting between two men down below, one beautiful and elderly, the other a small, less noticeable gentleman. They meet in the lane as if talking to each other about directions.

The light seems to make the old man look almost heavenly and the maid focuses on him, but then notices that the other man is Mr. Hyde, who had visited her master once. She instinctively doesn’t like him. He is listening impatiently to the old man for a while but then suddenly explodes with anger and attacks the old man with his heavy cane, killing him, and tramples his body. The maid faints. When she comes to, the murderer has disappeared but the victim is still lying in the lane along with half of the cane, a purse of money, and a letter addressed to Mr. Utterson.

The police bring the letter in the morning to Mr. Utterson and he announces very solemnly that he will not say anything else until he has seen the body. When he is brought to see it, he recognizes the body as belonging to Sir Danvers Carew. The policeman on duty is shocked – he knows that the murder of such a high-class figure will cause sensation.

The policeman gives the maid’s description of the murderer and asks Mr. Utterson whether he has any clue who it could be. Now seeing the broken stick, Utterson has no doubt that Hyde is the culprit. The policeman confirms that the maid called Hyde small and wicked-looking. Mr. Utterson offers to show the police to Mr. Hyde’s address. They travel through the foggy early morning. The colors of the sky move and shift, one place is dark, the next quite bright. Utterson reflects that as they approach Hyde’s residence, the strange light gives the place an awful atmosphere. It is so nightmarish that even the policeman appears frightened.

Hyde’s street comes into view. It is an odd collection of establishments, including a gin palace. The fog settles in and soon they see only the house in question. They are greeted at the door by an old woman with a wicked-looking expression, who tells them that Mr. Hyde arrived home very late but went out again almost immediately. But she insists that this is normal behavior for her master, who is often away for months at a time.

The policeman requests to search Hyde’s rooms. The old lady’s face is filled with “odious joy” as she expresses her interest that Hyde is in trouble. She lets the men in to look. The rooms are mostly empty. Hyde uses only a few of them, and these are very well-kept, with nice furniture and decoration, including a painting given to Hyde by Dr. Jekyll. But the rooms also looked like they had been recently ransacked and in the spilled ashes of the fire, the policeman detects the remains of Hyde’s checkbook and the other half of the cane.

They take the book to the bank and are pleased to find that Hyde has thousands of pounds to his credit. Utterson declares that they will surely catch him; all they have to do is wait for him at the bank. But Hyde does not appear, and since he has been scarcely seen, they do not have much with which to identify him. The descriptions they gather of Hyde only have one sure detail, his unexplained deformed appearance.