I nodded and left, again using the rear door to the room, and returned to the front hall, where Mister Utterson was huddled in front of the fire, despite his thick outer garments and the raw heat the fire was giving out. He looked up at me and for a moment I thought he had been crying. I told him what my master had instructed me to tell him.

'I saw Mister Hyde go in by the old dissecting-room door, Poole,' he asked. 'Is that right, when Doctor Jekyll is from home?'

I now knew what had occurred between my master and his friend and it explained both the doctor's agitation and the debilitated state of his visitor. 'Quite right, Mister Utterson, sir,' I replied. 'Mister Hyde has a key.'

'Your master seems to repose a great deal of trust in that young man, Poole.'

'Yes, sir, he does indeed,' I said. 'We have all orders to obey him.' This was stretching the truth a little as the order to obey the strange man had come from me, and not from the doctor himself.

'I do not think I ever met Mister Hyde?' He probed.

'Oh, dear no, sir. He never dines here. Indeed we see very little of him on this side of the house; he mostly comes and goes by the laboratory.'

Utterson nodded, his questions answered, or perhaps his fears confirmed. 'Well, good-night, Poole.'

I bid him a good night in return and shut the door after him as he left.

I thought for a moment about reporting this conversation to my master, but the things I had learnt from Mister Utterson told me that I would be telling him nothing that he didn't already know. Instead, I retired to the kitchen to let him eat his supper in peace. God knew, peace was something he was sorely in need of.