"The prisoner, running away in the garden in the dark, climbed over the fence, was seized by the servant, and knocked him down with a brass pestle.Then he jumped back into the garden and spent five minutes over the man, trying to discover whether he had killed him or not.And the prosecutor refuses to believe the prisoner's statement that he ran to old Grigory out of pity.'No,' he says, 'such sensibility is impossible at such a moment, that's unnatural; he ran to find out whether the only witness of his crime was dead or alive, and so showed that he had committed the murder, since he would not have run back for any other reason.'
"Here you have psychology; but let us take the same method and apply it to the case the other way round, and our result will be no less probable.The murderer, we are told, leapt down to find out, as a precaution, whether the witness was alive or not, yet he had left in his murdered father's study, as the prosecutor himself argues, an amazing piece of evidence in the shape of a torn envelope, with an inscription that there had been three thousand roubles in it.'If he had carried that envelope away with him, no one in the world would have known of that envelope and of the notes in it, and that the money had been stolen by the prisoner.' Those are the prosecutor's own words.So on one side you see a complete absence of precaution, a man who has lost his head and run away in a fright, leaving that clue on the floor, and two minutes later, when he has killed another man, we are entitled to assume the most heartless and calculating foresight in him.But even admitting this was so, it is psychological subtlety, I suppose, that discerns that under certain circumstances I become as bloodthirsty and keen-sighted as a Caucasian eagle, while at the next I am as timid and blind as a mole.But if Iam so bloodthirsty and cruelly calculating that when I kill a man Ionly run back to find out whether he is alive to witness against me, why should I spend five minutes looking after my victim at the risk of encountering other witnesses? Why soak my handkerchief, wiping the blood off his head so that it may be evidence against me later? If he were so cold-hearted and calculating, why not hit the servant on the head again and again with the same pestle so as to kill him outright and relieve himself of all anxiety about the witness?
"Again, though he ran to see whether the witness was alive, he left another witness on the path, that brass pestle which he had taken from the two women, and which they could always recognise afterwards as theirs, and prove that he had taken it from them.And it is not as though he had forgotten it on the path, dropped it through carelessness or haste, no, he had flung away his weapon, for it was found fifteen paces from where Grigory lay.Why did he do so? just because he was grieved at having killed a man, an old servant; and he flung away the pestle with a curse, as a murderous weapon.That's how it must have been, what other reason could he have had for throwing it so far? And if he was capable of feeling grief and pity at having killed a man, it shows that he was innocent of his father's murder.Had he murdered him, he would never have run to another victim out of pity; then he would have felt differently; his thoughts would have been centred on self-preservation.He would have had none to spare for pity, that is beyond doubt.On the contrary, he would have broken his skull instead of spending five minutes looking after him.
There was room for pity and good-feeling just because his conscience had been clear till then.Here we have a different psychology.Ihave purposely resorted to this method, gentlemen of the jury, to show that you can prove anything by it.It all depends on who makes use of it.Psychology lures even most serious people into romancing, and quite unconsciously.I am speaking of the abuse of psychology, gentlemen."Sounds of approval and laughter, at the expense of the prosecutor, were again audible in the court.I will not repeat the speech in detail; I will only quote some passages from it, some leading points.
Chapter 11
There Was No Money.There Was No RobberyTHERE was one point that struck everyone in Fetyukovitch's speech.
He flatly denied the existence of the fatal three thousand roubles, and consequently, the possibility of their having been stolen.
"Gentlemen of the jury," he began."Every new and unprejudiced observer must be struck by a characteristic peculiarity in the present case, namely, the charge of robbery, and the complete impossibility of proving that there was anything to be stolen.We are told that money was stolen- three thousand roubles but whether those roubles ever existed, nobody knows.Consider, how have we heard of that sum, and who has seen the notes? The only person who saw them, and stated that they had been put in the envelope, was the servant, Smerdyakov.
He had spoken of it to the prisoner and his brother, Ivan Fyodorovitch, before the catastrophe.Madame Svyetlov, too, had been told of it.But not one of these three persons had actually seen the notes, no one but Smerdyakov had seen them.
"Here the question arises, if it's true that they did exist, and that Smerdyakov had seen them, when did he see them for the last time?
What if his master had taken the notes from under his bed and put them back in his cash-box without telling him? Note, that according to Smerdyakov's story the notes were kept under the mattress; the prisoner must have pulled them out, and yet the bed was absolutely unrumpled; that is carefully recorded in the protocol.How could the prisoner have found the notes without disturbing the bed? How could he have helped soiling with his blood-stained hands the fine and spotless linen with which the bed had been purposely made?
"But I shall be asked: What about the envelope on the floor?