The Brothers Karamazov

“Let us lay aside psychology, gentlemen, let us lay aside medicine, let us lay aside even logic itself, let us turn just to the facts, simply to the facts alone, and let us see what the facts will tell us. Smerdyakov killed him, but how? Alone or together with the defendant? Let us first consider the first alternative— that is, that Smerdyakov was working alone. Of course, if he did kill him, it was with some object, for some sort of profit. But, not having even the shadow of a motive for murder such as the defendant had—that is, hatred, jealousy, and so on and so forth—Smerdyakov would undoubtedly have killed only for the sake of money, in order to appropriate precisely the three thousand roubles he had seen his master put into the envelope. And so, having planned the murder, he informs another person beforehand—a highly interested person, moreover, namely, the defendant—of all the circumstances to do with the money and the signals: where the envelope lay, what exactly was written on it, how it was tied, and above all, above all, he tells him about these ‘signals’ by which one can get into his master’s house. Why does he do it? To betray himself straight off? Or so as to have a rival, who perhaps will want to get in and acquire the envelope himself? No, I shall be told, he did it out of fear. But how could that be? A man who did not shrink from planning such a fearless and beastly thing and then carrying it out, gives away information that he alone in the whole world knows, and that, if he had only kept silent about it, no one in the whole world would have found out? No, however cowardly the man might be, if he were planning such a thing, he would never tell anyone about the envelope and the signals, for that would mean giving himself away beforehand. He would deliberately invent something, some lie or other, if he absolutely had to give information, but he would be silent about that! On the contrary, I repeat, if he kept silent about the money at least, and then went and killed and appropriated the money for himself, no one in the whole world would in any case ever be able to accuse him of murder for the sake of robbery, because no one but he would have seen the money, no one else would have known it was there in the house. Even if he were accused, it would inevitably be thought that he had killed from some other motive. But since no one ever noticed any such motive in him before, and everyone saw, on the contrary, that he was loved by his master and honored with his trust, then of course he would be the last to be suspected, and the one to be suspected would be the one who had such motives, who himself shouted that he had such motives, who did not conceal them, who revealed them to everyone, in short, the one to be suspected would be the murdered man’s son, Dmitri Fyodorovich. Smerdyakov would have committed the murder and robbery, and the son would be accused of it—surely this would be advantageous for Smerdyakov, the murderer? Well, and it is this son Dmitri that Smerdyakov, having planned the murder, tells beforehand about the money, the envelope, and the signals—how clear, how logical it is!

“The day of the murder planned by Smerdyakov comes, and so he goes tumbling into the cellar, shamming an attack of the falling sickness—what for? But, of course, so that first of all the servant Grigory, who was planning his treatment, seeing that there was absolutely no one to watch the house, would perhaps postpone his treatment and stand guard himself. Second, naturally, so that the master himself, seeing that no one was on guard, and being terribly afraid of his son’s coming, which he did not conceal, would be twice as mistrustful and cautious. Finally, and above all, so that of course he, Smerdyakov, brought down by the fit, would at once be transferred from the kitchen, where he always slept apart from everyone and where he could come and go as he pleased, to the other end of the cottage, to Grigory’s little room, behind the partition, three steps away from their own bed, as had always been done from time immemorial whenever he was brought down by the sickness, on the orders of his master and the tenderhearted Marfa Ignatievna. Of course, lying there behind the partition, he would most likely start groaning, in order to show himself truly sick, thereby waking them up throughout the night (as he did, according to the evidence of Grigory and his wife)—and all that, all that to make it more convenient for himself to get up suddenly and then kill his master!