XI. Денег не было. Грабежа не было

"Gentlemen of the jury," the counsel began, "in the present case one most characteristic feature strikes any fresh and unprejudiced observer, namely this: a charge of robbery, and at the very same time a complete impossibility of pointing, as a matter of fact, to precisely what was robbed.

Money was robbed, we are told — exactly three thousand — but whether it actually existed, that no one knows.

Consider: in the first place, how did we come to learn that there were three thousand, and who saw it?

Only one man saw it and testified that it had been put up in a packet bearing an inscription — the servant Smerdyakov, and he alone.

It was likewise he who passed this information, before the catastrophe, to the defendant and to his brother Ivan Fyodorovich.

Word of it was given to Madame Svetlova as well.

But none of these three persons ever actually saw the money themselves; again, only Smerdyakov saw it — and here a question arises of its own accord: if it is even true that the money existed and that Smerdyakov saw it, then when did he see it last?

And what if the master had taken this money out from under the mattress and put it back into his strongbox without telling him?

Observe: according to Smerdyakov, the money lay beneath the bedding, under the mattress; the defendant would have had to wrench it out from under the mattress, and yet the bed was not in the least disturbed — and this is carefully recorded in the report.

How could the defendant have left the bed entirely undisturbed and, on top of that, with hands still bloodied, not soiled the freshest, finest bed linen, which had been laid out specially for that very occasion?

But we shall be told: and what of the packet on the floor?

It is precisely this packet that is worth discussing.

A little while ago I was even somewhat astonished: the highly talented prosecutor, once he had begun on this packet, suddenly himself — do you hear, gentlemen, himself — declared, at that very point in his speech where he is pointing out the absurdity of supposing that Smerdyakov was the killer: "Had there been no such packet, had it not been left lying on the floor as evidence, had the robber carried it off with him, then no one in the whole world would ever have known that there was a packet, and money inside it, and that the money, accordingly, had been robbed by the defendant."

And so, by the prosecutor's own admission, it was solely and only this torn scrap of paper with its inscription that served to convict the defendant of robbery — "otherwise no one would have known there had been a robbery, or perhaps that there had even been any money."

But is the mere fact that this scrap was lying about on the floor really proof that money had been in it and that this money was robbed?

"But," they answer, "Smerdyakov did see it in the packet" — yet when, when did he see it last, that is what I am asking?

I spoke with Smerdyakov, and he told me that he had seen it two days before the catastrophe!

But why may I not suppose, for instance, some such circumstance as this: that old Fyodor Pavlovich, locked up at home, in impatient and hysterical expectation of his beloved, suddenly took it into his head, having nothing better to do, to draw out the packet and unseal it: "A packet, she might say, why, she perhaps won't even believe me, but if I show her thirty rainbow notes in a single bundle, that will surely have a stronger effect, it'll make her mouth water," — and so he tears open the envelope, takes out the money, and tosses the envelope to the floor with the masterful hand of a householder who has, of course, no fear of any evidence whatever.

Listen, gentlemen of the jury, is there anything more possible than such a supposition and such a fact?

Why is this impossible?

But surely, if even anything of the sort could have taken place, then the charge of robbery collapses of itself: there was no money, and so, accordingly, there was no robbery.

If the packet lay on the floor as evidence that money had been in it, then why may I not assert the opposite — namely, that the packet was lying about on the floor precisely because there was no longer any money in it, the money having been taken out of it beforehand by the householder himself?

"Yes, but in that case, where did the money go, if Fyodor Pavlovich himself emptied it out of the packet — it was not found in his house when it was searched?"

In the first place, part of the money was found in his strongbox, and in the second place, he might have taken it out that very morning, or even the day before, disposed of it otherwise, paid it out, sent it off, or finally changed his whole intention, his entire plan of action at its very foundation — and all this without in the least finding it necessary to report the matter to Smerdyakov in advance?

And surely, if even the mere possibility of such a supposition exists, then how can one so insistently and so firmly accuse the defendant of having committed the murder for robbery, and that a robbery actually took place?

For in this way we are entering the realm of romances.

For if one asserts that such-and-such a thing has been robbed, then one must point to that thing, or at the very least prove incontrovertibly that it existed.

And yet no one has so much as seen it.

Not long ago in Petersburg a young man, almost a boy, eighteen years old, a petty street-tray peddler, walked in broad daylight with an axe into a money-changer's shop and, with extraordinary, characteristic insolence, killed the proprietor and carried off fifteen hundred roubles in cash.

Some five hours later he was arrested, and on him, apart from the fifteen roubles he had already managed to spend, the whole of that fifteen hundred was found.

Moreover, the shop-clerk, returning to the shop after the murder, informed the police not only of the sum that had been stolen but of precisely what notes it had consisted of — that is, how many rainbow notes there had been, how many blue ones, how many red ones, how many gold coins and of exactly which kind — and lo, upon the arrested murderer those very same notes and coins were found.

On top of all this, there followed the murderer's full and frank confession that he had killed and carried off these very sums.

That, gentlemen of the jury, is what I call evidence!

There I know, I see, I can touch the money, and I cannot say that it does not exist or never existed.

Is that how it stands in the present case?

And yet the matter at hand concerns life and death, the very fate of a man.

"Very well," they will say, "but that same night he was on a spree, throwing money about, and fifteen hundred roubles were found on him — where, then, did he get them?"

But it is precisely because only fifteen hundred were found, while the other half of the sum could not, for all their efforts, be traced or uncovered, that this very thing proves that the money might not have been the same money at all — money that had never been in any packet whatsoever.

By a reckoning of time (and a most rigorous one at that) it was ascertained and proved by the preliminary investigation that the defendant, after running from the servant-girls to the official Perhotin, did not stop at home, nor indeed anywhere, and was thereafter the whole time among people, and so, accordingly, could not have separated half from the three thousand and hidden it somewhere in town.

It is precisely this consideration that gave rise to the prosecutor's supposition that the money is hidden somewhere in a crevice in the village of Mokroye.

Why not in the vaults of the castle of Udolpho, gentlemen?

Now is this not a fantastical, is it not a romantic supposition?

And observe: let this one supposition alone be demolished — namely, that it is hidden at Mokroye — and the whole charge of robbery blows up into the air, for where, where then did this fifteen hundred get to?

By what miracle could it have vanished, if it has been proved that the defendant went nowhere at all?

And with romances of this kind we are ready to destroy a human life!

They will say: "All the same, he was unable to explain where he got this fifteen hundred that was found on him, and besides, everyone knew that until that night he had no money."

But who, exactly, knew this?

But the defendant gave a clear and firm account of where he got the money, and, if you please, gentlemen of the jury, if you please — nothing ever could be, or can be, more probable than this account, and, what is more, more consistent with the character and soul of the defendant.

The prosecution has taken a liking to a novel of its own: a man of weak will who, having brought himself to take the three thousand so shamefully offered him by his betrothed, could not, supposedly, have set apart half of it and sewn it into a little amulet-bag; on the contrary, even had he sewn it up, he would have unstitched it every couple of days and picked out a hundred at a time, and in this way run through the whole of it within a single month.

Recall how all this was set forth in a tone that brooked no objection whatever.