Here again approving chuckles came from the public, all directed at the prosecutor. I shall not give the entire speech of the defense attorney in detail, but shall only take some parts of it, some of its most salient points.
Chapter 11:
There Was No Money. There Was No Robbery
There was one point that even struck everyone in the defense attorney’s speech—namely, his complete denial of the existence of the fatal three thousand roubles, and thus also of the possibility of their robbery.
“Gentlemen of the jury,” the defense attorney began, “one most characteristic peculiarity will strike any fresh and unprejudiced person in this case— namely, the charge of robbery, and at the same time the complete impossibility of pointing in fact to what precisely was robbed. Money, they say, was robbed—namely, three thousand roubles—but whether this money actually existed, nobody knows. Consider: first of all, how did we learn of the three thousand, and who actually saw it? The only one who saw it and pointed out that it was wrapped in the envelope with the inscription was the servant Smerdyakov. He told this information to the defendant and to his brother Ivan Fyodorovich still prior to the catastrophe. It was also made known to Miss Svetlov. Yet none of these three persons saw the money, again only Smerdyakov saw it, but here the question naturally arises: if the money really existed and Smerdyakov saw it, when was the last time he saw it? And what if his master took the money from under the bed and put it back in the box without telling him? Notice, according to Smerdyakov the money was under the bed, under the mattress; the defendant would have had to pull it from under the mattress, and yet the bed was not rumpled at all, that has been carefully noted in the record. How could the defendant leave the bed entirely unrumpled, and, moreover, not stain with his still bloody hands the fresh, fine bed linen that had just been put on it purposely for the occasion? But, you will say, what about the envelope on the floor? It is worth saying a few words about this envelope. I was even somewhat surprised just now: the highly talented prosecutor, when he began speaking of this envelope, suddenly declared of it himself—do you hear, gentlemen, himself—namely, in that part of his speech where he points out the absurdity of the suggestion that Smerdyakov was the murderer: ‘Were it not for this envelope, had it not been left on the floor as evidence, had the robber taken it with him, no one in the whole world would have learned that the envelope existed, or the money inside it, and that the defendant had therefore robbed the money.’ Thus it is solely because of this torn scrap of paper with the inscription on it, as even the prosecutor himself admits, that the defendant has been accused of robbery, ‘otherwise no one would know that there had been a robbery, nor perhaps that there had been any money either. ‘ But can the simple fact that this scrap of paper was lying on the floor possibly be proof that it once contained money and that this money had been robbed? ‘But,’ they will reply, ‘Smerdyakov did see it in the envelope,’ but when, when did he last see it?—that is my question. I spoke with Smerdyakov, and he told me that he had seen it two days before the catastrophe! But why can I not suppose at least some such circumstance, for example, as that old Fyodor Pavlovich, having locked himself in the house, in impatient, hysterical expectation of his beloved, might suddenly decide, having nothing better to do, to take the envelope and unseal it. ‘An envelope is just an envelope,’ he might think, ‘why should she believe me? If I show her a wad of hundred-rouble bills, that will really work, it will make her mouth water’— and so he tears open the envelope, takes out the money, and throws the envelope on the floor with the imperious gesture of an owner, and certainly not afraid of any evidence. Listen, gentlemen of the jury, could anything be more possible than such a speculation and such a fact? Why is it impossible? But if at least something of the sort could have taken place, then the charge of robbery is wiped out of itself: there was no money, therefore there was no robbery. If the envelope lying on the floor is evidence that there was once money in it, then why may I not assert the opposite—namely, that the envelope was lying on the floor precisely because it no longer contained any money, the money having been taken out of it previously by the owner himself? ‘Yes, but in that case where did the money go, if Fyodor Pavlovich took it out of the envelope himself; it was not found when his house was searched?’ First, part of the money was found in his box, and second, might he not have taken it out that morning, or even the day before, and made some other use of it, paid it out, sent it away, might he not, finally, have changed his thinking, the very basis of his plan of action, and that without finding it at all necessary to report first to Smerdyakov? And if even the mere possibility of such a speculation exists, then how can it be asserted so insistently and so firmly that the defendant committed the murder with the purpose of robbery, and indeed that the robbery existed? We thereby enter the realm of novels. If one asserts that such and such a thing was robbed, one must needs point to this thing, or at least prove indisputably that it existed. Yet no one even saw it. Not long ago in Petersburg a young man, hardly more than a boy, eighteen years old, a little peddler with a tray, went into a money changer’s shop in broad daylight with an axe, and with extraordinary, typical boldness killed the shopkeeper and carried off fifteen hundred roubles. About five hours later he was arrested, and except for fifteen roubles that he had already managed to spend, the entire fifteen hundred was found on him. Moreover, the shop clerk, who returned to the shop after the murder, informed the police not only of the amount stolen, but also of what sort of money it consisted—that is, so many hundred-rouble bills, so many fifties, so many tens, so many gold coins and precisely which ones—and then precisely the same bills and coins were found on the arrested murderer. On top of that there followed a full and frank confession from the murderer that he had killed the man and taken that very money. This, gentlemen of the jury, is what I call evidence! Here I know, I see, I touch the money, and I cannot say that it does not or never did exist. Is that so in the present case? And yet it is a matter of life and death, of a man’s fate. ‘So it is,’ they will say, ‘but that night he was carousing, throwing money away, he was found with fifteen hundred roubles—where did he get it?’ But precisely because only fifteen hundred was found, and the other half of the sum could not be located or discovered anywhere, precisely this fact proves that the money could be quite different, that it may never have been in any envelope at all. By the reckoning of time (quite strict here), it has been determined and demonstrated by the preliminary investigation that the defendant, when he ran from the serving-women to the official Perkhotin, did not stop at his place, and did not stop anywhere else, and afterwards was constantly in the presence of other people, and therefore could not have separated half of the three thousand and hidden it somewhere in town. Precisely this consideration caused the prosecutor to assume that the money was hidden somewhere in a crevice in the village of Mokroye. And why not in the dungeons of the castle of Udolpho, [347] gentlemen? Is it not a fantastic, is it not a novelistic suggestion? And, notice, let just this one assumption—that is, that the money is hidden in Mokroye—be demolished, and the whole charge of robbery is blown sky-high, for where is it, what has become of this fifteen hundred? By what miracle did it disappear, if it has been proved that the defendant did not stop anywhere? And with such novels we are prepared to ruin a human life! They will say: ‘Still, he was unable to explain where he got the fifteen hundred that was found on him; moreover, everyone knew that before that night he had no money.’ But who, in fact, knew that? The defendant has given clear and firm testimony to where he got the money, and, if I may say so, gentlemen of the jury, if I may say so—there neither can nor ever could be anything more plausible than this testimony, nor more in keeping with the defendant’s character and soul. The prosecution liked its own noveclass="underline" a man of weak will, who determined to take the three thousand so shamingly offered him by his fiancée, could not, they say, have separated half of it and sewn it into an amulet; on the contrary, even if he did, he would open it every two days and peel off a hundred, and thus run through it all in a month. Remember, this was all told here in a tone that would brook no objections. Well, and what if the thing went quite differently, what if you have created a novel around quite a different person? That’s just it, you have created a different person! It will perhaps be objected: ‘There are witnesses that the whole three thousand he took from Miss Verkhovtsev was squandered in the village of Mokroye a month before the catastrophe, at one go, to the last kopeck, so that he could not have set aside half of it.’ But who are these witnesses? The degree of trustworthiness of these witnesses has already displayed itself in court. Besides, a crust always looks bigger in another man’s hand. Lastly, not one of these witnesses counted the money himself, they merely judged by eye. Did not the witness Maximov testify that the defendant had twenty thousand in his hands? So, gentlemen of the jury, since psychology has two ends, allow me to apply the other end and let us see if it comes out the same.