10 The Brothers Karamazovand getting no news, he’d be sure to come and climb over
the fence, as he used to, and do something.’
‘And if he hadn’t come?’
‘Then nothing would have happened. I should never have
brought myself to it without him.’
‘All right, all right. speak more intelligibly, don’t hurry;
above all, don’t leave anything out!’
‘I expected him to kill Fyodor Pavlovitch. I thought that
was certain, for I had prepared him for it... during the last
few days.... He knew about the knocks, that was the chief
thing. With his suspiciousness and the fury which had been
growing in him all those days, he was bound to get into the
house by means of those taps. That was inevitable, so I was
expecting him.’
‘Stay,’ Ivan interrupted; ‘if he had killed him, he would
have taken the money and carried it away; you must have
considered that. What would you have got by it afterwards?
I don’t see.’ 0 ‘But he would never have found the money.
That was only what I told him, that the money was under
the mattress. But that wasn’t true. It had been lying in a
box. And afterwards I suggested to Fyodor Pavlovitch, as
I was the only person he trusted, to hide the envelope with
the notes in the corner behind the ikons, for no one would
have guessed that place, especially if they came in a hurry.
So that’s where the envelope lay, in the corner behind the
ikons. It would have been absurd to keep it under the mat-
tress; the box, anyway, could be locked. But all believe it was
under the mattress. A stupid thing to believe. So if Dmitri
Fyodorovitch had committed the murder, finding nothing,