that.”
“But what if he did not kill him, but only knocked him down?”
“If he did not kill him, of course, I would not have ventured to take the money, and nothing would have happened. But I calculated that he would beat him senseless, and I should have time to take it then, and then I’d make out to Fyodor Pavlovitch that it was no one but Dmitri Fyodorovitch who had taken the money after beating him.”
“Stop … I am getting mixed. Then it was Dmitri after all who killed him; you only took the money?”
“No, he didn’t kill him. Well, I might as well have told you now that he was the murderer. … But I don’t want to lie to you now, because … because if you really haven’t understood till now, as I see for myself, and are not pretending, so as to throw your guilt on me to my very face, you are still responsible for it all, since you knew of the murder and charged me to do it, and went away knowing all about it. And so I want to prove to your face this evening that you are the only real murderer in the whole affair, and I am not the real murderer, though I did kill him. You are the rightful murderer.”