doubt!  And so you have wounded vanity and unsatisfied passion.  That’s enough to lead to murder.  Two of them are in our hands, but who is the third?  Nikolashka and Psyekov held him.  Who was it smothered him?  Psyekov is timid, easily embarrassed, altogether a coward.  People like Nikolashka are not equal to smothering with a pillow, they set to work with an axe or a mallet. . . .  Some third person must have smothered him, but who?”

Dyukovsky pulled his cap over his eyes, and pondered.  He was silent till the waggonette had driven up to the examining magistrate’s house.

“Eureka!” he said, as he went into the house, and took off his overcoat.  “Eureka, Nikolay Yermolaitch!  I can’t understand how it is it didn’t occur to me before.  Do you know who the third is?”

“Do leave off, please!  There’s supper ready.  Sit down to supper!”

Tchubikov and Dyukovsky sat down to supper.  Dyukovsky poured himself out a wine-glassful of vodka, got up, stretched, and with sparkling eyes, said: 

“Let me tell you then that the third person who collaborated with the scoundrel Psyekov and smothered him was a woman!  Yes!  I am speaking of the murdered man’s sister, Marya Ivanovna!”

Tchubikov coughed over his vodka and fastened his eyes on Dyukovsky.

“Are you . . . not quite right?  Is your head . . . not quite right?  Does it ache?”

“I am quite well.  Very good, suppose I have gone out of my mind, but how do you explain her confusion on our arrival?  How do you explain her refusal to give information?  Admitting that that is trivial—­very good!  All right!—­but think of the terms they were on!  She detested her brother!  She is an Old Believer, he was a profligate, a godless fellow . . . that is what has bred hatred between them!  They say he succeeded in persuading her that he was an angel of Satan!  He used to practise spiritualism in her presence!”

“Well, what then?”

“Don’t you understand?  She’s an Old Believer, she murdered him through fanaticism!  She has not merely slain a wicked man, a profligate, she has freed the world from Antichrist—­and that she fancies is her merit, her religious achievement!  Ah, you don’t know these old maids, these Old Believers!  You should read Dostoevsky!  And what does Lyeskov say . . . and Petchersky!  It’s she, it’s she, I’ll stake my life on it.  She smothered him!  Oh, the fiendish woman!  Wasn’t she, perhaps, standing before the ikons when we went in to put us off the scent?  ‘I’ll stand up and say my prayers,’ she said to herself, ‘they will think I am calm and don’t expect them.’  That’s the method of all novices in crime.  Dear Nikolay Yermolaitch!  My dear man!  Do hand this case over to me!  Let me go through with it to the end!  My dear fellow!  I have begun it, and I will carry it through to the end.”

Tchubikov shook his head and frowned.

“I am equal to sifting difficult cases myself,” he said.  “And it’s your place not to put yourself forward.  Write what is dictated to you, that is your business!”