He looked down at his hands on which there still were marks of blood, and he moved his fingers.
“Why there is blood?… Hm … If this is part of the evidence, it is but poor evidence.… When I lifted up blood-stained Olga I could not help dirtying my hands with blood. I was not wearing gloves.”
“You just told me that when you found your wife all bloody, you called for help.… How is it that nobody heard your cries?”
“I don't know, I was so stunned by the sight of Olia, that I was unable to cry aloud.… Besides, I know nothing.… It is useless for me to try to exculpate myself, and it's not in my principles to do so.”
“You would hardly have shouted.… Having killed your wife, you ran away, and were terribly astonished when you saw people on the clearing.”
“I never noticed your people. I paid no heed to people.”
With this my examination for that day was concluded. After that Urbenin was confined in one of the outhouses on the Count's estate and watched.
XXIX
On the second or third day the Assistant Public Prosecutor, Polugradov, arrived post-haste from the town; he is a man I cannot think of without spoiling my frame of mind. Imagine a tall, lean man, of about thirty, clean shaven, smartly dressed, and with hair curled like a sheep's; his features were thin, but so dry and unexpressive that it was not difficult to guess the emptiness and foppishness of the individual to whom they belonged; his voice was low, sugary, and mawkishly polite.
He arrived early in the morning, with two portmanteaux in a hired calash. First of all he inquired with a very concerned face, complaining affectedly of fatigue, if a room had been prepared for him in the Count's house. By my orders a small but very cosy and light room had been assigned to him, where everything he might need, beginning with a marble washstand, and ending with matches had been arranged.