When he was engaged in his official duties, he always became extraordinarily grave, as though realising his position and the sanctity of the obligations laid upon him.
He had a special gift for mystifying murderers and other criminals of the peasant class during interrogation, and if he did not win their respect, he certainly succeeded in arousing their wonder.
Pyotr Ilyitch was simply dumbfounded when he went into the police captain's. He saw instantly that everyone knew.
They had positively thrown down their cards, all were standing up and talking. Even Nikolay Parfenovitch had left the young ladies and run in, looking strenuous and ready for action.
Pyotr Ilyitch was met with the astounding news that old Fyodor Pavlovitch really had been murdered that evening in his own house, murdered and robbed.
The news had only just reached them in the following manner:
Marfa Ignatyevna, the wife of old Grigory, who had been knocked senseless near the fence, was sleeping soundly in her bed and might well have slept till morning after the draught she had taken.
But, all of a sudden she waked up, no doubt roused by a fearful epileptic scream from Smerdyakov, who was lying in the next room unconscious. That scream always preceded his fits, and always terrified and upset Marfa Ignatyevna.
She could never get accustomed to it.
She jumped up and ran half-awake to Smerdyakov's room.
But it was dark there, and she could only hear the invalid beginning to gasp and struggle.
Then Marfa Ignatyevna herself screamed out and was going to call her husband, but suddenly realised that when she had got up, he was not beside her in bed.
She ran back to the bedstead and began groping with her hands, but the bed was really empty.
Then he must have gone out where?
She ran to the steps and timidly called him.
She got no answer, of course, but she caught the sound of groans far away in the garden in the darkness.
She listened. The groans were repeated, and it was evident they came from the garden.
"Good Lord! just as it was with Lizaveta Smerdyashtchaya!" she thought distractedly.
She went timidly down the steps and saw that the gate into the garden was open.
"He must be out there, poor dear," she thought. She went up to the gate and all at once she distinctly heard Grigory calling her by name, Marfa! Marfa!" in a weak, moaning, dreadful voice.
"Lord, preserve us from harm!" Marfa Ignatyevna murmured, and ran towards the voice, and that was how she found Grigory.
But she found him not by the fence where he had been knocked down, but about twenty paces off.
It appeared later, that he had crawled away on coming to himself, and probably had been a long time getting so far, losing consciousness several times.
She noticed at once that he was covered with blood, and screamed at the top of her voice.
Grigory was muttering incoherently:
"He has murdered... his father murdered.... Why scream, silly... run... fetch someone..." But Marfa continued screaming, and seeing that her master's window was open and that there was a candle alight in the window, she ran there and began calling Fyodor Pavlovitch.
But peeping in at the window, she saw a fearful sight. Her master was lying on his back, motionless, on the floor.
His light-coloured dressing-gown and white shirt were soaked with blood.
The candle on the table brightly lighted up the blood and the motionless dead face of Fyodor Pavlovitch.
Terror-stricken, Marfa rushed away from the window, ran out of the garden, drew the bolt of the big gate and ran headlong by the back way to the neighbour, Marya Konndratyevna.
Both mother and daughter were asleep, but they waked up at Marfa's desperate and persistent screaming and knocking at the shutter.
Marfa, shrieking and screaming incoherently, managed to tell them the main fact, and to beg for assistance.
It happened that Foma had come back from his wanderings and was staying the night with them.
They got him up immediately and all three ran to the scene of the crime.
On the way, Marya Kondratyevna remembered that at about eight o'clock she heard a dreadful scream from their garden, and this was no doubt Grigory's scream, "Parricide!" uttered when he caught hold of Mitya's leg.
"Some one person screamed out and then was silent," Marya Kondratyevna explained as she ran.
Running to the place where Grigory lay, the two women with the help of Foma carried him to the lodge.
They lighted a candle and saw that Smerdyakov was no better, that he was writhing in convulsions, his eyes fixed in a squint, and that foam was flowing from his lips.
They moistened Grigory's forehead with water mixed with vinager, and the water revived him at once. He asked immediately:
"Is the master murdered?"
Then Foma and both the women ran to the house and saw this time that not only the window, but also the door into the garden was wide open, though Fyodor Pavlovitch had for the last week locked himself in every night and did not allow even Grigory to come in on any pretext.
Seeing that door open, they were afraid to go in to Fyodor Pavlovitch "for fear anything should happen afterwards."
And when they returned to Grigory, the old man told them to go straight to the police captain.
Marya Kondratyevna ran there and gave the alarm to the whole party at the police captain's.
She arrived only five minutes before Pyotr Ilyitch, so that his story came, not as his own surmise and theory, but as the direct conformation by a witness, of the theory held by all, as to the identity of the criminal (a theory he had in the bottom of his heart refused to believe till that moment).
It was resolved to act with energy.
The deputy police inspector of the town was commissioned to take four witnesses, to enter Fyodor Pavlovitch's house and there to open an inquiry on the spot, according to the regular forms, which I will not go into here.
The district doctor, a zealous man, new to his work, almost insisted on accompanying the police captain, the prosecutor, and the investigating lawyer.
I will note briefly that Fyodor Pavlovitch was found to be quite dead, with his skull battered in. But with what? Most likely with the same weapon with which Grigory had been attacked.
And immediately that weapon was found, Grigory, to whom all possible medical assistance was at once given, described in a weak and breaking voice how he had been knocked down.