"That's what throws you all off the scent.

But I maintain that he is not cunning, not practised, and probably this was his first crime! The supposition that it was a calculated crime and a cunning criminal doesn't work.

Suppose him to have been inexperienced, and it's clear that it was only a chance that saved him--and chance may do anything.

Why, he did not foresee obstacles, perhaps! And how did he set to work?
He took jewels worth ten or twenty roubles, stuffing his pockets with them, ransacked the old woman's trunks, her rags--and they found fifteen hundred roubles, besides notes, in a box in the top drawer of the chest! He did not know how to rob; he could only murder.

It was his first crime, I assure you, his first crime; he lost his head.