Crime and Punishment — Part II

At dawn after the murders, Raskolnikov wakes in a fever, shivering and confused, and suddenly recalls everything. He inspects his clothes for blood, finds congealed drops and a stained sock and pocket, snips away telltale threads, and hides the stolen trinkets and purse heedlessly behind loose wallpaper, then collapses again.

A pounding at the door from Nastasya and the house porter rouses him with a summons. Terrified it is about the murders, he discovers it orders him to the district police office. Despite dizziness and fear of blurting something out, he dresses, debates destroying the bloody scraps, and goes out into the sweltering street.

At the police station he is jostled through crowded rooms and learns the summons concerns a debt: an old IOU to his landlady, assigned to Tchebarov. Relief floods him. Amid an office scandal involving Luise Ivanovna and the explosive assistant superintendent Ilya Petrovitch, Raskolnikov flares up, then tries to explain his poverty to the amiable superintendent Nikodim Fomitch, before turning numb and indifferent.

As he signs a written undertaking, he is seized by an impulse to confess but overhears Nikodim Fomitch and Ilya Petrovitch debating the pawnbroker’s case: Koch and the student Pestryakov have alibis; the locked then unfastened door suggests the murderer slipped past them. Overwhelmed, Raskolnikov faints, then revives to curt questioning about going out around seven the previous evening.

They dismiss him without detention. Leaving, Raskolnikov’s terror resurges; convinced a search will follow, he hurries home, certain the police suspect him despite their confusion.