“The old man!” Mitya cried in a frenzy, “the old man and his blood...! I un-der-stand!”

And as if cut down, he fell more than sat on a chair standing nearby.

“You understand? He understands! Parricide and monster, your old father’s blood cries out against you!” the old district police commissioner suddenly roared, going up to Mitya. He was beside himself, turned purple, and was shaking all over.

“But this is impossible!” cried the short young man. “Mikhail Makarich, Mikhail Makarich! Not like that, not like that, sir...! I ask you to allow me to speak alone ... I would never have expected such an episode from you...”

“But this is delirium, gentlemen, delirium!” the police commissioner kept exclaiming. “Look at him: in the middle of the night, with a disreputable wench, covered with his father’s blood ... Delirium! Delirium!”

“I beg you as strongly as I can, dear Mikhail Makarich, to restrain your feelings for the moment,” the deputy prosecutor whispered rapidly to the old man, “otherwise I shall have to resort to...”

But the short attorney did not let him finish; he turned to Mitya and firmly, loudly, and gravely declared:

“Retired Lieutenant Karamazov, sir, it is my duty to inform you that you are charged with the murder of your father, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, which took place this night ...”

He said something more, and the prosecutor, too, seemed to add something, but Mitya, though he listened, no longer understood them. With wild eyes he stared around at them all . . .

BOOK IX. THE PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION

Chapter 1: The Start of the Official Perkhotin’s Career

Pyotr Ilyich Perkhotin, whom we left knocking with all his might at the well-locked gates of the widow Morozov’s house, in the end, of course, was finally successful. Hearing such furious knocking at the gate, Fenya, who had been so frightened two hours before, and who was still too excited and “thinking” too much to dare go to bed, became frightened once more almost to the point of hysterics: she fancied that it was Dmitri Fyodorovich knocking again (though she herself had seen him drive off), because no one else but he would knock so ‘boldly.” She rushed to the awakened porter, who had heard the knocking and was already on his way to the gate, and began begging him not to open. But the porter made inquiries of the person who was knocking, and learning who he was, and that he wanted to see Fedosya Markovna on a very important matter, finally decided to open the gates for him. Going to the same kitchen with Fedosya Markovna—and she “on account of her doubts” prevailed upon Pyotr Ilyich to allow the porter to come with them—Pyotr Ilyich started questioning her and at once hit upon the most important fact: namely, that Dmitri Fyodorovich, as he ran off to look for Grushenka, had snatched the pestle from the mortar, and returned later without the pestle but with his hands covered with blood: “And the blood was still dripping, it kept dripping and dripping!” Fenya exclaimed, her distraught imagination apparently having invented this horrible detail. But Pyotr Ilyich had also seen those bloody hands himself, though the blood was not dripping, and had himself helped to wash them, and the question was not how soon the blood had dried, but where exactly Dmitri Fyodorovich had run with the pestle—that is, was it certain he had gone to Fyodor Pavlovich’s, and what might be the grounds for such a positive inference? Perkhotin thoroughly emphasized this point, and though he did not find out anything definite as a result, he still became almost convinced that Dmitri Fyodorovich could not have run anywhere else but to his parent’s house, and that, consequently, something must have happened there. “And when he came back,” Fenya added excitedly, “and I told him everything, I began asking him: ‘Dmitri Fyodorovich, my dear, why are your hands covered with blood?’ and he answered me that it was human blood, and that he had just killed a man—he simply admitted it, he simply confessed it all to me, and suddenly ran out like a madman. I sat down and started thinking: where has he run off to like a madman? He’ll go to Mokroye, I was thinking, and kill my mistress there. So I ran out to go to his place and beg him not to kill my mistress, but at Plotnikov’s shop I saw that he was already leaving and that his hands weren’t covered with blood anymore.” (Fenya had noticed this and remembered it.) The old woman, Fenya’s grandmother, confirmed all her granddaughter’s statements as far as she could. Having asked a few more questions, Pyotr Ilyich left the house even more troubled and worried than when he had entered it.

One would think that the most immediate and direct thing for him to do now would be to go to Fyodor Pavlovich’s house and find out if anything had happened, and, if so, what exactly, and being convinced beyond any doubt, only then to go to the police commissioner, as Pyotr Ilyich had firmly resolved to do. But the night was dark, the gates of Fyodor Pavlovich’s house were strong, he would have to knock again, and he was only distantly acquainted with Fyodor Pavlovich—and so he would have to keep knocking until he was heard and the gates were opened, and what if suddenly nothing had happened at all, and a jeering Fyodor Pavlovich were to go all over town tomorrow telling jokes about how a stranger, the official Perkhotin, had forced his way into his house at midnight in order to find out if anyone had murdered him. A scandal! And there was nothing in the world Pyotr Ilyich feared more than a scandal. Nevertheless he was moved by so strong a feeling that, having angrily stamped his foot on the ground and given himself another scolding, he at once rushed on his way again, not to Fyodor Pavlovich’s now, but to Madame Khokhlakov’s. If she, he thought, would answer just one question: whether or not she had given Dmitri Fyodorovich three thousand at such and such a time, then, in case the answer was negative, he would go straight to the police commissioner, without going to Fyodor Pavlovich; otherwise he would put everything off until tomorrow and go back home. Here, of course, it is immediately obvious that the young man’s decision to go at night, at almost eleven o’clock, to the house of a society lady who was a complete stranger to him, and perhaps get her out of bed, in order to ask her an—under the circumstances—astonishing question, was perhaps much more likely to cause a scandal than going to Fyodor Pavlovich. But it sometimes happens that way—especially in such cases—with the decisions of the most precise and phlegmatic people. And at the moment Pyotr Ilyich was far from phlegmatic. He remembered afterwards all his life how the irresistible anxiety that gradually took possession of him finally became so painful that it carried him along even against his will. Naturally, he kept scolding himself all the way, in any case, for going to this lady, but “I’ll go through with it, I’ll go through with it!” he repeated for the tenth time, clenching his teeth, and he did as he intended—he went through with it.

It was exactly eleven o’clock when he came to Madame Khokhlakov’s house. He was promptly let into the yard, but to his question: “Is the lady asleep, or has she not gone to bed yet?” the porter could give no precise answer, beyond saying that at that hour people usually go to bed. “Ask to be announced upstairs; if the lady wants to receive you, she will; if she won’t—she won’t.” Pyotr Ilyich went up to the door, but there things became more difficult. The lackey did not want to announce him, and finally called the maid. Pyotr Ilyich politely but insistently asked her to inform the lady that a town official, Perkhotin, had come on special business, and were the business not so important, he would not have ventured to come—”inform her precisely, precisely in those words,” he asked the maid. She left. He stood waiting in the front hall. Madame Khokhlakov, though not yet asleep, had already retired to her bedroom. She had been upset since Mitya’s visit and now anticipated that she would not get through the night without the migraine that was usual for her in such cases. On hearing the maid’s report, she was surprised, and yet she irritably told her to refuse, though the unexpected visit at such an hour of a “town official” quite unknown to her greatly piqued her woman’s curiosity. But this time Pyotr Ilyich was stubborn as a mule: hearing the refusal, he once again asked the maid very insistently to inform her mistress and tell her precisely “in these very words” that he had come “on extremely important business, and that the lady herself might regret it later if she did not receive him now.” “It was like throwing myself off a mountain,” as he afterwards recounted. The maid, having looked him over in surprise, went to announce him again. Madame Khokhlakov was amazed, thought for a moment, inquired about his appearance, and learned that “he was very properly dressed, young, and so polite.” Let us note parenthetically and in passing that Pyotr Ilyich was quite a handsome young man, and was aware of it himself. Madame Khokhlakov decided to come out. She was already in her dressing gown and slippers, but she threw a black shawl over her shoulders. “The official” was shown into the drawing room, the very room where she had just recently received Mitya. The hostess came to meet her visitor with a sternly inquiring look and, without inviting him to sit down, began straight off with a question: “What is it you want?”