The Brothers Karamazov

In the next room, with the girls, there also sat our young district attorney, Nikolai Parfenovich Nelyudov, who had come to our town from Petersburg only two months earlier. Afterwards everyone talked of it and even marveled that all these persons should have come together as if on purpose, on the evening of the “crime,” in the house of the executive authority. Yet it was a perfectly simple thing and happened quite naturally: it was the second day that Ippolit Kirillovich’s wife had had a toothache, and he absolutely had to flee somewhere from her groaning; as for the doctor, by his very nature he could do nothing of an evening but play cards. And Nikolai Parfenovich Nelyudov had already been planning for three days to visit Mikhail Makarovich that evening, inadvertently, so to speak, in order suddenly and perfidiously to startle the older girl, Olga Mikhailovna, with the fact that he knew her secret, that he knew it was her birthday and that she had decided purposely to conceal it from our society, so as not to have to invite people for dancing. Much laughter was in store, much hinting at her age, that she was supposedly afraid to reveal it, that he, now being in possession of her secret, would tell everyone tomorrow, and so on and so forth. The dear young man was very naughty in this respect; our ladies in fact called him a naughty boy, and he seemed to like it very much. However, he was of quite good society, good family, good upbringing, and good feelings, a bon vivant but quite an innocent one, and always proper. Physically, he was short and of weak, delicate constitution. Several extremely large rings always flashed on his thin and pale fingers. When performing his duties, he became remarkably solemn, as though he conceived of his significance and responsibility as sacred. He was especially good at throwing murderers and other low-class criminals off guard in interrogations, and actually aroused in them, if not respect for himself, at least a certain astonishment.

When Pyotr Ilyich entered the commissioner’s house, he was simply astounded: he suddenly saw that they knew everything already. Indeed, they had abandoned their cards, they all stood arguing, and even Nikolai Parfenovich came running from the young ladies with a most pugnacious and impetuous look on his face. Pyotr Ilyich was met with the astounding news that old Fyodor Pavlovich had really and truly been murdered in his house that evening, murdered and robbed. It had been learned just a moment before, in the following way.