Porfiry lights a cigarette, jokes that everything is relative, admits he entered the flat while the door was open, and says he has come to have it out and explain how suspicion grew.
He retraces the case with unsettling candor: rumours, the pledge notes, the office scene, the journal article read with literary admiration, sleepless pride and despair in youth, the room searched umsonst while Raskolnikov lay ill, Razumihin and Zametov stirred on purpose, the restaurant cry I killed her, the hidden stone in the kitchen garden, bell-ringing, walking beside the workman who called him murderer, and Nikolay in the next room. He calls his tricks not malicious and says psychology can be taken two ways until a little fact appears. Nikolay is a fantastic peasant who wants to take his suffering; Porfiry expects him to abjure his evidence. Then the turn: Nikolay doesn’t come in. This is a modern theorist who jumped like from a bell tower, forgot the door, hid money under a stone, and returned half delirious to hear the bell again.
Raskolnikov asks who the murderer is. Porfiry answers softly: You are the murderer. Denial, ten minutes’ silence, lip twitch noted, old tricks again. Raskolnikov whispers it was not he who murdered her; Porfiry whispers back it was only he. Porfiry is already convinced, will arrest soon, yet says direct arrest is not to his interest: confrontation with the drunken painter would collapse, psychology alone is thin, and he has a little fact Providence sent but will not name. He offers a third reason: surrender and confess for lighter sentence while Nikolay muddles the case and aberration can be argued. Raskolnikov refuses; he doesn’t care about lessening the sentence.
Porfiry pleads like a preacher: don’t disdain life, seek God, suffer, smile at the torturer if you find faith, be the sun, Schiller flattery confessed, fresh air three times echoing Svidrigailov. He grants two days to walk about, says Raskolnikov won’t run away, warns that prison will bring confession of itself, and asks that if suicide tempts him he leave a note mentioning the stone. Raskolnikov insists he has admitted nothing, remembers nothing confessed, and flees after Porfiry leaves. Raskolnikov had feared Porfiry believed him innocent. The openness is worse. Porfiry leaves him unarrested, with time to come of himself, and the room is suddenly too still.
