When Authority Responds to Crisis — The Brothers Karamazov

Book IX begins not at the crime scene but at Police Captain Makarov's house, where card-players and dancing girls make a little capital of sociability. By chance the prosecutor Ippolit Kirillovitch, the new doctor, and young Nikolay Parfenovitch are there when Marya Kondratyevna bursts in from the Karamazov lodge. Marfa Ignatyevna, woken by Smerdyakov's epileptic scream, finds Grigory not by the fence but twenty paces off, covered in blood, muttering that the master is murdered. She sees Fyodor's body through the lit window and runs for help through the back way while cards still lie on the table.

The search finds the brass pestle on the garden path, the torn empty envelope marked for Grushenka's three thousand, and pink sealing-wax on the floor by the bed. Pyotr Ilyitch arrives with his own account: Mitya loaded pistols before witnesses, spoke of shooting himself at dawn, and grinned that help would come too late. The prosecutor repeats the Olsufyev story of a murderer who curled his hair and carried stolen money openly; formalities delay departure, but Schmertsov is sent ahead in secret to watch Mitya through Trifon Borissovitch.

The main party follows at four in the morning while the doctor stays for post-mortem and to study Smerdyakov's fits, which he declares may not survive the night, congratulated by colleagues as if the servant were a scientific prize.