Part 5, Chapter 3 — the frame-up exposed

Luzhin enters the flat with calm official authority. He carries a small notebook. He apologizes for the interruption and asks the room's indulgence for a delicate matter. Earlier today, he says, a young woman visited him on charitable business; following her departure he discovered a hundred-rouble note missing from his open pocketbook; he is reluctantly forced to ask her, in the company of these witnesses, to consent to a search. Sonya, white-faced, does not at first grasp what is being said. When she does she stands and offers to be searched. She turns out her pockets. A folded hundred-rouble note falls from the pocket of her dress. Katerina Ivanovna throws herself on Sonya. Amalia Ivanovna shouts. Luzhin prepares to summon the police.

Lebezyatnikov has been in a corner. He stands up. He says, in his thin clear voice, that there is no theft. He himself, standing by the door as Sonya was leaving Luzhin's lodgings, had seen Luzhin slip a folded note into the side pocket of her dress. He had not understood at the time what he was seeing. He understands now. He gives the room dates, times, the position of the door. He says it calmly. He is no longer comic.

Raskolnikov, from his corner, supplies the missing piece. He tells the assembled lodgers about the broken engagement, about Luzhin's threats, about the obvious motive: to discredit Raskolnikov's family by exposing his connection to a "thief." The frame is publicly destroyed. Luzhin, blustering at first, then white, then silent, walks out without another word. Sonya stands in the middle of the room shaking. Katerina Ivanovna, cheated of even this, turns on Amalia Ivanovna in screaming rage. The landlady evicts the family on the spot. Katerina Ivanovna takes the children, the funeral dishes still on the table, and goes down into the street.