Part 1, Chapter 7 — the murder

Alyona Ivanovna recognizes him through the crack and lets him in. She is alone. He hands her the wrapped pledge — the wooden plank done up to look like a silver case. She turns toward the lamp to untie the string. Her back is to him. He draws the axe out of the loop in his coat and brings it down on the crown of her head with the blunt edge. She makes no sound. She drops. He hits her again to be sure.

He fumbles in her pocket for the keys, opens the iron-bound chest under the bed, grabs items from the top tray — wrapped objects, a gold chain — and stuffs them into his pockets. He has missed, he will later realize, almost all of the actual money. Behind him the door opens. He has forgotten to latch it. Lizaveta has come back early from the market. She walks in, sees her sister, sees Raskolnikov in the doorway with the axe. She does not scream. She does not raise her hand. He runs at her and hits her once across the skull with the sharp edge.

Two visitors of the old woman ring at the door. Raskolnikov stands inside with the axe in his hand, listening to them argue on the landing. They go down to fetch the porter; in the gap he pulls the door shut and goes down the stairs. On the second floor he ducks into the empty apartment the painters had been working in and waits the half-minute it takes for the visitors and the porter to climb past him. He walks down and out of the gate, returns the axe to the porter's lodge, walks home in a daze. By the time he reaches his garret he is shaking, and the fever is already in him.