Marianna and Solomin read this letter in turn. After that she put her portrait and the two letters in her pocket, and stood motionless.
Then Solomin said to her:
'Everything is ready, Marianna; let us go. We must carry out his wishes.'
Marianna approached Nezhdanov, touched his chill brow with her lips, and turning to Solomin said, 'Let us go.'
He took her by the hand, and together they went out of the room.
When a few hours later the police made a descent on the factory, they found of course Nezhdanov—but a corpse. Tatyana had laid the body out decorously, put a white pillow under his head, crossed his arms, and even put a nosegay of flowers on the little table beside him. Pavel, who was primed with all needful instructions, received the police-officers with the profoundest obsequiousness and a sort of derision, so that the latter hardly knew whether to thank him or to arrest him too. He described circumstantially how the suicide had taken place, and regaled them with Gruyère cheese and Madeira; but professed perfect ignorance of the whereabouts at the moment of Vassily Fedotitch and the lady who had been staying there, and confined himself to
244
