“Well?”

“If you know already,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch hurriedly, his eyes looking as though they would dive into Stavrogin’s soul, “then, of course, we are none of us to blame, above all not you, for it’s such a concatenation⁠ ⁠… such a coincidence of events⁠ ⁠… in brief, you can’t be legally implicated and I’ve rushed here to tell you so beforehand.”

“Have they been burnt? murdered?”