Raskolnikov moves by increments toward his inevitable fate

Part 5 (of 6) of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866, Pevear-Volokansky tr.) ends with an over-the-top dramatic sequence, even by FD standards: After Raskolnikov has his heart-to-heart meeting with the Sonya, ending in his confession to her and her absolution of him, handing him a small makeshift cross that she asks him to hold near to him, they received word from the comical leftist friend (whose personal account absolved S of the accusation that she'd stolen 100 roubles from the odious Luzhin, completely out of character for her - she'd obviously been framed) that S's (step?) mother is on the streets with her three young children, forcing them to sing and dance and begging for pennies (kopecks). S et al. rush out to find the mother hysterical and delirious, talking nonsensically about how she'd been wronged by a general who refused to pay her a widow's pension (the general was correct albeit unfeeling). After some hysterics she collapses, S and R bring her to S's small apartment, where she dies, leaving 3 young orphaned children. Then another figure shows up to speak w/ R: Svidrigailov (sp?), the wealthy man who'd made passes at R's sister and now has been trying to make amends by buying her off (which she refused). This time his plan is to give his money to the orphaned children, an act, it seems of true benevolence; and then he tells R that he knows that R is the murderer. How is this possible? His rented room is adjacent to S's and he'd heard R's confession. So this section ending leaves us w/ a # of questions, not the least of which - and this has not really entered R's consciousness - that another man, the house painter, is being held on a murder charge (in fact, he's confessed to the killings, probably after a brutal interrogation) - so R's silence on this matter makes him guilty of, in a sense, a 3rd killing. He is beginning, it seems, to recognize that he has to unburden himself of this crime, pay the price - years at hard labor, probably in Siberia? - and hope for some kind of Christian redemption (though he has shown little evidence of faith, Sonya is clearly an allegorical figure who can provide him w/ an opportunity for at least partial absolution). Given that we have known from page one who killed the pawnbroker, it's incredible how much tension and drama FD has been able to develop and sustain by concentration on the mental and social status of the killer as he moves by increments toward his inevitable fate.