- The chapter returns to Mr. Verloc, who is standing in his shop following the departure of Chief Inspector Heat. The narrator gives us access to Mr. Verloc's thoughts, which center on how he never intended for Stevie to die.
- He'd thought that the worst thing that could happen is that Stevie would be arrested. He hadn't anticipated the whole thing coming back to him so quickly, hadn't anticipated Stevie's address being sewn into his clothes. He realizes that "that was what she meant when she said that he need not worry if he lost Stevie during their walks" (11.2).
- He thinks that "she ought to have told him of the precaution she'd taken" (11.3), as if Winnie should've somehow known that he was going to hand her brother a bomb and send him off to blow up an observatory.
- But then again, he uses his generosity to resist scolding his wife for her mistake. "The unexpected march of events [has] converted him to the doctrine of fatalism" (11.4).
- In other words, Verloc no longer believes that humans are in control of their lives. It's just randomness and bad luck. He tells Winnie that he didn't mean for any harm to come to Stevie. He then blames Heat for telling her everything and upsetting her. He talks about how hard it was for him to sit around all day, thinking of a way to tell her the news. His self-centeredness really shines through in these passages.
- At this point, he follows Winnie into the house and notices that the roast beef and bread from his dinner is still sitting on the dining room table. Starving, he cuts himself off a piece and bolts it down. This isn't because he's callous, but because he hasn't eaten a thing all day.
- He says that the situation can't be helped, and that Winnie needs to be rational if they're going to plan for the future. Winnie, however, simply heaves with sadness and doesn't answer him. Her silence bothers him. The narrator sarcastically adds that "Mr Verloc was a humane man; he had come home prepared to allow every latitude to his wife's affection for her brother" (11.16). But he really, really doesn't understand the depth of Winnie's emotional attachment to Stevie.
- He doesn't think of relationships as relative, but as being based on the actual worthiness of the person being loved. Because of this, he considers himself much more important than Winnie's "Half-witted" brother. But he doesn't understand the kind of love and devotion that has grown out of Winnie's life as a protector to Stevie.
- He becomes more severe with her, telling her that she "can't sit like this in the shop" (11.21). There are practical matters that they need to discuss, now that he's been found out. He tells her to stop crying and asks how much worse it would've been if she'd lost him instead of Stevie. Yeah, dude really doesn't get it.
- Verloc thinks about his situation again, and knows that he'll have to go to prison. But this is a good thing, since it'll protect him from all the people who'll want to kill him once he exposes himself as a spy and talks publicly about all the things that he (and his bosses) have been involved in.
- He's already thinking about moving abroad as soon as he's released. He thinks about how Winnie will have to keep the shop running for a couple of years while he's in prison. "Though Mr Verloc's fatalism accepted his undoing as a secret agent, he had no mind to be utterly ruined, mostly, it must be owned, from regard for his wife" (11.27).
- It's hard to gauge the narrator's sympathy for Verloc here, but it seems to be insisting that Verloc really does love Winnie, and just doesn't see his situation for what it is, since he can't stop thinking about himself. Unlike Stevie, he does not have the imagination to relate his pain to the pain of others.
- He reminds himself that this is "no evening for business" (11.28), so he gets up to close the shop and put out the gaslight. Mr. Verloc walks into the parlor and glances down the two steps into the kitchen. Winnie is sitting in the place Stevie usually uses for drawing his circles.
- Mr. Verloc watches her from behind, trying to learn something, but all he gets is a crude outline of how she feels. He starts telling her about all the other bomb plots he's dealt with in his career, probably trying to make Stevie's death part of a larger picture.
- When he looks back up, he is startled by his wife's stare. She seems to be looking through him. He asks her if she understands him, and she answers, "No […] What are you talking about?"
- He tells her to go to bed, believing that what she wants is a good cry. At this, we get a long narration of what's going on in Winnie's head, and we're carried back into her childhood, when she would risk herself to protect Stevie from their abusive father: "She had the vision of the blows intercepted (often with her own head), of a door held desperately shut against a man's rage (not for very long)" (11.51).
- She then has a crushing memory of all the years she spent in her parent's boarding house, carrying trays and haggling with boarders. She thinks of "a young man wearing his Sunday best, with a straw hat on his dark head and a wooden pipe in his mouth" (11.52). This is the young butcher boy whom she truly loved, but had to give up marrying because he could not afford to take care of her mother and Stevie.
- She thinks of how the years with Mr. Verloc had increased her confidence in Stevie's safety. She thinks of how she's happily lived with Verloc, despite the "occasional passage of Comrade Ossipon, the robust anarchist with shamelessly inviting eyes" (11.53), who has apparently always watched her with a vibe of sexual aggression.
- Suddenly, her mind returns to the last moment she ever saw Stevie, when he was walking away with Verloc and she thought that they looked like father and son. At that moment, she had congratulated herself with the thought that shed truly guaranteed Stevie's safety. This memory now tortures her.
- Verloc, meanwhile, keeps raving about the Embassy people and how he's going to take them all down with his testimony. He also says that oh-so-fateful phrase, "Nothing on earth can stop me now" (11.61).
- At this point, Winnie says through her teeth that she thought Mr. Verloc had caught a cold, meaning that she hadn't realized why he was so rattled when he came home that evening.
- Verloc tells her not to worry, says that he won't let the revolutionists "do away with him" (11.75) because he's too fond of Winnie to let that happen. He gives a nervous laugh at this, but gets no response from Winnie.
- The narrator informs us that Winnie has been overcome by a "fixed idea," and that nothing Verloc says can overcome this idea. She tries to remember where Stevie actually died, but the name of the place escapes her for the moment. Finally, Winnie gets up from her seat and goes upstairs. Verloc encourages her, saying that she needs sleep and that he'll be up in a bit. The thought of him touching her makes her sick.
- She disappears upstairs, and Mr. Verloc is overtaken by "unappeasable hunger" (11.92). He goes back to the table and starts going to town on the roast beef.
- He is startled by the fact that he can't hear Winnie moving upstairs, but feels better once he hears her moving. He gets startled again, though, when he hears her put on her walking shoes. She comes back down the stairs, dressed to go out into the night. He tells her that he won't allow her to leave the house. This statement makes Winnie realize that Mr. Verloc will never let her go now. She says nothing back to him, though, and his patience reaches its end.
- He repeats his earlier speech about how much risk he has taken to give her a good life, and that he never intended for Stevie to die. He says that he hunted high and low for dozens of other men to do the job, but couldn't find anyone. It was just an accident, he says, as though Stevie was hit by a bus while crossing the street.
- He even goes on to say that Stevie's death is as much Winnie's fault as his own, since Winnie was always pushing Stevie into Verloc's life, wanting him to take the boy on walks. The idea would never have come into Verloc's head if it hadn't been for Winnie.
- He then tells her she's lucky that he's such a wonderful guy. When she says nothing still, he feels tired and moves over to lie on the sofa in his coat, the back of which is facing Winnie. He thinks aloud that he wishes he'd never seen Greenwich Park.
- The mention of the place where Stevie blew himself up jogs Winnie's memory. "Greenwich Park. A park! That's where the boy was killed" (11.114). She also remembers that the police had had to scoop up Stevie's remains with a shovel. This image seems to make her snap completely.
- Anyone looking at her would know something was different. But Mr. Verloc is facing the other side of the room now, and the back of the couch is separating him from her.
- At this point, Verloc thinks he's won Winnie over again. He say's "Come here […] in a peculiar tone, which might have been the tone of brutality, but was intimately known to Mrs. Verloc as the note of wooing" (11.119). That's right, folks. Verloc thinks that this is a good time to flirt with his wife and invite her to have sex with him. Verloc hears her coming toward him, and is happy.
- As Winnie passes the dining table, and "the carving knife [vanishes] without the slightest sound from the side of the dish" (11.120). Again, Verloc doesn't see this because of his positioning.
- The narrator also tells us that right down to the drooping lip, Winnie takes on the appearance of Stevie as she approaches the couch. This shifting of appearance seems to hint that in some way, Stevie is about to avenge himself through his sister.
- Winnie reaches over the edge of the couch and plunges the knife into Verloc's chest. Verloc has enough time to see what's about to happen, even enough time to formulate a plan for escape, but not enough time to actually act. The knife is in him, and the only word that can escape his mouth is "Don't" (11.121).
- With the deed done, Winnie leans against the sofa and rests her arms on it. As she rests, though, she hears a loud ticking sound, and glances at the clock across the room. She remembers that the tick of this clock is completely silent, and then looks around for the source of the noise. Her eyes eventually lead her back to the body of her husband, where she sees drops of blood running to the edge of the knife handle and falling to the wooden floor, making a tic tic tic sound. This sound eventually turns into a steady flow as the blood comes out more and more, falling in a constant stream from the knife.
- For the first time since hearing about Stevie's death, Winnie's wits seem to come back to her. She totally freaks out about what she's done and smashes into the kitchen table as she runs from Verloc's body.