He slowly shook his head. “He has gone in his sleep, I think, as we all hope will happen, without the hospital, the-the equipment, all of those things that hurt us.”

“But something wasn’t right,” I suggested, seeing his troubled frown. He looked around the room, again shaking his head. “You are right. It is something, not only this glass. Is it the pillow? I think it is, it has the”—he fumbled for a word, showing with his fist the way the head makes a hollow in the pillow after sleep-“yes, the hollow; the pillow looks like he sleeps on it, but he is in his chair. Now”-he crossed to the bed-“now it is normal, but-not quite right, not where I have been leaving it. And also, I think someone has moved this chair.”

He pointed at a cane chair on the far side of the bed, next to the drapes covering the sliding doors. You could see four indentations in the pile where the legs had stood for months; whoever replaced the chair hadn’t aligned it exactly.

I wanted to inspect the rest of the apartment, but Rivas was anxious not to be late for his meeting. I tried to get him to leave me his key, telling him the police would want to send in a forensic team, but Rivas didn’t want to be part of a police inquiry. If someone had been here with Mr. Taverner the night he died, had moved furniture, moved pillows, it would seem as though Rivas hadn’t looked after his gentleman carefully, even though Mr. Taverner always wanted to be left to go to bed alone. Besides, the new family would take it amiss to have Rivas involved in a police inquiry. The administrator would help with keys and entrance to the apartment, he said, if investigators needed to search Mr. Taverner’s apartment in greater detail.

I nodded my understanding. Following him down the hall and out the door, I took advantage of his anxiety about the time to depress the lip of the dead bolt so it wouldn’t fasten when we left. Rivas went to the elevators while I walked outside. As soon as he got into an elevator, I darted back down the hall, pushed Taverner’s door open and flipped the lights back on. A handsome old leather-topped desk stood in a corner on the far side of the sitting room. Nearer to me were the armchairs where Taverner and Whitby had presumably sat to have their conversation. I started toward the desk, then decided caution was the better part of valor. I returned to the kitchen, found some latex gloves under the sink, and put those on.

When I returned to the sitting room, I realized it was considerably colder than the kitchen and bedroom had been. I stopped on my way to the desk: a draft was seeping under the brocade drapes, which swayed with the air currents.

I crossed the room fast and flung the drapes open. Someone had broken the glass on the door to the patio and forced the lock from the inside. I pulled the heavy fabric away from the wall. A man was flattening himself into the corner. He swore and ran toward me bull-like, head lowered. I didn’t let go of the drapes fast enough. The man butted me in the stomach, shoved open the broken patio door and took off.