When he was through, he smoothed the duvet and went back downstairs. There was a guest bedroom on the ground floor, and its door opened smoothly. He would wait there. He practiced walking the route to her bedroom. Testing the floorboards until he knew every creak. When he was satisfied, he rearmed the house security system and went into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. He emptied his bladder carefully in the toilet. Took a piece of toilet paper and dabbed up an errant drop on the seat. Then he slipped under the guest-room bed and cleared his mind. The quiet hum of the house was pleasant.

He waited.

Tinsley felt the vibration of the garage door opening through his spine. It snapped him back to full consciousness, and he listened to what the house murmured to him. The garage door closed, and the alarm sounded again but was shut off a moment later. High heels strode toward the front of the house, and then the doorbell rang. Someone had followed her. Perhaps a friend whom she had invited home with her. But a man or a woman? She was widowed, so either was possible. He listened to her answer the door, and the sound of two women’s voices speaking animatedly filled the front hall. There was laughter. They walked past his door and back toward the kitchen.

For the next several hours, Tinsley listened to the women prepare dinner and eat. Classical music muddied the sounds of their voices, but he kept careful track of where they were in the house. Each sound or smell that came to him, he analyzed and cataloged. The flush of a toilet. The clinking of silverware and glasses. The smell of garlic and olive oil. He moved them through the house on the chessboard in his mind. Mercifully for her friend, the guest bedroom never opened.

He’d only come for one.

It was after eleven before the doctor showed her guest out. They stood talking and making plans that the doctor would not keep. Her friend would find it hard to believe that the doctor would take her own life after such a lovely evening. But gradually, she would be convinced that the dinner was intended as a farewell. But she was so cheerful, so full of life . . . Psychiatrists would explain that suicides often become ebullient once they’ve made up their mind. As if a weight has been lifted. Eventually, she would accept it as the truth even if a small part of her harbored doubts. He heard a car start, and after a moment it drove away.