He turned into the avenue and walked nearly its entire length and the houses that he passed had names—Tintern, Derwent, Braemar—that irked him, for they spoke of a homesickness for places long ago left behind but somehow still yearned for when the new century was only months away. It seemed to him that a man’s thoughts should be of the new nation, of a future freed from the mother country. But his thoughts were not of the future. His thoughts were on the house almost at the end of the street, an imposing three-storey villa with many shuttered windows and the final vestiges of pale pink paint on its rendered walls. Outside sprouted a huge banksia dotted with spiky yellow blooms that defied the season and attracted the winter lorikeets that nestled in its foliage in a noisy blaze of blue, green and orange. Against this riot of colour the house behind appeared dull, worn. Yet here was a finely carved set of steps leading up to the entrance and wrought-iron railings, the paint gently flaking off; here was a front door with leadlight in its window and above it a delicately ornate lantern hanging in a gabled porch so that an air of quiet elegance was, somehow, maintained.

The butler who might have opened this door fifty years ago was long gone, the overworked maid with a soiled uniform and unkempt hair who may have answered the door with bad grace five or ten or fifteen years ago was similarly departed. Now the names of the residents were listed on a little wooden board nailed to the porch and the residents opened their own front doors.

Alasdair went up to the house. He observed for a moment his right hand where it rested on the flaking paint of the railing. The usual thrust of his chin, the squareness of his shoulders was gone. But every man has his secrets; it was part of what made him a man.

Or so Alasdair told himself. He pushed open the door and let himself in.

Here was a quiet that offered respite from the noisy bustle of the wharves and the glare of the brilliant sky. A coolness, too, for the sun never ventured into the dimly lit hallway. It was a grand space, or had been. One or two anonymously closed doors suggested formal drawing rooms and reception rooms now partitioned into private apartments. A magnificent staircase fashioned from Australian cedar swept upwards to a half-landing then swung back on itself to arrive at the first floor. And beside the staircase, a triumph of wrought iron and hydraulics, was an elevator cage and shaft, recently installed.

There was no one about. There was, aside from the inevitable groans and creaks of the old house, silence.