But no one cared to recall the Premier’s words, at Tamworth or anywhere else.

They had just spotted Leon Jellicoe.

The former—now disgraced—Solicitor-General had just stepped down from a cab and was making his way, head down and at a quickened pace, towards the other doorway. The little knot of pressmen spied him at once, deserting the minor minister and descending on him.

Alasdair looked on. It was unfortunate timing, but parliamentary careers rose and fell on timing, good timing or poor, fortuitous or regrettable. Jellicoe’s, undoubtedly, was regrettable. And Jellicoe, at whose Potts Point house Alasdair had frequently dined and whose cellar he had enjoyed, saw Alasdair in the moment before he was besieged by the excitable men of the press, and gave him a confused look, as though not quite able to place him. He was a muscular figure, clean-shaven with a steady gaze. The sort of fellow who looked well on a horse, his strength and vigour being of the most basic masculine kind but also of the intellectual kind, of the kind that can, in time, make its possessor a leader of men. But this Jellicoe, surrounded now by a multitude of clamouring pressmen, was a shadowy and hollowed-out facsimile of that other man. The strength, the vigour faded. A poor copy of the man who had once been talked of as a future premier.

It was unsettling. One had no wish to witness another fellow’s downfall—this ghastly affair, this very public divorce—though undoubtedly Jellicoe had brought his present calamity down upon his own head. Still, it was unsettling. One was aware of living in a glass house, metaphorically speaking.

Alasdair looked away. He frowned. His conscience did not often prick him. He thought of his umbrella, left behind in the hansom cab. To lose an item in his possession under such circumstances became, somehow, at this moment, significant, crucial, when surely it was the most trivial thing in the world. But still he thought of the lost umbrella.

He took the steps up to the entrance of Parliament House two at a time. He was vigorous. He was strong! He thought about the Solicitor-General’s position which was now vacant. It was a prominent position—more prominent, certainly, than Secretary for Public Monies.

The thought pleased him and made him, at the same time, a little uneasy.

The parliamentary reception desk was unmanned. A handful of faceless clerks and functionaries could be seen moving along distant corridors and in the outbuildings that bordered the Domain, but of the other members of the Assembly there was not a sign.

Except for one.

‘Dunlevy. Not expecting to run into the Prem, are you?’