I walked up a long wood-block path to the house. A gardener working on a rose bed looked at me as if I was spoiling the landscaping. I went up fifty or sixty Oregon timber steps to the porch. You could have subdivided the porch for house lots and marched six wide-shouldered men abreast through the front door. I stabbed the bell with a finger and a wide-shouldered man opened the door while the soft chimes were still echoing about in the house. He was about six feet two, which gave him an inch on me, and he looked like he’d been the stroke of the first rowing eight maybe ten years before when the school had won the Head of the River. His suit had cost five times as much as my lightweight grey model, but he still wasn’t the real money.

“Mr Gutteridge is expecting me.” I passed a card across into his perfectly manicured hand and waited. He opened the door with a piece of body language which stamped him as a man of breeding but a servant nonetheless. His voice was a deep, musical throb, like a finely played bass.

“Mr Gutteridge is on the east balcony.” He handed the card back. “If you wouldn’t mind following me?”

“I’d never find it on my own.”

He let go a smile as thin as a surgeon’s glove and we set off to discover the east balcony. The rich always have lots of mirrors in their houses because they like what they see in them. We passed at least six full-length jobs on the trek which put expensive frames around a thinnish man with dark wiry hair, scuffed suede shoes and an air of not much money being spent on upkeep.

The rowing Blue led me into the library cum billiard room cum bar. He stepped behind the bar and did neat, fast things with bottles, ice and glasses. He handed me two tall glasses filled with tinkling amber liquid and nodded towards a green tinted glass door. “Mr Gutteridge is through there sir,” he said. “The door will open automatically.”