Grand Avenue

Lined on both sides with tall, stately buildings of pale stone, Grand Avenue has the air of a street that knows exactly how much it is worth. Shop windows glitter with things nobody strictly needs, each display arranged just so, and the pavements are swept so often it seems a crime to walk on them at all. Plane trees stand in neat iron cages at regular intervals, offering a little shade to those who stop long enough to want it.

The avenue runs straight and broad toward the busier streets of Midtown, the traffic thickening the further one goes, while at its quieter top end an old road slips out past the last grand houses toward the distant forest. Halfway along, a striped awning and a pair of revolving doors mark the entrance to the Ashcombe Hotel, a uniformed doorman standing ready to decide whether or not to open them for you.