The sun was declining into the hills when the coach in which I was travelling came in sight of the village and then scraped and jostled across the bridge. Five days had passed since I received my summons. I leaned through the open door-window and looked back at the houses and church. There was a faint smell of woodsmoke on the air, but in the failing light and stretching umber shadows the village appeared unnaturally empty. All day the laneways from Shaftesbury had been deserted except for the occasional herd of black-faced sheep, and I felt by now as if I had arrived on the verge of a desolate precipice.

'Have we much further to go before Pontifex Hall?'

My driver, Phineas Greenleaf, emitted the same low, bovine grunt which had greeted most of my enquiries. I wondered for the dozenth time if he was deaf. He was an old man, lethargic of movement and lugubrious of manner. As we rode I found myself staring not at the passing countryside but, rather, the wen on his neck and the withered left arm that protruded from its foreshortened coat-sleeve. Three days earlier he had been waiting for me, as promised, at the Three Pigeons in High Holborn. The coach had been by far the most impressive vehicle in the tavern's stable-yard, a commodious four-seater with a covered box-seat and a lacquered exterior in which I could see my undulant reflection. A fussy coat of arms was painted on the door. I had been forced to revise my impression of the impecuniosity of my prospective hostess.

'Am I to see Lady Marchamont?' I had asked Greenleaf as we cleared the stable-yard's narrow coachway. I received his noncommittal grunt in reply but, undaunted for the moment, ventured another question: 'Does Lady Marchamont wish to buy some of my books?'