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discomfort of the night, withkidney pies and pigeon pies, hot mutton pasties, tankards of ale, and muffins and tea, poached eggs and thick rashers of bacon.
    Who has not alighted with Mr. Pickwick in the courtyard square of The Blue Lion at Muggleton; or eaten oysters with Tom Jones at The Bell in Gloucestershire; or suffered with Keats at the inn at Burford Bridge? Or, hungry and thirsty, who has not paused for a half-pint of bitter and a cut of blue-veined Stilton, flakey Cheshire, or a knob of cheddar; or known that he would always find the brass gleaming, the wood polished, the fire enormous, the beer dark, the host tweeded, and, upstairs, the halls dark and narrow, the snug room nearly impossible to find — up two stairs, down three, turn right, up five, walk ten paces, like a child playing hide and seek or a counting game? If the streamers have gone from the white caps, and the host is there more in spirit than in fact, like a smile hovering in air — still, with all of this wealth in the vaults of memory, one could almost forget that the pound had dropped.
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    The Man with a Load of Mischief was no exception — a half-timbered, sixteenth-century coaching inn through the archway of which Melrose Plant now drove his Bentley, parking it in the unused stableyard. Here the stagecoach from Barnet might have clattered in and pulled up in the cobbled court, ringed round with galleries, over which Molly Mog waved and flirted with the footmen. To Lady Ardry, it was the quintessential English inn. In summer, clematis spread its long tendrils over the face of the building, competing with the climbing roses. The inn sat on a hill facing south, a long building which looked as if it had been put together in sections, in a drunken wave. Its thatched roof fitted its windows like a collar. Amid the green and glowing fields of summer, the silver, misty fields of winter, its diamond-paned windows looked off toward the village of Long Piddleton.
    When Melrose Plant and Lady Ardry arrived, it was dark, and this made the lighted inside of the inn that much more inviting. The inn was a free house and its proprietor had every intention of keeping it from being swallowed up by the breweries.
    That proprietor, Simon Matchett, greeted them now at the front door, making a good deal over Agatha but less over Melrose Plant, whom he afforded a nod and a smile, but the smile was not very broad. Melrose disliked him; he sensed in Matchett a climber after both wealth and position, a man of surface polish but underlying vulgarity. To be fair, he wondered if he might not simply be jealous. Matchett’s popularity with women could hardly be overstated. All he needed to do to enhance a door was walk through it. Matchett’s apparent attachment to Vivian Rivington disturbed Melrose.
    Perhaps even the tragedy in Matchett’s past — something involving his deceased wife and another woman — might have added to the man’s romantic image, like a scar on the face of a duelist. This had all happened so long ago that not even Lady Ardry had been able to dig out all the details.
    They stood now in the low, dimly lit hall, hung about with sporting prints and stuffed birds, his aunt and Simon Matchett making small talk smaller. Melrose simply leaned against the wall, the top of his head just grazing a rather tatty-looking brace of stuffed pheasant. He studied the dusty coaching prints on the other side. There were the passengers being deposited in a snowy bank as the coach gaily overturned. And now here they were whooping into the cobbled courtyard as Betsy Bunt waved from the upper gallery. Melrose wondered why coaching seemed to be regarded back then as a sport, something like rugby or bowls. He watched as his aunt and Matchett sauntered down the hall toward the saloon bar, ignoring him. Melrose started up the hall, where a narrow staircase lined with more pictures — these of grouse and pheasant