I'd been there once before, with Lucy Marling, who is just about the best sob writer the town had seen in a decade—but tonight I was celebrating my emancipation from newspapers, and I figured that I'd do it alone and unaided. I wanted a quiet evening to sort myself out, not another interminable session of shop talk, too much bourbon and the final problem of sidestepping Lucy's bedroom. Not that I hate women, but… hell, put it down to blue blood on the distaff side or something. Just an old gripy sourpuss, that's me. Anything you say.

I eased a size eleven tan brogue off the accelerator to take the last bend before the inn, my mind pleasantly anticipating the peculiar and particular aromatic savour of the Peacock's admirable cuisine. Maybe a bit of cold consommé, a steak with mushrooms on the side…

I didn't get any farther because it was at this point that I saw her. She was lying in the center of the roadway and, as far as I could judge from behind my headlights, was wearing a raincoat. I had about twenty-five yards in which to stop and it was dead easy because I wasn't clocking a mile above forty. The hydraulics clawed the Buick down to a walk and I was pulling into the grass verge before I got on to it that this might be the old stick-up