Coach House

The Coach House is an upscale restaurant on Regnery’s main street whose public entrance, visible waiting area, and convenient parking make it useful to Burke Devore for observing Herbert Coleman Everly without drawing attention. Burke chooses it not simply as a place to meet, but as the stage for a false job interview: Everly waits inside for a recruiter who will not come, while Burke watches from nearby. The restaurant’s ordinary social arrangements—reservations, lunch companions, people waiting on benches—give the deception its credible shape and make the location central to Burke’s plan.

Setting and Physical Layout

The Coach House is described as a fairly upscale establishment frequented by local gentry. Its position on Regnery’s main street provides Burke with what he considers two practical advantages: parking is straightforward, and he can remain anonymous amid ordinary street activity. The restaurant’s Colonial-style mullioned windows look onto the street. Through them, a passerby can see the front of the establishment, including the maître d’ greeting customers and a small waiting area furnished with two benches. These features allow Burke to monitor the entrance and identify someone inside without entering the restaurant himself.

That arrangement makes the restaurant’s threshold part of the action. Everly can be seen waiting in the front seating area; Burke can pass the windows, return to his car, and watch from a distance. The windows separate the men physically while keeping Everly in view. The benches, intended for customers awaiting lunch companions, supply an unremarkable reason for the man Burke is targeting to stay put. The setting’s usefulness depends on its public character: the scene unfolds among customers and on a town street, rather than in a concealed or isolated place.

Selection and Deceptive Appointment

Burke surveys restaurants around this part of the state nine days before the planned meeting, then settles on the Coach House as ideal for his purposes. The choice is linked to a letter that presents a renewed employment opportunity. It invites Burke to lunch at one o’clock on Friday, June 20, with Personnel Director Ms. Laurie Kilpatrick, and gives the Coach House in Regnery as the meeting place. The letter explains that a phone call might distress the employee who is still on the premises, helping the invitation appear plausible. In reality, Burke has arranged the false appointment to bring Everly to the restaurant.

The day before the meeting, Burke telephones the Coach House and reserves a table for two under Kilpatrick’s name. His plan relies on the reservation being confirmed while the supposed interviewer remains absent: Everly will be told that the booking exists but that the other party has not yet arrived, and Burke expects him to wait in the seating area. The restaurant is therefore not merely named in a forged invitation; its routine handling of a reservation helps sustain the false expectation on which the trap depends.

Surveillance During the Wait

On Friday, Burke parks his Voyager half a block away and approaches the restaurant on foot shortly before one. In his first glimpse, a man sits on a bench with one leg crossed, wearing a dark suit and figured tie; Burke notices his close-cropped gray hair and square face. He walks on, pauses at an appliance-store window to look at VCRs and fax machines, and then passes the Coach House again for a longer look. The second view confirms his identification of Everly, whose square-jawed, commanding manner and apparent anticipation match Burke’s expectation.

Burke returns to the car and watches the entrance. Well-dressed customers continue to arrive, mostly in pairs and generally middle-aged or older. At 1:10, he checks whether the man he has identified is still waiting and considers whether the real target might be someone else. Everly remains there. Burke recognizes him as a former Marine instructor who spent his entire working life with one company; as the wait lengthens, Everly appears less confident and looks at his watch.

At 1:45, Everly is still inside. Burke understands that he must realize something has gone wrong, but continues to watch. The long interval turns the restaurant’s waiting area into the measure of the deception: a scheduled lunch has become an unanswered appointment, and the expectation of an interview gives way to distress. Burke acknowledges the humiliation he is imposing and feels wretched about it, while telling himself that there was no other way. The polished restaurant and its respectable lunchtime traffic remain outwardly unchanged as the false promise runs its course.

Exit and Narrative Significance

Eventually Everly comes out into the sunlight. He pauses on the sidewalk, looks up and down the block, shakes his head, and starts walking in Burke’s direction. Burke turns his face toward a bank across the street as Everly passes, then follows him in the mirrors. He notices Everly’s ramrod-stiff posture and briefly remembers Everett Dynes. Everly continues to his black car; Burke starts the engine of his own vehicle. The encounter at the Coach House ends with the men still physically apart, but the restaurant has served its planned role: it brought Everly into a predictable, observable public space and kept him waiting until the false appointment had exposed him to disappointment.

The scene also draws meaning from the contrast between the respectable employment procedure represented by a personnel interview and Burke’s deliberate falsification of one. The invitation promises a chance to return to work, while the restaurant’s ordinary conventions lend that promise credibility. Against Burke’s history of corporate downsizing and a long search for employment, the location becomes part of a wider plot in which job-seeking rituals are repurposed as instruments of deception. Its significance lies in this double use: the Coach House remains a local lunch restaurant, yet for Burke it is an observation post and a carefully chosen setting for turning professional hope into humiliation.