Cudsey is the village setting for Paul Carpenter and Sophie Pettingell’s assignment to engineer a meeting between Ashford Clent and a client. Its quiet, picturesque appearance and the Bunch of Grapes pub’s ordinary hospitality provide a strikingly mundane frame for the operation: a file-borne goblin briefing, a potion slipped into beer, and a sleeping film star. The work is staged in a local pub, but its precise timing turns the village into a temporary mechanism for J.W. Wells & Co.’s magic.

Setting and arrival

The goblin directs Paul and Sophie to take the 10:17 train from Euston to Manchester Piccadilly, change to a local service for Ventcaster, and then take a taxi to Cudsey. Their destination is not presented as remote wilderness or an uncanny landscape. It is a pleasant village of grey stone, described as genuinely picturesque beneath a haze of almost-rain. The subdued weather and solid buildings establish a calm, recognisable setting for the increasingly unusual business that follows.

The journey also gives the assignment a concrete geography. Cudsey is the final leg after the train connections, and the taxi carries them from Ventcaster into the village. The goblin reserves two rooms for them at the Bunch of Grapes, specifying that the pub has an Egon Ronay one-star rating. The practical arrangements—transport, rooms, and a named place to report—make the supernatural job resemble an ordinary work trip, even as the instructions arrive through a creature concealed in a file.

The Bunch of Grapes as headquarters

After arriving, Sophie insists on carrying the suitcase, which has become extremely large and heavy. They leave it in her room, then take the file to the deserted games room behind the pub’s public bar. There, on the pool table, the file’s goblin appears again to deliver the rest of the briefing. It scuttles across the green baize and nibbles a piece of cue chalk before explaining the plan. The setting’s everyday furnishings—the bar, games room, pool table, and chalk—serve as the working equipment and backdrop for a highly controlled magical operation.

Paul considers the pub the sort of place he might have enjoyed staying at in different circumstances. That qualification captures the tension between the village’s inviting appearance and the couple’s position within it: they are lodged in a pleasant inn, but their stay is governed by an assignment whose success depends on deception, strict timing, and an unseen supernatural employer. Cudsey is not described as inherently magical; rather, the ordinary pub is temporarily made into a stage for magic and professional manipulation.

The arranged encounter

The briefing assigns each part of the operation a specific time. At 5:45 p.m., the landlord and his wife are expected to fall asleep. Sophie is to put on an outfit supplied for the job, take her place behind the bar, and appear to be a barmaid. At 5:55, Ashford Clent is expected to enter and order a pint. Sophie must add the required dose of JWW Valentine Express Love Philtre to his drink, then leave the bar; Paul is to take her place and prevent any woman other than the client from entering while Clent sleeps. The potion’s side effect is expected to keep him asleep for twenty minutes, with the client due at 6:15, so that she will be present when he wakes.

The scheme works smoothly. Clent, described as an award-winning screen figure, arrives at the appointed time and orders beer. Sophie adds two tablespoonfuls of the golden potion without being noticed. The traditional Yorkshire real ale’s strong taste masks the philtre, and Clent falls asleep before Paul can ask him for an autograph. The client arrives precisely on time and sits opposite the sleeping man, smoking and reading The Daily Telegraph Guide to Investment Management. The staged encounter depends on the pub’s normal routines—serving a pint, occupying a table, tending the bar—while the potion and the timetable determine what those routines conceal.

The Green Dragon and the next turn

The Bunch of Grapes is not the only pub in Cudsey to shape the episode. When Paul later notices Clent and the client going into the Green Dragon pub across the road, Sophie tells him to stay where he is and says she is returning to her room. Her stated next move is to buy the next Mrs Clent a drink. The crossing from one pub to another changes the operation’s direction: the original assignment had brought its participants together at the Bunch of Grapes, but Sophie’s response suggests that the apparent completion of the job will not be the end of their involvement.

Cudsey’s narrative function rests on this contrast between fixed, local spaces and the scheme’s shifting purposes. The Bunch of Grapes supplies rooms, a bar, and a games room in which the goblin can brief the employees; the Green Dragon provides a visible destination across the road when Sophie decides to act again. The village remains picturesque and unremarkable in description, while its two pubs contain the carefully arranged encounter and the immediate turn that follows it.