[1] Jasper Pye a refined civil servant is sent to the rural Suffolk–Norfolk border to close the Office of Output Statistics which has outlived its usefulness.
He soon finds that the department's two senior employees spend most of their time running the Hall and researching its history, the village and the local cricket team; anything, in fact, other than the jobs they are supposed to be doing.
On one of the rare moments when he actually manages to have a discussion on the department's function, the third employee, Miss Mounsey, tearfully admits to him that she has been making up the statistics for a number of years and is worried this may have affected government policy.
He has a number of adventures, including painting a portrait of a topless Belinda, finding himself locked in the Hall dungeon/wine cellar with Lionel Virley (where they get completely inebriated) and turning up late to the Arcady versus Flaxfield cricket match, where, although still drunk, he scores the winning runs and rescues the game.
Belinda invites him to an assignation and he finds her waiting for him nude on an island in the middle of a lake; they swim together and make love on the grass.
Jasper later joins a party on Lord Flamborough's train, but over all these experiences hangs the pall of the difficult decision of whether to close the obviously redundant department despite the rural idyll it supports.
Eventually, he announces that the department is to close, a decision which does not go down well with Lord Flamborough or the villagers, although they apparently bear Jasper no ill will, realising he is "just doing his job".
The village fete proceeds as planned, including a traction engine rally, the ankle-judging competition (won by Miss Mounsey) and a demonstration of the Charleston by Jasper.