Young man-about-town Bertie Wooster, the novel’s first-person narrator, wakes in his London apartment with a throbbing hangover, the result of a “bachelor binge” he hosted the previous night for his old friend Gussie Fink-Nottle, a “fish-faced” biology afficionado who specializes in newts. Jeeves, his prodigiously capable valet, comes to his bedside with a bracing restorative. Jeeves is flawlessly cordial as ever, but a slight tension hangs in the air, owing to Wooster’s steadfast refusal to commit to an around-the-world cruise, which Jeeves thinks would be “highly educational” for him. Wooster moves the conversation to Gussie’s future father-in-law, a former judge named Sir Watkyn Bassett, who once fined Wooster five pounds for the attempted theft of a police helmet. Bassett, whom Wooster describes as a “hellhound,” has since inherited a fortune and retired to the country. Wooster doesn’t envy Gussie’s future filial connections to this man, and he briefly interrupts his narrative to foreshadow “old Pop Bassett’s” leading role in the “sinister affair” that is to follow (4).

The trouble starts with an invitation from his Aunt Dahlia, a somewhat bossy woman who publishes a women’s weekly called Milady’s Boudoir.