Blott on the Landscape — Tom Sharpe

When philandering Sir Giles Lynchwood decides it''s time to wriggle free of his monumentally unattractive wife, Lady Maud, he knows divorce is out of the question. He can''t leave her and keep her cash; a reversionary clause on her ancestral home, Handyman Hall, has taken care of that. Lady Maud, for her own special reasons, is also dying to see the back of Sir Giles. Sir Giles dreams of motorways ploughing through the front door of Handyman Hall, of compulsory purchase orders, of loot and no wife. Lady Maud bellows. Blott the gardener watches from his inner sanctum, the greenhouse, and listens...and waits.