Stevens introduces himself and his unusual situation: he is a lifelong butler at Darlington Hall, now serving the American Mr. Farraday, who has suggested he take a motoring holiday. Stevens constructs an elaborate professional justification for the trip — he will recruit Miss Kenton back to alleviate a staffing problem — and avoids acknowledging any personal motivation. He meditates at length on the nature of 'dignity' in a great butler.

Stevens drives through Wiltshire and stops near Salisbury. He continues meditating on what separates the great butler from the merely competent, concludes it is 'dignity,' and begins recalling the great diplomatic gatherings at Darlington Hall in the 1930s — including the first significant visit of the German Ambassador Herr Ribbentrop. He also recalls his first impressions of Miss Kenton's competence and her challenging, mildly combative manner with him.

Stevens recalls his aging father's final years in service under him at Darlington Hall — a deeply poignant inversion of their relationship — and the father's decline and death on the night of the crucial 1923 Darlington Hall conference. Stevens served that conference impeccably while his father lay dying upstairs. He reflects on this as his proudest professional moment. The memory of Miss Kenton arriving at Darlington Hall in 1922 deepens, and their early working relationship is established.

Stevens reflects on the question of whether a 'great' butler can have served a 'great' but morally compromised employer. He recalls the night Lord Darlington asked him to dismiss two Jewish housemaids, which he did, and which Miss Kenton protested. He recalls the appeasement conferences of the late 1930s, the presence of Oswald Mosley and Sir Oswald's Blackshirts, and the visit of a journalist named Mr. Cardinal who challenged Stevens directly about Lord Darlington's political direction.

The deepest layer of memory opens: Stevens recalls the intimate evening conversations with Miss Kenton in her sitting room over cocoa, the moment he intruded on her as she wept over the news of a family bereavement, her announcement that she had received a proposal of marriage, and — most important — the evening he pushed open her door and found himself standing very close to her, during which 'something silently passed between us.' He also recalls her growing frustration with his coldness, her deliberate attempts to make him acknowledge her, and the increasing distance between them.

Stevens arrives in Little Compton, Taunton, and meets Miss Kenton — now Mrs. Benn — at a tearoom. Their conversation is warm, nostalgic, and quietly excruciating. She tells him she sometimes wonders about the life she might have had. She is not unhappy, but she has thought about it. She is not coming back to Darlington Hall. Stevens watches her bus disappear and walks to the seafront, where — in the most emotionally open moment of the novel — he allows himself to recognize what he has lost, then chooses to move forward. He resolves to serve Mr. Farraday better and 'make the best of what remains of the day.'