The Landlady

“He had never been to Bath before. He didn’t know anyone who lived there. But Mr. Greenslade at the Head Office in London had told him it was a splendid city. ‘Find your own lodgings,’ he had said, ‘and then go along and report to the Branch manager as soon as you’ve got yourself settled.’” 

This opening passage establishes Billy’s situation in Bath–one of isolation and vulnerability–and also establishes some key aspects of his character. We can see that he is a combination of confident and gullible; he trusts his overseer’s characterization of Bath as a “splendid city” and also trusts that finding lodgings will be no problem. Seeing the gap between his actual situation in Bath and the way that he explains this situation to himself–or, rather, allows other, distant people to explain it for him–the reader suspects that Billy may run into trouble.  

“There were no shops in this wide street that he was walking along, only a line of tall houses on each side, all of them identical. They had only porches and pillars and four or five steps going up to their front doors, and it was obvious that once upon a time they had been very swanky residences.” 

This passage establishes Bath as a very different city from London, the latter being the city where Billy is based. It also shows, once again, Billy’s limited ability to interpret his surroundings. To the reader, a quiet residential street of ruined, elegant old houses at night time might seem sinister and threatening. However, Billy’s jaunty, shrugging way of describing these houses shows that he himself is no more than mildly bemused.

“And now a queer thing happened to him. He was in the act of stepping back and turning away from the window when all at once his eye was caught and held in the most peculiar manner by the small notice that was there. BED AND BREAKFAST, it said. BED AND BREAKFAST. BED AND BREAKFAST. BED AND BREAKFAST.”

Billy is clearly transfixed by the sign in the landlady’s window; however, the story leaves it ambiguous as to whether these feelings are natural, induced by hypnosis, or both. It is true that