The Landlady

Although The Landlady and The Inn of Lost Time are both different mystery stories with different plots, they still have some similarities. The Landlady is about the young inexperienced Billy Weaver staying at a very strange boarding house owned by a very mysterious landlady. The Inn of Lost Time is about Zenta the bodyguard and Tokubei the merchant staying at an inn and waking up to find that fifty years had passed. These two stories show similarities in their character’s inexperience, trickery, and strange hosts. One of the first similarities that these two stories show are their main character’s inexperience. Both Billy Weaver and Zenta are lured in easily. Billy enjoys the warm look of the boarding house while Zenta, hungry from

The first sign of trickery is the fake appearance of the inn or boarding house. Billy stays at the boarding house because he saw how warm and welcoming it was through the window. The fireplace cast a warm glow in the room while a dog was asleep on the floor and a bird rested on its perch. Later on, Billy finds out that both the dog and the bird are dead and have been stuffed by the landlady. Zenta and Tokubei first believed that time had passed because the appearance of the inn that they were staying at had changed. It now looks dilapidated and worn out. Using his keen observation skills, Zenta was able to figure out that this was caused by rubbing on ashes. Hidden drugs is another use of trickery. The landlady gave Billy tea that contained potassium cyanide, a bitter almond flavored poison, so that Billy would die and she could stuff him. The hosts at the inn gave Zenta and Tokubei tea that contained knockout drugs. After the two were asleep, the host and his daughter carried them outside. The fake kindness used by the innkeeper and the landlady is the third example of trickery. Billy thought that the landlady was being nice to him. He described her as, “.. she was obviously a kind and generous soul.” In the Inn of Lost Time, the innkeeper is polite to Zenta and Tokubei and offers them a low price since he can’t provide an extravagant welcome for the two. It was easy for Billy and Zenta to be tricked because

In both stories, the hosts know that their guests are coming and are waiting for them. When Billy rings the doorbell of the boarding house, the door is opened immediately as if the landlady had been standing on the other side of the door the whole entire time. When Tokubei and Zenta follow the smell of rice to the clearing, they find a pretty girl waiting for them. During Billy’s, Tokubei, and Zenta's stay, their hosts looked at them weirdly. The landlady looked at Billy as if he was food. “... her blue eyes traveled slowly all the way down the length of Billy’s body, to his feet and then up again.” Tokubei and Zenta's host was less creepy. He continuously admired Zenta's sword and would often talk to Zenta about them. The final example of the strange hosts are their appearances. Billy notices that the landlady has a strange smell that reminds him of pickled walnuts, new leather, and the corridors of the hospital. When Zenta was being served tea by the pretty girl, he noticed that she had six fingers. The odd behaviour and appearances of the landlady and the innkeeper creates a mysterious element in the