In The Landlady Billy has every right to be suspicious because who wouldn’t be with The Landlady saying how selective she is with her guests as he is only her third, because she has also had the guests Mr Temple and Mr Mulholland.
Another piece of evidence that should create tension to Billy Weaver in The Landlady is that she said ‘there wasn’t a blemish on Mr Temple’s body’ and how would she know? In my opinion this is an unusual and a scary thing to say, as it doesn’t seem to make sense and sounds like she has had a relationship with Mr Temple. She also says to Billy a lot, how perfect his teeth are and how good looking she found him to be.
As the plot thickens more evidence suggests that she is in fact a murderer who has stripped both bodies to stuff them as she has also with the animals. That could possibly be why both names sounded familiar to Billy, they had probably been mentioned in the newspaper for going missing and tension gets built as he mentions to the landlady the names sounded familiar and she quickly changes the subject. It also looks as if she has been using poison in Billy’s tea as it smelt strangely of ‘bitter almonds’ which is not normal.
I do feel that the landlady has been stereotyped as a murderer just because her pets are stuffed but I can see how Billy got scared at the end. Although no evidence was proven in the story that Mr Temple and Mulholland were in fact stuffed also because she didn’t admit to it. But this makes the story more effective and surprising. The story’s impact at the end is a big one because it is left on a cliffhanger. Had she also stuffed recent guests? And had she poisoned Billy Weaver and stuffed him also? Does she ever get found out?
I think that in A Terribly Strange Bed the main character is very lucky that he notices the picture disappearing, otherwise he could have been murdered when the canopy came down lowering on the narrator. Luckily the man escaped by rolling over, climbing through the window and sliding down the drainpipe, this creates tension in the story, as it is scary thinking how the character will escape without being suffocated in his sleep.
Motives for murder in both stories is different in A Terribly Strange Bed the motive for murder is so the criminals get the money. Whereas in The Landlady the motive is more than certainly psychological. I find both stories ironic in The Landlady Billy’s first impressions of the landlady is that she is ‘off her rocker’ in a sinister way and is not as ‘harmless’ as he thought. In A Terribly Strange Bed it is ironic that the old soldier tries to encourage the victim to break the bank to win it big time, and then makes himself the victim.
More contrasts between the two stories are that the gambling house and Bed and Breakfast have attractions to both characters. In A Terribly Strange Bed the character gets a determination to enter the gambling house as he has never been in one before and Billy in The Landlady gets attracted to the sign saying ‘Bed and Breakfast’ and then gets compelled to ring the bell.
In A Terribly Strange Bed the narrator ignores the advice from the Old Soldier to be suspicious and cautious of everything. Billy in The Landlady doesn’t feel like he should be suspicious and cautious until evidence builds up when she says ‘there wasn’t a blemish on Mr Temple’s body’ and that she was ‘just a teeny weeny bit choosy and particular when she chose her guests’. This was made obvious when he read the guest book that revealed she had only two guests before him and they were years ago!
One conclusion is almost certain for the ending that Billy will die in The Landlady who would never be suspected of doing such a crime and luckily the gambler escapes his ordeal in ‘A Terribly Strange Bed’.
The place A Terribly Strange Bed was set in Paris and The Landlady was set in Bath. The fear and tension in both stories is incredible and have a lot of connections with each other as ‘A Terribly Strange Bed’ is seen as a detective story and ‘The Landlady’ is a horror story.
