Magnus Pym, a “powerful but stately” (14) English spy, arrives in a small coastal town in the southern country of Devon, England. He goes straight to a boarding house operated by Miss Dubber, who is happy to receive him despite the late hour, though she refers to him as Mr. Canterbury. She insists that he remove his black tie and politely accepts his gift of a “thickly knitted cashmere shawl” (15). They sit, drink tea, and talk, and Pym is very “attentive.” He plans to spend two weeks at her guest house, where he has rented a room for years but appears only intermittently. Miss Dubber later hears him singing to himself in his room.

Three hours earlier, Pym’s wife, Mary, stands at her bedroom window in Vienna, Austria. She waits for either her husband or Jack Brotherhood, who calls her on the telephone to announce his imminent arrival. Many of Mary’s male relatives have been died “fine deaths” in service to England. Although Mary is fiercely patriotic and believes she’s dutiful, she still regrets an incident in Greece with her husband and is desperate to apologize. She now has no idea of Pym’s whereabouts and hopes that Jack can tell her.