In Roald Dahl’s short story “The Landlady,” the landlady preserves her guests through taxidermy.
The story follows Billy Weaver, a young traveler who finds inexpensive lodging at a seemingly welcoming bed-and-breakfast in Bath. The landlady appears kind and attentive, but details in the house gradually become unsettling.
Billy notices that previous guests mentioned in the guest book seem familiar, and the landlady’s pets are revealed to be preserved specimens. The final clues strongly suggest that she has killed and stuffed earlier lodgers, although Dahl leaves some of the horror implicit.
“The Landlady” was first published in 1959 in The New Yorker and later appeared in Dahl’s short-story collections. It is frequently studied for its use of foreshadowing, understatement and an apparently innocent narrator.