What is this short story?

January 6, 2008 9:40 PM

What is the name of this short story that I am thinking of?

There was a short story that I read back in high school and I need to know the name of it. The story was about a man who had to spend the night at a bed and breakfast (or some stranger's house) and at this bed and breakfast this lady has a lot of stuffed pets. The story ends with her putting cyanide in his drink and she ends up stuffing him. Any ideas?

posted by jModug to writing & language (6 comments total)

It sounds like The Landlady by Roald Dahl... I think that's the name of it, anyway. Was there another tenant as well? Any other details you can remember?
posted by indienial at 9:47 PM on January 6, 2008

Complete text of Dahl's "The Landlady"here. I love this story!
posted by indienial at 9:49 PM on January 6, 2008 [1 favorite]

it is dahl for sure, not sure which story
posted by gavtaylor at 9:51 PM on January 6, 2008

Definitely "The Landlady." You're remembering a little more detail than is actually in the story though. It's implied that she's gonna stuff him, but the story ends with him noticing a funny taste in his tea. There's a plot summary and a list of all the books it's collected in on my Dahl tribute site.

(I was about to say that I'm surprised somebody would flout copyright by posting the whole story on an education site, but it looks like they got permission! I need to link to that, obviously.)
posted by web-goddess at 10:27 PM on January 6, 2008

Mefites are spot on with this. This story was also made into a one-off TV drama as part of Roald Dahl's series, Tales of the Unexpected, which ran here in the UK between 1979 and 1988. It used to scare the pants off me as a kid. Details here (with a brief mention of this story):

Tales of the Unexpected

The Landlady (orig. published, The New Yorker, 1959) entry can be found here:

The Landlady

Enjoy!
posted by Blacksun at 5:08 AM on January 7, 2008

You can the first couple of The Tales of The Unexpected series on DVD now... watched The Landlady late last year, one of the better creepier ones (though you see the twist coming a mile off).

Here's the IMDB entry on it.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:37 AM on January 7, 2008