In the introduction to Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories, a collection of fourteen stories by other writers that he chose as the genre's best, Dahl states that he had always wanted to write a ghost story but never quite been able to. The implication is that the landlady has poisoned Billy's tea with cyanide and intends to stuff his corpse, as she has already done to Mulholland and Temple. He asks the landlady whether she has had any other guests since the two young men. Billy finds that his tea tastes faintly of bitter almonds. The landlady says that she stuffs all her pets when they die. Billy is surprised to find that the parrot and dachshund he had seen through the window are both stuffed. She says that Billy is a handsome young man, as were the two other guests.

The landlady assures Billy that her Mulholland was a Cambridge undergraduate, and that Mulholland and Temple are still staying upstairs in her boarding-house. He seems to recall that Mulholland was an Eton schoolboy whose disappearance was reported in the newspapers. The landlady invites Billy for some tea, and Billy tries to remember where he has previously heard the names in the guest-book. Temple – names which seem curiously familiar to Billy. When Billy signs her guest-book, he finds only two names, both dated more than two years ago: Christopher Mulholland and Gregory W. Billy discovers that her boarding-house is extremely cheap, and finds the woman somewhat eccentric and absent-minded, but very kind. When he rings the doorbell, it is instantly answered by a middle-aged landlady. Through the window, he notices a parrot in a cage and a sleeping dachshund on the floor. Looking for lodgings, he comes across a boarding-house and feels strangely compelled by its sign saying ' Bed and Breakfast'. Plot īilly Weaver is a seventeen-year-old youth who has travelled by train from London to Bath to start a new job. It initially appeared in The New Yorker, as did other short stories that would later be reprinted in the 1960 anthology, Kiss Kiss. ' The Landlady' is a short horror story by Roald Dahl.

For the Dostoyevsky story, see The Landlady (novella).

Poison by roald dahl