Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 19, No. 99, February 1952
Suicide Hotel
by André Maurois[1]
All his life, Andre Maurois, the French novelist and biographer, wanted to write. When, as a young man, he appealed for advice to his best friend, Professor Alain, the professor of philosophy said: “If you wish to write, nothing will be more useful to you than to have lived first, to have employed yourself in a trade and to have known responsibility.” Such practical advice from a professor of philosophy! So young Maurois went to work in his father’s factory. But a person who wants to write, and who wants to deeply enough, will write; and so it turned out for Andre Maurois — his very first book, LES SILENCES DU COLONEL BRAMBLE, transformed him, overnight, from an industrial executive into a popular and successful author.
Andre Maurois has been called “a sophisticate who writes for people who love the urbane and the witty.” His work has also been described as having delicacy of style and charming irony. You will find all these qualities in the curious little tale which follows...
We are extremely grateful to Ernest Rubin of Arlington, Virginia, for calling this “crime cocktail” to our attention and for graciously supplying the original text.
“What’s steel?” asked Jean Monnier.
“Fifty-nine and one-fourth,” answered one of a dozen clerks.
The clicking of their machines formed a jazz-like rhythm. Outside the window loomed the giant skyscrapers of Manhattan, their forty or fifty stories pierced by precise rows of windows. Telephones screamed and ribbons of paper unrolled with incredible rapidity, filling the office with their sinister serpentines, covered with cryptic letters and figures.
“What’s Steel?” said Jean Monnier.
“Fifty-nine,” answered Gertrude Miller.
She stopped a moment to look at the young Frenchman. Hunched in an armchair, his head in his hands, he seemed crushed.
“Another one who has gambled,” she thought. “Tough luck for him. And tough luck for Fanny.”
For two years before Jean Monnier, attached to the New York office of the Banque Holmann, had married his pretty and clever American secretary.
A voice halloed outside the door. Harry Cooper entered. Jean Monnier rose.
“What a session!” said Harry Cooper. “Every stock down 20 per cent. And one still finds imbeciles who say this isn’t a crisis.”
“It is a crisis,” said Jean Monnier.
And he went out.
“That one’s been hit,” said Harry Cooper.
“Yes,” said Gertrude Miller, “he’s gambled his shirt. Fanny told me so. She’s going to leave him tonight.”
“Tough luck for him,” said Harry Cooper.
The beautiful bronze doors of the elevator slid open.
“Down,” said Jean Monnier.
The whole of the little fortune amassed in Arizona had been advanced for margin in his stock transactions. He was through. In the street, hurrying for his train, he tried to imagine the future. If Fanny withheld her blow, it was not impossible. He remembered his first struggles, his rapid rise. After all, he was barely thirty. But he knew Fanny would be merciless and she definitely was.
When he woke up alone the next morning, he felt drained of all courage. Despite Fanny’s harshness, he had loved her. The maid served his melon and cereal, and blandly asked for money.
He gave her fifteen dollars, then cast up his accounts. He had left a little less than $600. It was enough to live on for one, perhaps two, months. After that? He looked out the window. Almost every day for a week there had been stories of suicides in the newspapers. Bankers, stock salesmen, speculators chose death to a battle already lost. A fall of twenty stories? How many seconds? Three, four... then that quashing on the pavement. But if the shock did not kill him? He imagined atrocious sufferings, his limbs broken, his flesh crushed to pulp. He sighed, then, a newspaper under his arm, went to lunch at a restaurant, where he was surprised to find how good pancakes flooded with maple syrup still tasted.
“Thanatos Palace Hotel... New Mexico... Who is writing to me from that bizarre address?”
Below three engraved cypresses, he read:
Dear Sir:
If we approach you today, it is not by chance but because we have information about you which permits us to think and to hope that our services may be of some use to you.
You certainly cannot but have noticed that, in the life of the most courageous man, there may arise circumstances so completely inimical that further struggle becomes impossible and the idea of death comes to seem a deliverance.
To close the eyes, to sleep, never to wake again, to hear no more questions or reproaches... Many of us have fashioned this dream, formulated this wish. However, aside from a few cases, men do not dare to flee their ills, and this is understandable when one observes those among them who have tried to do it. For most suicides are frightful frustrations. Someone who has attempted to shoot himself through the head succeeds only in severing the optic nerve and making himself blind. Someone else, who has thought of going to sleep after poisoning himself with some compound, makes a mistake in measuring the dose and wakes up, three days later, brain liquefied, memory gone, limbs paralyzed. Suicide is an art that does not permit mediocrity nor amateurism, and which, moreover, by its very nature does not allow the acquisition of experience.
This experience, if, as we believe, the problem interests you, we are ready to put at your disposal. Proprietors of a hotel situated at the frontier of the United States and Mexico, freed of all troublesome control by the desert-like character of the region, we have believed it our duty to offer to those of our fellow-men who, for serious and irrefutable reasons, wish to quit this life, the means of doing it without suffering and, we almost dare write, without danger.
At the Thanatos Palace Hotel, death will come in your sleep and in the most peaceful manner. Our skillful technique, acquired in the course of fifteen years of uninterrupted success (we received more than 2000 visitors last year), permits us to guarantee a minute dose and immediate results. We may also add that, for clients affected by legitimate religious scruples, we put an end to things by an ingenious method, and, if you honor us by turning to us, relieve you of all moral responsibility.
It is important to add that Thanatos is situated in a region of great natural beauty, that it has four tennis courts, an eighteen-hole golf course, and a beautiful swimming pool. Its clientele being composed of persons of both sexes who almost all belong to a refined social milieu, the social delights of the sojourn are incomparable. Travelers are requested to get off at Deeming, where the hotel automobile will meet them. They are asked to announce their arrival by letter or cable at least two days in advance. As for the fee, the sum of $300 will cover your entire expenses...
The hotel was built in Spanish-Indian style, very low, with terraced roof and red walls of a cement crudely simulating clay. The rooms faced south on an open vista, streets like those of a great city, flower-lined boulevards.
Henry Boerstecher, the manager, was a quiet man with gold-rimmed glasses, very proud of his establishment.
“The hotel belongs to you?” asked Jean Monnier.
“No. The hotel belongs to a corporation, but it was my idea, and I am manager for life.”
“And how is it that you don’t have the gravest difficulties with the local authorities?”