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:

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?”

“Difficulties?” said Mr. Boerstecher, surprised and shocked. “But we do nothing that is contrary to our duties as hotel-keepers. We give our clients what they want, everything they want, nothing more. Besides, there is no local authority here. The boundary is so loosely defined in this territory that no one knows exactly what is Mexico and what the United States.”

“And the families of your clients never prosecute you?”

“Prosecute us!” exclaimed Mr. Boerstecher indignantly. “And why, in heaven’s name? In what court? The families of our clients are only too happy to see liquidated without publicity affairs that are delicate and at the same time almost always painful. Would you like to see your room? It will be, if you really wish it, Room 113. You are not superstitious?”

“Not at all,” said Jean Monnier. “But in this connection, I ought to tell you that I have been reared religiously and that the idea of suicide is repugnant to me.”

“It is not a question of suicide,” said Mr. Boerstecher in a tone so peremptory that his interlocutor did not insist. “Sarconi, you will show Mr. Monnier 113. As for the $300, if you would be good enough to pay in advance in passing the cashier’s office, next to mine here.”

It was in vain in Room 113, bathed in a beautiful sunset, that Jean Monnier looked for traces of death-dealing machines.

“What time is dinner?”

“At eight-thirty, sir,” said the valet.

“Is it necessary to dress?”

“Most of the gentlemen do, sir.”

“Very well! I’ll dress. Get out a black tie and white shirt.”

When he went down to the lobby, he saw, indeed, that the women were in décolleté and the men in dinner jackets. Mr. Boerstecher appeared, officious but perfectly deferential.

“Ah! Mr. Monnier! I was looking for you. Since you are alone, I thought perhaps you would find it pleasant to share your table with one of our clients, Mrs. Kerby-Shaw.”

Monnier made a gesture of ennui.

“I did not come here,” he said, “to lead a worldly life. However, that depends. Can you show me this lady without presenting me?”

“Certainly, Mr. Monnier. Mrs. Kerby-Shaw is the young woman in the silver-spangled gown sitting near the piano looking through a magazine. I don’t think that her physical aspect can displease. Far from it. And she is an extremely pleasant woman, with good manners, intelligent, an artist.”

Certainly Mrs. Kerby-Shaw was a very pretty woman. Her hair, arranged in little curls, was drawn into a low knot at the nape of her neck to reveal a high and vigorous forehead. Her eyes were soft and intelligent. Why the devil did such a charming being want to die?

“Is Mrs. Kerby-Shaw... that is, is that lady one of your clients on the same terms and for the same reason as I?”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Boerstecher, and he seemed to charge the adverb with a heavy significance. “Certainly.”

“Then present me.”

After dinner Jean Monnier spent the entire evening in a small deserted salon, whispering words to Claire Kerby-Shaw which seemed to move her. Before going up to his room, he sought out Mr. Boerstecher. He found the manager in his office, a large black register open before him. Mr. Boerstecher was checking his accounts, and, from time to time, with a stroke of a red pencil, he struck out a line.

“Good evening, Mr. Monnier. Can I do something for you?”

“Yes, Mr. Boerstecher... At least I hope so... What I have to say is going to be a surprise... Such a sudden change... but that is the way life is... In short, I have come to tell you I don’t want to die.”

Mr. Boerstecher raised his eyes.

“Are you serious, Mr. Monnier?”

“I know very well,” said the Frenchman, “that I am going to seem incoherent and indecisive. But isn’t it natural that if circumstances change, your desires also change? Eight days ago, when I received your letter, I felt desperate, alone in the world. I didn’t think life’s struggle was worth the trouble to be enterprising. Today everything is changed. And fundamentally, thanks to you.”

“Thanks to me, Mr. Monnier?”

“Yes, because the young woman whom you seated across from me at the table is the one who has performed the miracle. Mrs. Kerby-Shaw is a delightful woman.”

“I told you so, Mr. Monnier.”

“Delightful and heroic. Told of my miserable situation, she really wanted to accept and to share it. Does that surprise you?”

“Not in the least. We are used to these sudden changes here. And I am glad, Mr. Monnier. You are young.”

“There remains only the settlement of a rather delicate question. The $300 which I have advanced and which constitutes almost all I have in the world, has it been irrevocably paid over to Thanatos, or may I, to buy our tickets, recover a part?”

“We are honest people, Mr. Monnier. Tomorrow morning the cashier’s office will prepare your bill, and the remainder will be returned to you.”

“You are most courteous and generous. Ah! Mr. Boerstecher, what gratitude I owe you! Happiness rediscovered! A new life!”

“At your service,” said Mr. Boerstecher.

He watched Jean Monnier make his exit and disappear. Then he pressed a button and said:

“Send me Sarconi.”

After several minutes the porter appeared.

“You asked for me, Signor Manager?”

“Yes, Sarconi. It will be necessary to turn on the gas in 113 this evening... about two o’clock in the morning.”

As the porter went out, Mrs. Kerby-Shaw appeared at the door.

“Come in,” said Mr. Boerstecher. “I was about to call you. Your young and charming client has just been in to announce his impending departure.”

“It seems to me,” she said, “that I deserve compliments. That was quick work.”

“Very quick. I have taken that into account.”

“Then it is set for tonight?”

“It is set for tonight.”

“Poor boy,” she said. “He was sweet, romantic.”

“They are all romantic.”

“All the same, you are cruel,” she said. “It’s exactly at the moment when they regain a taste for life that you do away with them.”

“Cruel? On the contrary, it is in that that the humanity of our method lies.”

He consulted his register.

“Tomorrow, rest, but day after tomorrow I have a new arrival for you. It’s another banker, but a Swede this time. And this one is no longer very young.”

“I really liked the little Frenchman,” she said, dreamily.

“One doesn’t choose one’s work,” said the manager severely. “Here, here are your ten dollars, plus a two-dollar premium.”

“Thank you,” said Claire Kerby-Shaw.

As she placed the bills in her bag, she sighed.

When she had gone, Boerstecher looked for his red pencil. Then, carefully, using a little metal ruler, he struck a name from his register...