SUICIDE IN A TAXI.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 1821, 13 January 1913, Page 2

SUICIDE IN A TAXI.

A PARIS TRAGEDY,

The chauffeur heard the sound of a detonation, but lie imagined it came from the bursting of a tyre in the car behind, and swept on. When he came to the destination winch had been given, his "fare" remained inside, and did not step out. So the chauffeur got down from the car and opened the door. The man was dead, with the pistol 011 the floor beside him. An examination of the dead body showed that it was that of M. Adrieu Floreutin-Pointereau, a town councillor of Artueil, France. When the police sent a messenger to M. Piontereau's house to infoim the relatives, no one answered. The messenger departed, intending to return later in the day. |But, later a telegram was received from the brother of the dead man, giving the news that the sender had that moment received a letter from his brother, stating that the dead man, before ta ing his own life, had taken that of his wife. It seems that monetary troubles had of late preoccupied him, and that he had talked much of suicide. His wife had endeavoured to console him and to persuade him that the dark hour would pass. But he had only grown the more gloomy in his resolution, and had apparently resolved that if he quitted this life he would not leave her behind him to endure its miseries. And so he shot her while she slept, wrote to her brother what he had done, and left for Paris. There he took a taxicab, and as it passed along the street of Montparnasse he pressed the pistol to his temple, as earlier he had pressed it to the temple of his beloved, and'ended his life.