“Well,” said Daeng at last, uncomfortable in the early morning quiet. The foggy mist rolled in through the window and rasped the inside of her throat.
“Well, indeed,” agreed her husband.
“This is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into, Dr. Siri.”
“Me? I didn’t do it.”
“No. Not
“Madam, judging from the evidence in front of us, I’d say this would have occurred whether we were here or not. And it didn’t even have to have happened here. This was a tragedy begging to be let out of the bag.”
“Again, you’re right. But if you hadn’t volunteered yourself, volunteered us all, we’d be at home now beside the Mekhong eating noodles in relative peace. We wouldn’t be in this room with this particular body, about to be embroiled in an international scandal. This would be someone else’s problem. Someone in good health capable of handling it. But, oh, no. One last adventure before I retire, you say. What can go wrong? you say. Everything’s perfectly safe, you say. And look at us now. Five weeks ago we were perfectly content and now we’re up to our necks in dung.”
“Come on, Daeng. Be fair. What could I have done to avoid it?”
“What could you have done?”
“Yes.”
“Torn up the note.”
“I think we need to wake up Inspector Phosy,” Siri said. “I’ll stay with the major. And perhaps you could ask the manager to rouse Second Secretary Gordon and Dr. Yamaguchi.”
“Right.”
And she was gone.
Siri walked around, being careful not to disturb anything. He knew it wouldn’t be long before the room was full of inquisitive people. Once that happened it would be too late to spot any of those anomalies that make a difference to an inquiry. The room was very much like his own in the far wing. There was a strong scent of alcohol with a trace of vomit but there was no evidence that the major had thrown up. At the small carved dressing table he saw the lipstick and an indelible felt-tip pen. The bed was unmade but tidy as if someone had lain there but not slept. An empty whiskey bottle lay on its side on the floor. There was no cap. Beneath the bed was a crate with eight more unopened bottles and four empty slots. Not bad, Siri thought, after only three nights. On the table beside the bed was an open thermos of cold coffee and a used cup.
He only had time for a cursory look into the bathroom. The alcohol and vomit smells were much stronger in there. There was a small pile of clothing below the shower head and what might have been a short rug. They looked as if they’d been doused with water. He heard voices outside the door. He turned around and a shudder ran along his spine. The sight of the dimly lit room gave him a profound attack of deja vu. He didn’t know when or how, but he’d been in this room before-after dark.
Inspector Phosy had barred all but Second Secretary Gordon, Dr. Yamaguchi and Peach, who was needed for her linguistic skills, from entering the room. Peach had taken one look at the corpse and run into the bathroom to throw up. They often forgot how young she was. But she composed herself and, by keeping her gaze fixed out of the window, assured everyone she’d be able to translate. Judge Haeng, who was technically everybody’s boss, had barged his way into the room past one of the two old guards they’d posted there. He’d insisted on conducting a search of the major’s bags and drawers and even lifted the mattress to see if there was anything concealed beneath. Once satisfied-exactly of what they weren’t sure-he’d retired and left them to it. Senator Vogal had made a brief appearance in the doorway, paled visibly and quickly taken Mack Gordon off for a briefing.
Siri and Yamaguchi had unfastened the major from the door handle, a feat made easier by a slip knot device tied into the rope. This should have been the major’s escape route; a tug on the loose end and the noose gives way. But, on this occasion, the old soldier hadn’t been fast enough. They enlisted the aid of Phosy to lift him onto the bed. He was as heavy as a jeep. As the erection had failed to go away, they covered the body in a sheet for Peach’s benefit. All the indicators pointed to death by hanging. There was a clear ligature impression between the chin and the larynx. The face was pale and the eyes protruding. Saliva had dried around the mouth. As for the erotic element to the death, both Siri and the American had seen such a thing before. Siri had witnessed it only once; the death of a deviant neighbour in his Paris apartment. A middle-aged man, dressed in pajamas, had hanged himself from a coat rack in a closet. The rail had given way and he had fallen to the floor, waking everybody up. Yamaguchi, it turned out, had seen post mortem autoerotic accidents on numerous occasions, making them sound as common a pastime in Hawaii as Frisbee. Siri decided Western perverts had too much time on their hands. Although he was convinced that the major had accidentally killed himself, there seemed to be something troubling the American. Yamaguchi retreated to his room to look through a reference book he’d brought along for a little light reading.
Breakfast was laid out on the tables as usual but after the events of the morning few people had an appetite. Sergeant Johnson and Gordon went into town on Toua’s ponies to phone the consulate and inform them of events. Judge Haeng, not about to trust his fate to a wild beast, had them send back one of the trucks so he could be driven comfortably into town to pass on the disturbing news to the ministry. At the Friendship, word had spread rapidly and the buzz around the hotel was that this tragedy would surely mark the end of the mission. They knew that as soon as the smoke cleared they’d be on their way back to Vientiane. Only Auntie Bpoo saw the major’s demise as “a heroic way for a pervert to go.” Other opinion ranged from disgust to pity. Civilai arrived late for breakfast, weighed down with a thunderous hangover and oblivious.
“He what?” he said, after receiving a rushed description of the death.
“I doubt he intended to kill himself,” said Siri. “He was involved in a session of autoeroticism.” (He’d resorted to French as there was no Lao equivalent for such a concept.) “You do know what that is, I assume?”
“Of course I do,” Civilai replied. “It’s when you make love to your car. I’m quite fond of my Citroen.”
“Civilai!” said Daeng.
“Sorry. Bad time for a joke. Bad joke for the time.”
“Tact has never been your forte,” said Siri.
“But I very much doubt the major was capable of anything erotic last night,” Civilai said. “Sex, even with oneself, is an act of passion. I’m scouring my memory here but I seem to recall it comes at a time of heightened awareness. You become stimulated to the point when you need release. When I saw him he was dead to the world, snoring like a wild boar.”
“When you saw him where?”
“In his room. I went there last night.”
“You told us you’d forgotten,” said Daeng.
“I had to say that. I could hardly announce that the head of the mission was so drunk he couldn’t unlace his own boots. That he’d thrown up all over the floor.”
“You cleaned him up?”
“And took his boots off.”
“How did you get in the room?” Siri asked.
“The door wasn’t locked. I knocked and tried the handle.”
“Are you sure he was drunk and not ill?”
“Come on, Siri. I know what drunk looks like. He smelled like a whiskey distillery. He looked a lot like you the night Madame Daeng accepted your proposal of marriage.”
“That bad?”
“He was slurring so much his tongue kept flopping out of his mouth.”
“But it was only, what, seven o’clock when you went to his room,” Daeng reminded him. “Seven thirty at the latest. How does a man with Potter’s drinking track record manage to get that sloshed in such a hurry?”
“I’ve never tried it myself,” Civilai told her, “but I imagine knocking back a bottle of eighty-proof Scotch whiskey in an hour might just do it. The empty bottle was in his hand.”
Siri nodded. “What exactly did you do when you found him?”
Civilai broke the end off a baguette and dipped it in a very cold and runny egg yolk before filling his mouth with it. Siri and Daeng waited patiently until Civilai had washed the mouthful down with coffee.
“He was on the bed on his front, face to his left,” Civilai began. “He had the empty bottle in one hand and was reaching for his boot laces with the other. I went over to help him take the boots off and I noticed he had
