The Thai Amulet

Chapter 8

Once in powerKing Yot Fa remained much as he had been. He was not well trained for kingship, but he was an intelligent boy and tried hard to emulate his father.

The regent, his mother, on the other hand, gloried in her position. She had the royal residence completely redone to her taste, at great expense to the kingdom, and moved ruthlessly to sweep away her detractors. Wives and concubines of the dead king were thrown out of the palace, and several of those who opposed her were sent away on missions of varying degrees of necessity and plausibility. Many did not return.

The regent tried to have me sent to the countryside as a laborer, but the young king would not allow it. Accordingly, she changed her tactics to try to drive a wedge between the two of us, a strategy that I unwittingly aided, just how it will soon become clear. I have no idea what poisonous things she had to say about me, but I could see, as the months wore on, that they were having an effect. The king began to view me with some suspicion, which usually, but not always, I was able to allay. Nonetheless, he continued to insist I remain in the palace, and indeed appointed me to a better position.

Shortly after the king’s death and her appointment as regent, Lady Si Sudachan began a scandalous and completely inappropriate dalliance with a heretofore minor court official, Phan But Si Thep, the guard of the front image hall. Phan But Si Thep had always struck me as an ambitious man of little ability. The regent, however, clearly doted on him, and he was a slave to her every command.

The liaison was certainly to his benefit. Shortly after he succumbed to the lady’s blandishments, for it was she who initiated the liaison, she appointed him Khun Chinnarat, guard of the inner image hall, demoting the former Khun Chinnarat to her lover’s former title of Phan But Si Thep. That elevated position in the inner court made it possible for the two of them to be together, all the more so when the queen regent promoted him to an even more important post as Khun Worawongsa, in charge of the Office of Registration.

The queen regent obviously had no care as to how others in the palace would view her actions, because soon after that, she built Khun Worawongsa an official residence where palace officials were required to submit to his wishes. She then built him a second official residence at the Din Gate, after which Worawongsa began taking a much more direct interest in the affairs of the kingdom and appeared regularly at the regent’s side.

There was talk, of course, but also fear of her wrath, and none objected, at least not in public. Indeed, all opposition to these measures was quickly quashed. One official, known to oppose Khun Worawongsa, was stabbed to death on leaving the residence at the Din Gate. It was increasingly clear that Lady Si Sudachan and her lover would brook no opposition; that to defy them meant, quite simply, death. Still, the gossip in the palace was, as you can imagine, considerable when it became evident that the regent was expecting a child.

So there I was back in the bosom of the Chaiwong family, and not entirely happy about it. Nor was the family, with the exception of Chat, any more thrilled about my presence than I was. Certainly there was no one making an effort to make sure I felt at home. Indeed, my host, Wongvipa, made no secret of the fact she’d prefer I wasn’t there. It was on the subject of my presence that Chat overruled his mother for the one and only time. He needed Jennifer to be near him, and she wasn’t going anywhere without me. Whether Wongvipa or I liked it or not, I was there.

Not that Wongvipa made her feelings known to me face-to-face. Her instructions were never delivered in person, but rather by Yutai. Through him she had declared Chat head of the company in his father’s place. According to Yutai, and as Chat had reported, Thaksin had made his views known to his wife before he died. No one argued, not even Sompom, who could be said to have a prior claim, given he was Thaksin’s firstborn, and indeed had worked for several years in the company before escaping to the world of academe. It was experience Chat lacked.

A Buddhist of Thaksin Chaiwong’s wealth and status might be expected to lie in state, as it were, for a considerable period, even months, but he was cremated three days after he died. His widow saw to that. Jennifer and I were not present at the cremation at Wongvipa’s request. Busakorn, the chosen one, was.

There were other immediate changes about the place that signaled the new regime. The two Fitzgerald portraits, one of Thaksin and his brother, the other of Sompom as a child with his mother, disappeared from sight. In their place were portraits of Wongvipa and the two boys, and Wongvipa and Fatty. The official explanation was that it distressed Wongvipa to see her husband so young and well. Sompom, Wan-nee, and Praneet, regular guests at the family dinner table, were no longer invited.

“We’ve been banished,” Praneet told me. “Our appearance is required at ceremonial occasions only.”

“I think your mother and Wongvipa perhaps do not get along that well,” I said, sympathetically.

“My mother feels that when my grandmother died, Wongvipa took advantage of Thaksin’s grief and managed to insinuate herself into the family and his life. Certainly she got pregnant with Chat right away. They got married shortly thereafter. That’s what I’m told, anyway. I was just a child.”

“Still, Thaksin and Wongvipa were together a long time,” I said. “Chat is what? Twenty-four or -five, I think.”

“Yes,” she said. “And I have a fair amount of sympathy for her. My mother was born into wealth and privilege, as I was. Wongvipa wasn’t. She grew up in a village on the outskirts of Bangkok. I think she was very poor. It can’t have been easy for her. She may have married well, but she is not without ability and charm. To tell you the truth, I’m just glad not to have to go to dinner there every week.”

Still, the suddenness of all this surprised me. I would have thought the widow would have waited a decent length of time to dump the portraits and the relatives, but Wongvipa did not seem to care about such things. Nor did she make any effort to disguise her liking for Yutai. While I had tried to persuade myself that the intimate scene I had witnessed between them on my arrival in Ayutthaya had been my imagination, it was clear that it was not. Yutai could regularly be found at her side, rather more than mere business would call for, and from time to time, I caught her looking at him with a glance that was nothing short of smoldering. I, on the other hand, found he was often watching me, and not, I thought, with any affection. Having said that, it rather quickly became business as usual, and business took the family and therefore Jennifer and me, to Chiang Mai.

In a sense, to travel the more than four hundred miles north from Bangkok to Chiang Mai is to journey back through history, pushing against the tide of ethnically and linguistically linked peoples who, about a thousand years ago or so, began to move south out of China’s Yunnan province into what was to become Thailand. It was a migration that was to take several centuries and to result in the formation of successive kingdoms, each a little farther south than the last. Chiang Mai was part of the earliest of five centers of power, the kingdom of Lan Na, which Thais consider to be the first of five Thai kingdoms. Lan Na was to be followed by Sukhothai, then Ayutthaya, then Thonburi, and finally Bangkok.

Now Chiang Mai is the principal city of Thailand’s north. The Old City is still surrounded by walls and a moat, although the town has spread way beyond them, a bustling place, noisy with the whine of tuk-tuks that buzz around the city by the thousands, their sound competing with the crowing of roosters and the cries of street vendors. The markets are crowded and colorful, the stalls piled high with fish and exotic fruits and vegetables.

But in all the noise there are oases of calm, perhaps even silence. One of them was the summer residence of the Chai-wongs. It was built of wood on a platform above the Ping River, and consisted of a main house with a huge veranda overlooking the river where the family took its meals, and off apart, a guest pavilion with three rooms and a sala that Jennifer and I shared.

If anything, I liked the place even more than the spectacular apartment in Ayutthaya. Here silk had been exchanged for cotton, gold and black lacquerware for exquisite old wood carving and painted columns, marble tile for a courtyard of laterite blocks.

It was here, I knew from Praneet, that Will Beauchamp had come on a reasonably regular basis to write. My bedroom had the desk I was certain he used, not because it was the only desk in the little house, although it was, but because it was the perfect place for contemplation and creation, with a view through an open window to sunlight filtering through the dark and luxurious tropical foliage that surrounded the grounds. I found his business card for Fairfield Antiques, one side in English, the other in Thai, stuck in the side of one of the drawers. In that same drawer I found red dust and some terra-cotta residue that made me think of the broken amulet. I looked in vain for more. If Will’s ghost was there, I couldn’t feel it. There was only the rustle of the breeze in the leaves, the rattle of bamboo, and the songs of birds. It was very close to paradise.

The guest pavilion also afforded me a view of the comings and goings at the main house. Khun Wichai visited, favoring me with his lovely smile and a wave as he went by. I hoped he would stay for dinner, especially given he’d not brought Busakorn, but he was there, apparently, on business. There were others who came and went, none of them familiar. I gathered that the business the family was there to discuss was Wongvipa’s. She had a factory and kilns just outside the city where her terra-cotta products were made.

The other haven of silence was to be found in the temples, or wats. There were hundreds of them in the city, some of them so ancient they were essentially ruins, others more modern and vital. It was to one of these that I took myself one day, the piece of paper with its name written so laboriously by the woman in the amulet market in Bangkok clutched tightly in my hand. Wats are essentially composed of two areas, the quarters of the monks and the more public areas for worship. The residences tend to be rather austere, but the public areas are often a riot of color, and gold, and splendid carving. I presented myself at the wat in question, and asked to meet with an English-speaking priest. To my surprise, they obliged.

I was ushered into one of the public buildings, abandoning my shoes, and ascending a staircase lined with protective serpents, or nagas. I had been well instructed never to touch a monk but to kneel in his presence and bow, forehead to the floor on meeting him, to ensure that the bottom of my feet at no time pointed toward either the monk or, more importantly, the Buddha image. I was to call him ajahn, which I gather means teacher. I am not religious, I’m afraid, and I was so enchanted by the place, from the decaying frescoes in reds and blues that depicted scenes from the life of Buddha, to his gold image, so calm and majestic, and at least twelve or fifteen feet high and beautifully crafted, that I did not for a time notice the monk who was sitting on a platform, his legs crossed, watching me.

“Oh dear,” I muttered and managed to get myself more or less in the right position. At the monk’s command, I was able to sit up, but had to sit on the floor with my legs tucked to one side, a position that at my age is something of a trial.

I looked up to see a man, his head shaved, dressed in the orange robe of the monk, one shoulder bare in the Thai style. What I noticed most were his blue eyes.

“You’re surprised,” he said softly. “To see a white man here.”

“I suppose I am,” I said. “Where are you from, ajahn!”

“California, but I have been here many years.” We talked about several things for a few minutes, the weather, how I liked Chiang Mai, his hometown of Fresno.

“Do you miss it?” I said.

“Fresno?” he replied with a slight smile. “California? My former life? Sex?”

That hadn’t been what I’d meant.

“No,” he said finally. But then he said, “You came here for a purpose.”

“Yes. I am looking for a monk. May I?” I said, pointing to my bag. “I have a photograph. I’m told he is associated with this temple.”

“Of course,” he said. He barely looked at the photo before handing it back to me. “He is not here.”

“But he was,” I persisted. The monk did not reply.

“Ajahn, would you please tell me about him,” I said. “I have no idea if it is relevant, but I do need to know if it is possible to talk to him. I am trying to find a man who abandoned his wife and disabled child in Canada, and I am following up every lead I have, which is not many.”

The monk said nothing for quite a while. Then he said, so softly I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly, “In Buddhism, a cool heart is something to strive for.”

“What?”

“You are very troubled about something.”

I thought about that for a moment or two. “I don’t think so,” I said. “Not any more than usual. Well, maybe I am. A little, anyway.”

He didn’t say anything.

I looked at the frescoes for a minute or two, admired the workmanship, the carved windows. Then suddenly I was just burbling away at this total stranger. I told him about Will and Natalie, about Jennifer and Chat, about my relationship with Rob. Part of me was horrified that I was going on like that, but the other was just relieved.

“You don’t have children of your own, do you?” he said when I stopped for breath.

“No.”

“Was that a mistake?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. But I have no patience. If they wouldn’t stop crying or something, I probably would have killed them.” There was a perceptible pause. I was dimly aware of chanting off in the distance somewhere, and the ringing of bells, but they had a muffled quality. “Actually,” I said. “That is not true. I would not have killed them. I would not have abandoned them. Will’s daughter is mentally handicapped, but she has the most beautiful smile you have ever seen. How could he do what he did? And you know what? He came here and he started writing a book about a woman who chopped her husband into bits and murdered her child. At least everybody thinks she did. The child’s body was never found. What would it take to make a mother murder her child? What possible conditions, other than utter madness, would have to prevail for that to happen? Surely it is our responsibility as adults to protect our children, our own, or somebody else’s.” I could hear my voice coming out in a croak as I spoke, and I realized that I had had no idea I was this upset about everything. I thought I would choke on my bile.

“And you know what else?” I said. “Almost no one has told me the truth, Thais and whites alike, since I got here. They smile, they are polite, and they lie through their teeth. Or if they haven’t lied, they have withheld information. And that includes you,” I said, pointing at the photograph.

For a moment I thought I would be struck by lightning for speaking to a monk that way.

“I suppose all religious groups have their bad apples,” he said after a minute. “He was one of them. He was a senior monk here, and he was found to have a rather spectacular home outside where he lived with a woman and drove a Mercedes. We thought he was retreating to meditate alone. The Ministry of Religious Affairs investigated—this was all done rather quietly, you understand—and he is no longer a monk.”

“Is that it?”

“No. He obviously had a lot of money. It was thought he was taking money from the temple, but there was no evidence that he had. The police decided his money came from smuggling.”

“Smuggling what?”

“Jewels, drugs, people. He is now in jail.”

“Since when?”

“Two years ago.”

“His father apparently says he is dead.”

“Perhaps he is dead to him.”

“Thank you,” I said. “For telling me.”

“You are quite welcome,” he replied. “Now you should go back to taking care of the children.”

“Could I ask one more question?”

“Yes.”

“These amulets,” I said, handing over my little plastic sandwich bag.

“These are—”

“Blasphemous, I know. But have you ever seen them before?”

“No,” he said, handing them back. “Nor, in the interests of not withholding information, have I seen anything like them.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I feel better.”

“I’m glad,” he replied. “It must be difficult for you trying to be a mother to so many.”

I opened my mouth to protest, to tell him I was childless by choice, that I had a wonderful life, a business that might not make me rich, but one I loved. I was going to tell him I owned a house, had very nice friends, got to travel all over the world, footloose and fancy-free. But I didn’t say any of it. Instead, I bowed my forehead to the floor again, and by the time I looked up, he was gone.

I wandered around Chiang Mai for at least an hour after that, arguing with both the monk and myself in my head. I remembered Clive telling me that I was always flailing about helping people I barely knew, and I wondered if this is what the monk had meant. I supposed Clive was referring to people like Robert Fitzgerald. I’d told Robert I’d try to sell his spirit houses in my store. Spirit houses! And this in a neighborhood that leaned rather more to Armani and Chanel. If Fitzgerald had a problem with his father, was it up to me to try to fix it? Maybe Clive and the monk were right.

On the other hand, Clive could hardly be judgmental, could he? And the comment about people I barely knew was hardly fair. For example, why exactly had I taken him back as a business partner long after our divorce? You couldn’t get much closer to home than that. I told myself it was because he was now my friend Moira’s partner, but maybe it was because I sensed the vulnerability under his rather brash exterior, or maybe because I felt the marriage failed because of me. Certainly I knew that when he went into business in competition with me, and right across the road, that he wouldn’t last long, particularly when he got dumped by his second wife, the rather wealthy Celeste. I could just have waited him out. He was no businessman, no matter how talented a designer.

And then there was William Beauchamp. Why had I ever said I would look for a man I didn’t know very well, for a woman and a daughter I knew even less? Was that what the monk had been talking about?

Maybe the only person in my life I didn’t feel responsible for was Rob. And maybe that was why I was so reluctant to move in with him. I thought our relationship would change, and I would not only be struggling with trying to be a mother to Jennifer, but he’d want me to mother him as well.

Deep in these thoughts, I was quite unaware of my surroundings, walking up and down lanes, barely noticing the buzz of the town around me. I will always think of Chiang Mai as a beehive because of the high-pitched hum of the tuk-tuks that must surely outnumber the cars. They whirred around corners and jostled for position at the intersections like annoying insects. At some point I found myself in the market off Moon Muang Road near the moat that surrounds the Old City. I barely noticed the piles of red, spiky rambutan fruit, the green papaya, the tubs of snakefish, the stacks of tofu and dried fish, the cries of the merchants.

Suddenly, though, I felt a tuk-tuk dangerously close to me, and tried to move out of its way. I felt a hand grab at the bag on my shoulder and tug at it. I yelled and held on tight, but was thrown very hard against a fruit stand, dislodging a mound of jackfruit, and sliding to the ground. Two or three people nearby rushed to help me, and by the time I was able to look around, the tuk-tuk had disappeared in a haze of blue exhaust.

“You hurt?” the owner of the fruit stall said, helping me up.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Very bad man,” one of the people who had come to my aid said, picking up the fruit and inspecting it before returning it to the pile.

“What happened?” I said.

“Young man on tuk-tuk,” the woman said. “Tried to steal your bag. It is good you hold on tight to it. In day, too. Big risk, I think. No good,” she added, pointing to a rather large bruise that was already forming on my arm. “He hurt you.”

“Maipen rai,” I said. “I still have my bag, and I’m fine. It doesn’t matter.” So much for thinking too much, though. All it got you was a sore arm and a frayed strap on your bag. As a traveler I should have been paying more attention in a strange place. I resolved to avoid such introspection as much as possible.

I returned to the guest house rather shaken despite what I’d said, but not so much that I didn’t notice that someone had been in my room. There was the maid, of course, as the most logical person, but the bed had been made up before I left. Will’s business card was gone, as was the red dust in the drawer. I decided she had simply come back and cleaned some more, but I wasn’t entirely sure. I kept thinking of the man in the amulet market who had tried so hard to separate me from the blasphemous ones. I carried them in my large shoulder bag at all times, so if someone had been looking for them, they would have been disappointed. But why would they? Could it have been the sword someone was after? That I’d left in Bangkok, determining rather sensibly that it wouldn’t go in my suitcase, and I was unlikely to be allowed to carry it on to the airplane. I decided I was just being silly, that my imagination was expanding in the heat.

Too soon the interlude in Chiang Mai was over, and we all returned to the Chaiwong residence in Ayutthaya. The place was beginning to feel like a prison to me, no matter how splendid the setting. It was not as splendid as before, mind you. This time I was relegated to a room the size of a broom closet. A beautiful broom closet, of course—everything in the place was beautiful—but there was no doubt in my mind that I was now in the servants’ wing. The lovely gold room was now occupied by Yutai. He had also moved into the largest office at Ayutthaya Trading, Jennifer told me, one with glass walls so that he could keep an eye on all goings-on. The man was rising through the ranks at Ayutthaya with breathtaking speed. It was too tempting to speculate why that might be.

Still, it got me back on the trail of Will Beauchamp. I had forgotten, in the chaos of the preceding days, my discovery of the portrait with my—it had come to be my— sword in it. I’d had the opportunity to study both the portrait of the two brothers and the sword very carefully, before the portrait disappeared, and there was no doubt in my mind that they were one and the same. I couldn’t believe there would be two identical swords.

What, I wondered, had made Will think the sword had been used to hack up Helen Ford’s husband? I went back and read the newspaper clipping that had been sent to Natalie very carefully, and there was no mention of it. I had only one clipping of what must have been many, given the nature of the crime in particular, and the propensity of newspapers in general to keep a good story going as long as possible. Still, given the way newspapers summarize an ongoing story every time they add to it, I would have thought the use of a sixteenth-century silver sword as a murder weapon would have been worth a mention at least some of the time.

So, assuming the story about chopping up Mr. Ford was untrue, if Will had happened upon the sword somehow in the course of a buying expedition, what did he do? Did he try to sell it to the Chaiwongs? That’s what you’d do, after all, if you were a dealer—unless you were my kind of dealer, which is to say I fall in love with things I purchase and then can hardly bear to part with them.

But assuming he wasn’t my kind of dealer, if he recognized the sword as the one in the portrait, then he would offer to sell it. If you were the Chaiwongs, given money was no object, surely you’d buy it for sentimental reasons, or just for the novelty of it.

Or, then again, perhaps Will purchased it from the Chaiwongs. It had been in the family at some point in the last half century or so. But why would they sell in the first place? They didn’t need the money. Which brought me back to the possibility that maybe they’d disposed of it because it had been used to hack up a body.

Still, that was just so implausible. It was much more likely that Will had just made up the story on the spur of the moment to impress Tatiana. If Praneet was right, though, he didn’t need to do that. Tatiana was the one on the prowl, not him. Was it possible that it was not Will but Tatiana herself, with an eye to a career in film, who had invented this story as a way to help sell her idea?

I decided the only thing to do was to pay her a visit. In fact, I was going to pay all of them—Fitzgerald, Rowland, and Tatiana—a surprise visit to see if their memories had improved since last we’d talked. But first I had to have a chat with the people at Keene Lyon Press, the company I was betting was also known, in Will Beauchamp’s world, as Key Lime Pie.

The distinguishing feature of the office, the defining motif, was fish. There were photos of fish, drawings of fish. There were fish with teeth, pretty ones with gorgeous coloring, scary ones that peeked out from behind rocks under the sea. A rather large aquarium built into the wall featured the live version, in contrast with the stuffed ones mounted on the side table. In a corner, a video ran on a loop. It showed, what else? Fish. There were magazines about fish, a fisherman’s newsletter, and even a fish cookbook—at least that is what it looked like—on the coffee table. The fish in the aquarium were very soothing to watch, but why, I had to ask myself, so many fish? I was not to wonder for long.

I was greeted within a few minutes by a pleasant young man called Mr. Nimit, who told me he was the senior editor. He ushered me into the back office where he sat at a desk piled high with papers. Two other workers, both women, were working at their desks, one of them with slides on a light table, which she used a magnifying glass to look at from time to time, the other with what looked to be galley proofs. There were a lot of fish photographs on the walls in here, too.

“I see you are admiring our photographs,” he said, after the formalities had been taken care of. “We take great pride in them. These are from our books,” he said. “Given you are here, you no doubt know all about our books.”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” I said.

“We are the largest publisher offish books in Bangkok,” he said proudly. “It is a very big business now. Our founder, Mr. Lyon,” Mr. Nimit said, indicating a framed photo above his desk, “was very smart. He knew this would be a very good selling item for us. Mr. Lyon died a few years ago, and unfortunately did not know how successful his company would become. It is now Thai-owned, of course. By my family,” he added just a little smugly.

“What other kind of books do you do?” I said, on the assumption that Will didn’t know any more than I did on the subject offish.

“No other books,” he said. “We work all year on fish books. We do a newsletter, we have a web site, all about fish. Now, how can I be of service?”

“I’m trying to get in touch with one of your authors,” I said. I was starting to have a bad feeling about this. “William Beauchamp.”

Mr. Nimit looked startled, then wary. “We do not have an author by that name.”

“But I think you know the name,” I said with just a touch of irritation in my voice. I was getting really tired of people not telling me things, despite my therapy session with the monk in Chiang Mai. But in Thailand, showing your irritation is a bad idea that gets you nowhere fast. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I do apologize. Mr. Beauchamp is a colleague of mine from Toronto. He has not been seen for several weeks, if not months. His wife is worried about him. I was told you were his publisher.”

“Mr. William was here,” Mr. Nimit said, somewhat mollified. “He came to introduce himself. He said he was one of our authors. We were all very surprised. I showed him the books we publish. You are also most welcome to look. I believe Mr. William was very upset. We were sorry we could not help him. He said his agent had given him an advance for this book. He showed me a photocopy of the check, but it was from an agent, not from us. Perhaps a colleague was making a joke of some kind, but if so, it was not in good taste, was it? Not very funny.”

“No, it was not very funny at all,” I agreed. “Now when was this that Mr. William came in?”

The man thought about it for a moment, and then spoke in Thai to the two women, who were pretending to work while they listened to our conversation. One of them replied.

“We believe it was exactly July two,” Mr. Nimit said. “It is the birthday of Miss Peroontip,” he said, gesturing to the woman who had spoken. “She remembers the day exactly therefore.”

“And you didn’t see him again?”

“No,” he said. “There was no reason. Mr. William said his book was not about fish.”

“You’ve been very helpful,” I said.

“Please,” he said. “A copy of our newsletter, and a catalog of our books. We also offer videotapes.”

“Thank you so much,” I said. It had been a discouraging conversation for me, but not nearly as bad as it would have been for Will. Bent Rowland was apparently even more of a sleaze than I thought. He and I would be having a chat shortly, but on the way, there was Tatiana Tucker to be seen.

“It’s too late,” she said, as I walked through the agency door.

“Too late for what?” I said.

“To return my call,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “I am so sorry. I completely forgot!”

“Well,” she said. “At least you didn’t say you didn’t receive my message.”

“Thaksin Chaiwong died,” I said, trying to explain.

“Who’s Thaksin Chaiwong?” she said. “And what has this got to do with returning phone calls?”

“A very wealthy man,” I said. “Jennifer and I found him. Dead, I mean. It rather put other things out of my mind.”

“Oh,” she said. “I guess finding a corpse will do that for you. But it’s still too late. I’ve unfortunately lost the papers you were looking for.”

“The m—?” I said. She shook her head almost imperceptibly. I stopped midword. The two other women in the office tried to look as if they weren’t listening.

“I’m going home, by the way,” she said.

“Home?” I said.

“The States,” she said.

“For good, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow morning. I’m just here to clear out my desk.”

“Isn’t this rather sudden?”

“I’m like that,” she said. “I make decisions, and I act on them.” She hadn’t looked at me once during this conversation. The other women in the office were assiduously pretending to work.

“Please let me buy you lunch, a drink, a coffee, whatever you have time for,” I said. “As a send-off. And as an apology for not returning your phone call.”

“That’s not necessary,” she said.

“Please,” I said. “I feel terrible.”

I could see she was thinking about it, and in the end her better nature gained the upper hand. “Okay,” she said. “I could use a drink.”

“You lost the manuscript!” I exclaimed as soon as we sat down at a table in a nearby bar.

“Shh!” she said, looking about her carefully and speaking in virtually a whisper. “I didn’t lose it. I destroyed it. And it wasn’t the whole manuscript anyway. It was just the introduction.”

“But why?” I said. “What happened to the movie?”

“It didn’t pan out,” she said, but I could tell she was lying.

“That’s too bad,” I said, trying to keep my irritation and curiosity out of my voice. “It sounded interesting. I guess that means you don’t need the sword anymore. Too bad. I spoke to the soon-to-be owner, and he seemed interested. There’d have to be insurance and everything, but he was willing to at least discuss it.” If there was a contest on to tell more lies than anyone else in Thailand, I intended to be part of it.

“That was nice of you,” she said. “So few people these days do what they say they will.”

I felt like a worm.

“I think you should just forget about what I told you about the sword,” she said. “It was pure fabrication.”

“Did you invent the story?” I said. “You obviously have a vivid imagination. No wonder you work in film.”

“Too vivid,” she said.

I said nothing.

“I’ve been getting phone calls,” she said. “Nasty ones. Telling me to go home.”

“From whom?” I said.

“Don’t know,” she said. “But they are really scary. Obviously I’ve stirred up something with this movie idea. I wish I hadn’t. Probably they’re watching me right now. They said they were. You shouldn’t even be here with me.”

“There’s nobody in here but us,” I said, looking around. “It’s too early for anybody else.”

“They seem to know what I’m doing. They said if I went back to the States right away, nothing would happen to me. That’s what I’m doing. If I were you, I’d go back home, too.”

“And you’re convinced these calls have something to do with the film about Helen Ford?” I said.

“Of course they do,” she said. “I work for a travel agency, for God’s sake. Do you think people call in death threats because the airline I booked them on ran out of the chicken entree before they got to them? What else would it be?” Her hands were shaking badly as she spoke.

“These were death threats? Really?”

“Yes,” she said. “They started out as ‘Go home, you don’t belong here,” to ’If you stay around, you could get hurt,“ then on to ‘If you don’t leave you’ll die.” “

“These calls,” I said. “Man? Woman? Thai? English?”

“Man,” she said. “They’re in English, or I wouldn’t understand them, I don’t think. My Thai isn’t that great, yet.”

“But do you think it’s a Thai man calling you?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Not sure. I’ll bet they follow me right to the airport and see I get on the plane.”

“It’s a big airport,” I said. “And that’s hard to do these days.”

“You think this is a joke!” she said.

“No, I don’t, but I like to think these are idle threats. Have you thought about calling the police?”

“No,” she said. “I’m going home. I don’t know whatever made me think I belonged here.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I meant it. “Look, could you at least tell me what it said, the manuscript, I mean?”

“That’s the ridiculous thing about this,” she said. “There was nothing in it that you couldn’t read in the Bangkok Herald archives. Helen Ford killed her husband, or had him killed, depending on which version you prefer, then his body was chopped up and disposed of. The torso was buried near the Chao Phyra, the head and limbs were burned. Her child was never found, but there was an assumption he, too, was killed. Helen was charged, convicted, sentenced to die, appealed, won the appeal, and then disappeared.”

“Nothing about corruption, scandal?”

“No,” she said. “Scandal, of course. The whole story is scandalous, but other than that, there were only hints of corruption in high places. Nothing specific. It ends with something about this being the story they didn’t want you to know. All rather melodramatic, but not very exciting when it came right down to it.”

“Who is they?”

“No idea.”

“When you spoke to Will, did you get the impression he’d finished writing the book?”

“Yes,” she said. “Or just about, anyway. He said he might have more work to do on it, that the more he looked into it, the more he learned, and that in a way, it would never really be finished. But yes, I got the impression that at least the first draft was done.”

“So why do you think that someone would be threatening you over something everyone could read in the archives?”

“Good question. I don’t plan to hang around to find out.”

“Did you invent the story about the sword and Helen Ford?” I asked her again.

“No,” she said. “I didn’t. Will told me.”

Robert Fitzgerald was next on my list. The first thing that struck me as I cut through the hole in the hedge was how untidy the grounds around the tree had become. On the previous visits, the grass and gardens had been immaculate. Now there was litter everywhere. A breeze caught a piece of paper, and it swirled across the yard. The tree house itself looked a little more welcoming than it had the first time: the stairs were down. That might have meant he was expecting someone, but he certainly hadn’t felt the need to make me feel welcome the first time I came. Still, when I’d come back to purchase the carvings for David Ferguson’s spirit house, he’d left them down for me. Nothing like being a paying customer to improve relations with someone, even someone as crusty as Fitzgerald. The stairs also might mean he already had a visitor, which, if so, was going to put a crimp in my line of questioning. Still, I decided to haul myself up, to use his expression.

I called out his name a couple of times as I ascended, but again there was no reply. That left a third option, which was that he had gone out and left the stairs down for his return. That certainly seemed to be the case. The sala was empty, but I could see he was working on the chess set, which warmed my heart. I stopped for a moment or two to admire them. He’d done one complete set of pieces in a black wood. The little pieces were really lovely, and he’d used tiny Thai houses for the castles. The king and queen were in traditional Thai dress, seated on elephants. Rob was going to be thrilled.

It was then I heard the faintest of sounds. It was difficult to identify, a wounded animal perhaps, a moan. It could have been the wind in the leaves of the trees, or the house merely creaking. Still, I felt I couldn’t ignore it. I tiptoed along the passageway to the other side of the house. There was no one in the kitchen, but the hall was littered with books and papers. I heard the moan again.

Cautiously I peered into the studio/bedroom. Fitzgerald sat on the floor, propped up against the side of the bed, legs straight out in front of him like a large rag doll. There was blood pouring from a wound on his head. His father’s diaries were everywhere, scattered about the room.

“Are you all right?” I exclaimed, kneeling beside him. It was a stupid question.

“You’re late,” he barked.

“What happened?” I said. “And how could I be late if you didn’t know I was coming?”

“Yes, I did,” he said. “Someone told me. That’s why I put the stairs down.”

“Who?”

He looked baffled for a moment. “I don’t seem to recall,” he said, after a pause. “They didn’t get it, though.”

“What?”

“Whatever it was they wanted.” He took a handkerchief out of his shirt pocket and wiped blood from his face. “I don’t suppose you could go to the kitchen and get me some of that brownish liquid we fancy? Straight up. You can skip the ice. I feel rather strange.”

“I’m going to get help,” I said. “Don’t move.”

He grasped my hand as I tried to stand up. “I think we need to talk to my mother,” he said. “The spirit house.”

Then he passed out.

It was much later in the day when I went to see Bent Rowland. I was dreading seeing the odious man again, but there was nothing more I could do for Fitzgerald. The doctors at the hospital told me he had a severe concussion and was in serious condition. The police had been called. They said they’d try to find his mother. Robbery was their official position.

The stairs up to Rowland’s office were dark and smelly. Rowland was sitting in his chair with his back to the door, looking out the small window on to the alleyway just as he had done when he’d contemplated the masterpiece I was writing. The smell in the room was even worse than the last time, the pungent reek of perspiration rather sickening. Rowland had been suffering from the heat and something more, some stronger emotion like fear. There was some other smell there, too, which I thought I might identify if I had time to think about it. However, I had questions for Bent Rowland. I’d ask them as fast as I could and get out of there.

“Mr. Rowland,” I said. “I’ve come to talk to you about my manuscript. This time I’d prefer truth to fantasy.”

Rowland didn’t move. I thought perhaps he’d fallen asleep, and then, given his lack of response that, overweight as he was, he’d had a heart attack in the heat. I suppose in a way he had. The knife through his heart would have done that, no doubt.