THAILAND'S MOMENT OF TRUTH - ZENJOURNALIST

One of the first to enter the bedroom was the King’s mother, who threw herself,
grief-stricken, on her son’s body, weeping and moaning `My dear Nand, my dear
Nand!’ The King’s old nanny followed, and after feeling his pulse she picked up the
pistol and put it on the bedside cabinet. Prince Bhoomipol, hearing the disturbance,
came in, and then Butr, who put the pistol in a drawer ‘for safety’, thereby adding
his fingerprints to Nanny’s. Butr was sent to call a doctor. After he had come Prince
Bhoomipal joined the Queen Mother, Nanny, and the two pages in washing the body,
laying it out in clean linen, and applying blocks of ice and setting up a fan to cool it
and delay decomposition, which the hot weather would otherwise have caused within
a few hours.
Any investigation of what had happened was made even more difficult by Prince Rangsit’s
insistence that commoners were not to touch the body of the dead king:
At last the police arrived; in fact, it was the Chief of Police, who had to push through
the confused mob of officials to reach the body, and he was not allowed to do
anything useful even then. Following protocol (’No-one may touch the Divine Body’)
the King’s uncle stopped him from examining either the wound or the King’s hands.
Nobody was allowed to feel if the body was stiff or cold. All the Chief of Police
could do was ask for the pistol; and when it was produced he added his own prints to
those of Nanny and Butr. He noted that the weapon was not on the safety catch and
that only one round was missing. No bullet had been found, but Nai Chit produced
a spent cartridge case which he said he had found on the floor on the left side of the
body. [Simpson, Forty Years of Murder: an Autobiography]
During the morning, according to testimony in 1950 by royal page But Pathamasarin,
Bhumibol and his mother appeared to have a strange conversation in the study adjoining the
bedchamber where Ananda’s corpse lay:
While the doctor was washing the body and Butr was in attendance, Butr heard a
noise in the adjoining study where the grief-stricken Princess Mother sat on a sofa.
She was stamping her feet and holding some sheets of paper while Bhoomipol paced
the room; and Butr heard her exclaim, ‘Whatever you want to do, do it.’ [Krueger,
The Devil’s Discus]
As news spread of Ananda’s death, more princes and leading officials arrived at the
Barompiman Hall:
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The Chief of the Palace Guards telephoned news of the tragedy to the aristocrat who
held the office of Chief Major Domo and Protocol. He was at his private house and
before setting out for the Palace he instructed another dignitary, the Chief of the
Royal Fanfare and Paraphernalia Section, to report to Pridi at the latter‟s official
residence by the riverside. Pridi immediately called in the King‟s Secretary-General,
the Minister of the Interior, and the Police Chief (entitled Director-General of the
Police Department). The first of these was to give the only account of Pridi at this
moment: “He was very agitated and pacing the floor. He said to me in English, ‘The
King is a suicide’.”
They all went straight to the Barompiman Hall where five senior princes together
with leading cabinet ministers and courtiers were fast assembling. During the
ensuing hours, after they had made obeisance before Ananda’s body, they gathered
downstairs and anxiously debated the situation. [Krueger, The Devil’s Discus]