Orchids for the Secretary

Who killed King Ananda Mahidol? For close to nine years, Siamese have asked the question--privately, over the tinkle of thousands of teacups; publicly, in one of the longest murder hearings in history.

On the morning of June 9. 1946, the young King (elder brother of the present popular, jazz-composing King Phumiphon Adundet) was found in his bed with a bullet hole through his forehead and a .45 near his hand. Soon afterward, the then Premier, Pridi Phanomyong. announced that the King had killed himself accidentally.

A year later there was a small revolution. Marshal Phibun Songgram, Pridi's ancient rival in the seesaw of Siamese politics, took over as Premier and charged that Pridi himself was responsible for the King's murder. (Pridi has since turned up in Peking, leading a "Free Thai" movement blessed by the Communists.) In the years that followed, successive courts of inquiry tried to fix the blame for the King's death on other guilty parties to no positive avail.

Last week, in the midst of Bangkok's frenetic preconference housecleaning, the Phibun government did its best to remove the skeleton from Ananda's closet by executing three Siamese vaguely convicted of "complicity" in his murder. The three were the late King's pages, Busya Patamasirind, 50, and Chit Singhaseni, 44, who discovered the body, and the King's former secretary, Chaliew Pathumros, who had been fired a month before the King's death. At 5 o'clock one morning last week, fortified with a final bottle of orange squash apiece, the three were led into the execution pavilion at Bangkwang Prison. Their hands were clasped together in the traditional Buddhist greeting and lashed to an upright pole. In each upraised hand, prison guards placed a ceremonial candle, joss sticks and a garland of small, pink Siamese orchids. Then a dark blue curtain was dropped behind each victim and the executioner fired a burst from his machine gun.

That morning Police Chief General Phao Srihanond had dropped by for a last chat with Private Secretary Chaliew, his comrade-in-arms during an anti-government coup back in 1932. "Good-bye, old comrade," said the general as machine-gun slugs tore into his friend. After ten rounds, Chaliew was dead. It took ten more rounds before the prison doctor pronounced Chit dead, and 20 full rounds for Busya. But at last the execution was done, the closet was tidy, and only one question remained unanswered: Who killed King Ananda?

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