ONE SHOULD NOT BLAME FRUIT FOR OUR DISAPPOINTMENTS

The pomelo salad had not been quite as good as Ladarat had imagined it would be. In large part, that failure could be attributed to the aftereffects of driving home, marinating in the stink of durian. It proved to be difficult indeed to work up any appetite under those conditions.

But on further reflection, she had to admit that disappointment was inevitable if you try to imagine how things would be. You get an idea in your head of how nice a fresh pomelo salad would be, and then you start filling in details. Just how crunchy the fruit would be, with a very specific tartness. And you imagine just how spicy the chilies would be. And it’s all wonderful until you take that first bite. Then it’s not what you imagined and somehow that makes it less good.

If you had no expectations, that bite might have been wonderful. You would be pleasantly surprised. But if you had those expectations, then the event itself was bound to be a disappointment, if for no other reasons than it was different. That failure was not the fault of the pomelo—one should not blame fruit for one’s disappointments. So as a general rule, you should be careful what you expect, since that will determine how happy you’ll be.

And Ladarat was not happy. There were too many things to worry about. And—what was worse—she was worrying about what she needed to worry about. Like the inspection, of course. And Director Tippawan. And then there was Peaflower. And the durian and a car that smelled as though a large forest animal had died in its front seat.

What should she be doing to better prepare for the inspection? What could she be doing?

And what should she be doing to catch Peaflower? And should she be doing anything at all?

And there was the man in the ICU waiting room. She needed to do something—anything—to solve that problem before the inspectors arrived.

And her smelly Beetle…

Eeeehhh. It was enough to make her want to quit her job and go back to being a regular nurse. She would care for patients during her shifts, and then she would go home. She would do her job, and do it well. And she would go about her life. She would read books and buy strawberries, and drink tea. She would do what normal people did. What Khun Duanphen advised her to do. She would not work so hard, and she would not think so much. Sabai sabai.

Yet… that would be boring, would it not? And besides, it was difficult to remain unhappily worried for very long. After all, this was the perfect time of day, with the best possible Chiang Mai weather. Maewfawbaahn was asleep, the night was cool enough to need a sweater, a thin gray wool cardigan that was one of her favorites.

As Ladarat let go of her worries, she found, as she often did, that her thoughts meandered along of their own volition. Those thoughts didn’t seem to move in straight lines but instead went forward and backward, crisscrossing one another in unpredictable ways. Sometimes they moved slowly and sometimes so fast that she couldn’t keep up. But they moved. That was the thing about thoughts. They would work hard for you if you just let them do what they want to do.

Tonight, several thoughts were rambling around in her head. There was the Peaflower investigation, of course. And the question of whether she should give it up. She let those thoughts go where they would. Perhaps she would solve the case. Or perhaps she would decide not to solve it. Either seemed like a good outcome of thinking. So she let those thoughts wander off to wherever it was they wanted to go.

That left her to think about other thoughts that were less freighted by worry. And indeed, it was in moments like these that Ladarat found that she could think about expectations and happiness with the detachment of a philosopher. That was the best definition of luxury she could imagine—to think about things because you wanted to, not because you had to.

There was that young man who bought the rambutan. His expectations, it seemed, were almost nonexistent. He was surprised by nothing. He was, she was certain, a happy sort.

But he also didn’t notice things. His expectations were so vague and ill-formed that nothing struck him as odd or unusual. She smiled. An elephant could amble down Praisanee Road along the Ping River, and that young man would probably take it in stride. He might not even notice.

That vision of an elephant wandering past a 7-Eleven on the river road led her to think about the wary country man outside the ICU. He was also a foreigner in a strange land, just as the American was. If he saw an elephant, he wouldn’t be surprised. He might even feel relieved. Here was something that was familiar. But everything else was foreign to him. He was nervous. And wary.

But what about these men who were being murdered? She knew that her thoughts would turn back to that case eventually, whether she wanted them to or not. That’s the way thoughts worked.

What about those men? What did they expect? For this to happen again and again, without anyone sounding the alarm, they must all be like the young American. They must be wide-eyed and unsurprised by anything.

But where would Peaflower find such men? How could she reliably locate men who would be unfazed by whatever she did to them? Unsurprised by whatever requests she made regarding life insurance?

That was when Ladarat had the insight of a true detective.

She thought about the wide-eyed American and the man in the ICU waiting room and the distance between them. The sort of trust she’d seen in the boy this afternoon was for the young. An older man, particularly one in a strange environment, like that man in the ICU or these Chinese men, would be cautious. He might be stupid. But he would notice things. He would be paying attention.

So it followed that this woman, Peaflower, was very, very clever. She was leading these men down a very carefully tended path. They were seeing what they expected to see. She’d eliminated any unpleasant surprises. If they expected elephants prancing down Praisanee Road, then she gave them elephants.

Ladarat pondered that for a while as Maewfawbaahn purred comfortably on the chair next to her.

But what did that mean? How could Peaflower do that? How could she give these men exactly what they expected?

And—a related but more important question: How would she get these men to do what she wanted them to do?

Ladarat tried to put herself in the position of a Chinese man who had met—somehow—a woman. How might that happen in such a way that these men were led along smoothly and effortlessly?

It would have to be like a mahout leading an elephant. Her father had told her once that the mahouts didn’t actually tell an elephant where to go or what to do. A 50-kilogram man can’t tell a 1,500-kilogram beast what to do. The beast would laugh at the man. If elephants could laugh, that elephant would certainly do so.

But a clever mahout can make an elephant want to do something. A clever mahout can guide the elephant’s expectations. A clever mahout can induce the elephant to think that kneeling, or raising a leg, or moving to one side is exactly what the elephant wants to do.

That, Ladarat was certain, was what Peaflower was doing. Somehow, she was setting up situations and expectations in such a way that these men thought it was the most natural thing in the world to sign over their money to her.

And that conclusion led Ladarat to an unexpected decision. If these men were making choices of their own volition, they were not victims in the usual sense. They were… volunteers.

And as Professor Dalrymple cautions, we must always respect people, even if we don’t agree with the choices they make. That is, we must respect the values that underlie that choice, and the person to which those values are connected, even if we think the choice that person is making is unwise, or even dangerous.

These men were choosing to trust this Peaflower woman. Ladarat was convinced of that. They were walking into this situation with their eyes wide open. They were making a choice to trust her.

And the voluntary nature of these choices, she decided, placed them outside her area of responsibility as an ethical detective. She could not pursue an investigation of them any more than she would question the free and informed choice of a patient, no matter how unwise. And no matter what the consequences.

Instead, she would call Khun Wiriya in the morning. She would tell him that she could no longer try to be a detective in this case. The notes would cease, her Beetle would be safe, and perhaps eventually she would forget the smell of a ripe durian. And she would devote herself to the upcoming inspection and to her work as an ethicist. That is, she would be a nurse and an ethicist only. Surely those were enough titles for one person?

Maewfawbaahn rose and stretched his cat muscles. Then, without pausing to look at her, he paced regally toward the back door, knowing that she would follow. As she did. That cat had an excellent sense of when it was time to stop thinking and go to bed.

Just inside the back door on the small kitchen counter, her mobile phone was blinking, signaling that a text had arrived. Ladarat’s first thought was that the message was from Khun Wiriya, and her heart gave a little skip of excitement. But then, just as quickly, she thought she might just ignore that message. She was not a detective anymore, was she? She was not. She would devote her time to being an ethicist, as she should.

But maybe this late-night text was related to her ethical duties? What if there were an ethical emergency? They did happen, she knew.

Eventually her sense of duty won. As she was picking up her mobile, Ladarat pondered the strange thought that only a few days ago, she would have assumed that any late-night communication was just such an ethical emergency. A patient who wanted to leave the hospital against medical advice, for instance. Or a family that disagreed about the best course of treatment for a child. But now, strangely, her first thought was of murders and mysteries and detection. Well, that would change.

It was largely thanks to that conversation in her head that Ladarat was almost smiling as she read the brief text from Khun Tippawan, instructing her to be at the hospital promptly at 8 A.M., to do the job for which she was hired.

The text was brief and impolite, as was usual for the director. And for texts in general, Ladarat supposed. And yet she found herself smiling.

Because that was exactly what she would do. She had already come to that decision herself, although perhaps she hadn’t entirely realized it. Now she did. Ladarat would arrive at Sriphat Hospital early. And she would work late. And she would be an ethicist only.