“You’ve never wanted children, Doctor?”

She shudders by way of answer. “Pets die. Children are a pain in the ass for the duration.”

She seems unwilling to leave the balcony or to waste time on talk, and I feel pretty much the same way. I try to intuit my way into the skin of Frank Charles: how exotic it must have seemed to him at first, to hang out under a tropical moon with an authentic Chinese murderess-and a beauty, in her austere way-who spoke better English than he and whose conversation was wittier than his. And a pharmacist, too! Surely he would have wanted to develop the relationship further? Not sexually, of course-Moi was not joking when she said she despised carnal love-but I think he sought one of those kinds of friendships farang nowadays dream of: more reliable than family, and a lot more fun. “Did he talk much about his film?” I mumble, hardly audible even to myself, but I’ve noticed how good Moi’s hearing is.

“Mmm.”

“You know the one I mean, Doctor?”

“Mmm.”

“What did he say about it?”

“I can’t remember. Mostly it was the artistic self-pity thing with him. How much he’d put into it in money and effort. How it consumed him but he never got it finished. He liked to make sure I realized it was not a schmaltz production like the others, it was serious, he was giving it his best shot, every detail had to be perfect.”

She takes a toke of her cheroot and exhales so slowly I’ve given up hope of more information, when she adds, “He couldn’t seem to get the ending right.”

Maybe she feels she’s said too much, for she stands slowly and invites me into the house. We cross the great polished teak balcony together and she steps inside to formally welcome me with a wai.

A finely carved Taoist temple table in blackwood: incense writhes upward and curls around two portraits of a man and woman in Qing dynasty costume, with their hair pulled back in queues, staring at us out of the past. I cast an eye at Doctor Moi.

“My great-grandfather on my father’s side, with his third wife, my grandfather’s mother. If not for Mao and the revolution I probably would have been brought up on the family estate in Swatow, with ornamental gardens and pavilions where one spent the summer. I might have had my feet bound, and I would certainly have been an opium addict.” She looks at me. “I long for that lost elegance. After all, I love opium and I never walk anywhere.”

She has taken the cheroot out of her mouth and straightened her back, as if the portraits are realer to her than the living and more deserving of respect, while I take in the rest of the room. There’s an underlying masculinity in the discipline, but the colors are subtle and fine. I say, “I’m looking for a teddy bear.”

She nods thoughtfully, as if in agreement. “I know. For the past twenty years I’ve kept him in a syringe.”

She takes me to a small and cozy library and even offers me a peek at the main bedroom. I’m wondering why she is being so hospitable, when I feel a sudden lift in the area of my brow. I turn to her in surprise.

“That wasn’t cognac in the cocoa, Doctor.”

“Did I say cognac? I must have had a blonde moment. Don’t worry, you didn’t drink anything I didn’t also drink.” She snorts. “And anyway, we’re not married, so there’s no need to kill you.”

“Can I at least know what it is?”

“No, it’s too rare and exciting, and the name wouldn’t mean anything to you.”

“What’s it going to do?”

“It’s going to solve the case for you. Isn’t that what you want?”

I don’t know if the reason I can’t concentrate is because the drug has started to work on me or because I’m afraid it has started to work on me. “Can we go back out on the balcony?”

As soon as we get there I slip with a sigh into the wicker chair and become mesmerized by the moon. Now I’m beginning to understand the mood she was in when I arrived. “You were already on this stuff when I showed up, weren’t you?”

“Mmm. How do you like it?”

“It’s too good. You’re a witch.”

“Mmm. Now, what was it you were saying about a letter from Colonel Vikorn?”

“It’s not going to work, Doctor, I’m not giving it to you until you’ve done a lot of explaining. That’s what I came to tell you.”

“A pot of cocoa for the letter?”

“No.”

She lets a few beats pass. “Do you realize that without my help you will never in your entire life feel as good as this again?”

I groan. “Yes.”

“But unlike earlier versions of this family of molecules, with this one you remember every ecstatic minute the next day, in glorious color, but without the ecstasy, which is replaced by an unendurable nostalgia for the lost high that will have you crawling up the wall.”

“I see.”

“But the worst of it is, you are only at the beginning of the trip. It’s going to get better and better and better-so good you won’t believe it. And then it will end. Unless I give you some more cocoa.”

“I got the picture, Doctor Moi.”

“And don’t even think of trying to bust me. That stuff is prescribed by my personal physician in Amsterdam, and it’s not my fault you came here uninvited and drank my cocoa before I could warn you what was in it.”

“I already know what your defense will be.”

“You have unusual resistance,” she says with a touch of chagrin.

“Whatever this is, it can’t compare to the blade wheel.”

“Blade wheel?” She repeats the phrase as if she has heard it before and tuts irritably.

“It cuts through everything. Even your chemicals.”

After a long, languid pause. “I see. Well, what was it you wanted to know?”

I find I am unable to answer, not because my mind has gone blank but because it has acquired such a crystalline clarity, such a sharpness of definition in both thought and sense, that I don’t want to waste the moment on work. Especially when I can read the file in the night sky. Time passes, but I have lost the measure of it.

“Solved everything yet?” Doctor Moi inquires.

“Yes.”

“There never was a problem, was there?”

“No.”

“More cocoa?”

“Yes.”

“Letter first.”

“No.”

“Detective, I believe that letter is addressed to me.”

“It’s addressed ‘To Whom It May Concern,’ and whether you get it or not is entirely up to me.”

We hang there like that for fully two hours. It really is good stuff. Finally, Moi says, “Just tell me exactly what you want from me.”

“A sign, Doctor, a word, anything that will confirm that what I’ve just read in the sky is all true. That it isn’t just chemicals screwing my head up.”

When I raise my head as a follow-up to my words, I see she is thinking profoundly. She picks up a little bell to ring for the maid, who brings a new cheroot and helps her light it, then goes back into the house without a word. Moi stands up to look at the river, which is black and shiny as an oil slick under the climbing moon. All I have of her is a three-quarter back shot with her long black hair trapped loosely in a tortoiseshell clip with silver inlay, the white silk of her cheungsam catching the moonlight thread by thread.

“The life of a pariah is not easy, Detective, even if you are lucky enough to be a rich one. He and I understood one another. We even talked about it. He told me that when he made his films-not the one good one, but the two dozen schmaltzy ones-he always kept a typical member of the public in mind. That person, for him, was a middle-aged librarian he met just once in Arkansas when he was running around the country promoting his first movie. She was a woman with a college degree whose taste remained mainstream and somewhat redneck, a product of a tribe and culture so complacent, so certain of her own goodness-because everyone in her vicinity agreed she was good-that he was able to identify her as a perfect ersatz muse. Although she didn’t know it, she was the golden one for whom he made the films. And she, in her unlimited mediocrity, is the one who made him rich.”