Assuming the necessary chemicals were available at Lycee Vientiane's chemistry department, Siri could usually eliminate fifty possible causes of death, but still be left with a hundred and fifty others.
So it was hardly surprising, when four-thirty came around, that he hadn't the foggiest idea what had killed Mrs Nitnoy. He could give a list as long as your distal tibia of things that hadn't. She hadn't been hit by a train (as there were none in Laos). She hadn't been shot, stabbed, suffocated, or had her limbs severed by an army launch. But as she'd been in a crowded room when she died, these were no great discoveries.