The official explanation was that he suffered a heart attack but many Thais — including Sirikit herself — suspected something more sinister. Her very public grief over the colonel’s death spiralled into a breakdown, and at the end of 1985 Bhumibol ordered her to undergo hospital treatment for what was officially called a “diagnostic curettage”. Sirikit vanished from view for months, and with public disquiet growing, Princess Chulabhorn was enlisted to calm anxiety in a televised interview in 1986 in which she declared: