The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Mma Makutsi did not reply. She was still staring intently at the page.

  ‘And there is nothing else,’ said Mma Ramotswe after a while. ‘I cannot see that we have anything else to go on.’

  Mma Makutsi now looked up. ‘This is not printed, Mma,’ she said, holding up the piece of paper as one might a soiled rag. ‘This is photocopied.’

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. ‘It is very easy to photocopy these things.’

  ‘If you have a machine,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘And many people do not have one.’

  ‘No…’

  ‘So,’ Mma Makutsi went on, ‘if you do not have a machine, you go to one of those places where they photocopy things cheaply. Such as…’

  ‘Clear Image Copies,’ said Mma Ramotswe.

  Mma Makutsi adjusted her glasses. ‘Do you have that leaflet that woman at Clear Image gave us, Mma? Daisy Something-or-other.’

  ‘Daisy Manchwe.’

  Mma Ramotswe rifled through the papers on her desk and extracted Mma Manchwe’s price sheet. Rising from her desk, she passed it to Mma Makutsi. She could see where this was going, and it excited her. The first step from having nothing to having something, even if not much, was always thrilling.

  Mma Makutsi laid the two pieces of paper out beside one another. Then, reaching into her desk drawer, she fished out a large magnifying glass. Mma Ramotswe remembered when she had bought this, on the recommendation of Clovis Andersen in a chapter entitled: ‘What the investigator must always have by his side’. This glass, though, had never had occasion to be used – before this occasion.

  Mma Makutsi bent forward to get a closer view. Then, lifting her head very slowly, she addressed Mma Ramotswe. Her tone was perfectly even. ‘They were copied on the same machine, Mma.’

  Mma Ramotswe crossed to her desk and peered over her shoulder.

  ‘You see, Mma,’ explained Mma Makutsi. ‘Down the side of this leaflet there is that wavy black mark. And down the side of this one here – exactly the same wavy black line. I believe these things are caused by some impurity on the ink cartridge, or on the mirror inside the machine, or something like that.’

  Mma Ramotswe saw what she meant. ‘That is amazing, Mma,’ she said. ‘That is detective work of the highest order.’

  Mma Makutsi gave a modest shrug. ‘It is knowing what to look for,’ she said. ‘That is all. I’m sure you would have seen the same thing when you started to look for it.’

  ‘If I started to look for it,’ Mma Ramotswe corrected. ‘I’m not sure that I would have thought of that, Mma.’

  ‘You would,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘You have always thought of these things, Mma. So I am sure you would have thought of doing this.’

  Mma Ramotswe returned to her desk. ‘What now, Mma?’

  ‘We go to see our friend, Daisy Manchwe, and we present her with the evidence. That is what we must do, Mma Ramotswe.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘That is for you to decide, Mma,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘Remember: I am only an associate detective.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘If I were a principal detective, then no doubt I would be able to suggest what we should do. But…’ The smile changed to a look of slight reproach. ‘But I am not that, of course.’

  And what about us, boss?

  They both gave a start. Mma Ramotswe imagined that she had heard something, a high-pitched, thin voice, rather what one would imagine a bird would sound like if a bird were to talk. But she was not sure. And nor was Mma Makutsi, although she looked down furtively and shifted her feet.

  They decided not to go immediately, but to make the trip after lunch. This would enable Mma Makutsi to accompany Mma Ramotswe, having first taken the baby back to the house to be looked after by the nurse. It would also enable Mma Makutsi to attend to the filing that she felt had been badly overlooked. As papers were unearthed, quickly read to assess their content and then placed in carefully separated pending files, Mma Makutsi uttered the occasional tut, tut! accompanied by a shake of the head that was at the same time both approving and disapproving.

  By the time they were ready to have morning tea – the second (official) cup of morning tea – the office was looking distinctly more organised. It was not that Mma Ramotswe was untidy – she was not – it was just that Mma Makutsi’s standards were so high. She had a habit of expressing these standards in terms of an aphorism: An unfiled piece of paper is a lost piece of paper, or Dust settles thickest on unfinished work, or Never leave your desk at night with a sheet of paper on it: sheets are for beds, not for desks.

  Mr J. L. B. Matekoni came in for tea first. He noticed the difference and smiled. He knew that Mma Ramotswe had been missing Mma Makutsi, and he was pleased to see them together again. Somehow, he thought, the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency without Mma Makutsi was like… He searched his mind for a suitable comparison, and came up with like a car with only one gear. It was a mechanical analogy, but so were all of his analogies and they served him well.

  Mma Makutsi was back in charge of tea. Within a few minutes she had prepared a steaming mug for Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, of precisely the right strength (halfway between weak and strong, but slightly tilted towards the strong), and with precisely the right amount of sugar (one and two-thirds spoonfuls, stirred, but not too much). For Mma Ramotswe she made the usual redbush tea, which, again, she made according to a method that she knew would please the other woman. This involved leaving the tea to infuse until the aroma of the tea reached the nose when it was placed a hand’s-breadth-and-a-half above the open teapot.

  When Charlie and Fanwell came in, they were both surprised to see Mma Makutsi.

  ‘So!’ exclaimed Charlie. ‘So you’re back, Mma! Nice holiday then?’

  Mma Makutsi flashed him a warning glance. ‘I’d like to see you in a maternity ward,’ she said. ‘If that’s your idea of a holiday…’

  ‘I’m sure it isn’t,’ said Mma Ramotswe pleasantly. ‘And have you met Itumelang Clovis Radiphuti, Charlie?’

  Charlie made a face. He had not yet seen the crib behind Mma Makutsi’s desk. ‘Itumelang What’s-his-face?’ he asked.

  ‘He is Mma Makutsi’s baby – and he is in that crib.’

  Charlie took a step to the side and craned his neck. He gave a start. ‘Your baby, Mma Makutsi?’

  ‘Yes, you can look at him,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘But don’t touch him. I don’t want him covered in greasy fingerprints. And I don’t want him to pick up any of your language, Charlie – so watch your tongue.’

  Charlie crept forward, followed by Fanwell. ‘Ow!’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Look at him!’

  Fanwell smiled at Mma Makutsi. ‘It is a very fine baby, Mma. Well done!’

  Mma Makutsi acknowledged the compliment. ‘Thank you, Fanwell,’ she said, and glanced at Charlie.

  ‘Oh yes, Mma,’ whispered Charlie. ‘This is a wonderful baby. Look at his head.’

  ‘What’s wrong with his head?’ snapped Mma Makutsi.

  ‘But there is nothing wrong with his head, Mma,’ replied Charlie. ‘It’s perfect. And look at his nose. It’s like a tiny… a tiny spark plug!’

  Mma Makutsi hesitated, but decided that this was a compliment. ‘Thank you, Charlie.’

  Charlie got closer. ‘Oh, he is so handsome, Mma Makutsi. He’s a very nice baby.’

  Now pride crept into Mma Makutsi’s voice. ‘Yes, Charlie, he is.’

  ‘Not ninety-seven per cent, Mma – one hundred per cent!’

  ‘That’s very kind, Charlie. Phuti thinks so too. He said exactly that, for some reason.’

  Charlie, who had been peering closely at the sleeping baby, now turned to Mma Makutsi. ‘I think he’s waking up, Mma,’ he whispered. ‘His little eyes are opening. See. Just like that. Tiny eyes.’

  ‘He’s due to wake up,’ said Mma Makutsi.

  Charlie looked at her pleadingly. ‘Do you think, Mma… Do you think…’

  ‘Think what, Charlie?’

  He looked at his hands. ‘Do you think that if I was
hed my hands – washed them properly – I could hold him? Not for long. Just a little bit.’

  Mma Ramotswe thought that she had witnessed something important. ‘I think you should let him, Mma,’ she said to Mma Makutsi. ‘And Fanwell too.’

  Fanwell shook his head, and made a self-deprecatory gesture with his hands. ‘Oh, not me, Mma. I’m always worried about dropping babies if somebody passes one to me. Not me.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Charlie quickly. ‘I won’t drop him.’

  Mma Makutsi thought for a moment before she said, ‘Go and wash your hands, Charlie. Not a couple of seconds under the tap – wash them properly. Then you can pick him up.’

  Charlie gave a low whoop of delight and left the room.

  ‘I think he likes him,’ said Fanwell.

  A few minutes later, Charlie returned. ‘See,’ he said, showing his hands to Mma Makutsi. ‘Totally clean.’

  She nodded and rose from her chair. Itumelang was now quite awake, but silent, staring with interest at the ceiling. Very gently, Mma Makutsi picked him up. ‘You hold him like this,’ she said as she handed him to Charlie.

  ‘Oh look, Mma,’ said Charlie. ‘Look at him!’

  They all watched as the young man walked up and down the office, cooing to the baby in his arms. Mma Ramotswe caught Mr J. L. B. Matekoni’s eye and she could tell that he was as surprised as any of them.

  ‘I want to get married,’ said Charlie when he handed Itumelang back to his mother. ‘Then maybe I can have a baby as fine as yours, Mma.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘But you’ll have to find a nice girl first, Charlie. And that means a girl with the right sort of figure to have nice babies. Not one of your fashionable girls. Not one of those girls I’ve seen you with – they’re not interested in babies, you know.’

  Charlie was quick to agree. ‘That is true, Mma. Those girls are… they’re useless for these things.’

  Mma Ramotswe laughed. ‘Think very carefully about fatherhood, Charlie,’ she said. ‘You have to be sure that you are ready.’

  ‘Oh, I’m ready, Mma,’ said Charlie. ‘When I see a baby like that, I know I’m ready.’

  Mma Ramotswe was both amused and puzzled. She was amused by the young man’s evident pleasure in holding the baby, and puzzled by the apparent change in his attitude. Not all that long ago, when he was suspected – wrongly, as it turned out – of being the father of a girlfriend’s twins, he had been horrified by the thought of being a father. Now, it seemed, the idea had become appealing. We change, she thought. A year or so can make a very big difference, especially if you are a young man.

  Mma Makutsi looked at her watch. ‘That’s enough now,’ she said. ‘Itumelang needs his feed, and then Mma Ramotswe and I have some important work to do.’ She clapped her hands peremptorily. ‘Tea break over.’

  Mma Ramotswe lowered her eyes. It had always been for her to say when the tea break started and when it ended; now it seemed that Mma Makutsi had taken that role upon herself. For a moment – the briefest of moments – she felt resentment, but it did not last, for of all the emotions and attitudes of which she was composed, resentment or envy surely had the smallest place. So rather than dwell on Mma Makutsi’s assumptions, she reminded herself of her good fortune in having her assistant back. And with that, she felt that most exquisite, and regrettably rare, of pleasures – that of welcoming back one who has left your life. We cannot do that with late people, Mma Ramotswe thought, much as we would love to be able to do so, but we can do it with the living.

  Mma Ramotswe spoke suddenly. The mechanics had left the room, and it was just Mma Makutsi, Itumelang and herself. She said, ‘Mma Makutsi, thank you. Thank you for coming back.’

  ‘That is quite all right, Mma,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘I am very happy to be back at work.’

  ‘And thank you for everything you have done for me – and for the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. I don’t know if I have ever thanked you for that – thanked you enough, that is.’

  Mma Makutsi stared at Mma Ramotswe. ‘You don’t have to thank me, Mma. I’m the one who should thank you. You took me – a nothing girl from Bobonong – and gave me a job. You taught me everything. You showed me how to be… myself.’

  ‘You were always yourself,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘Right from the word go, you were yourself.’

  Mma Makutsi shook her head. ‘No, Mma, you showed me. So I should be thanking you.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘You’re thanking me and I’m thanking you. We are both thanking one another.’

  ‘Good,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘But now, Mma, I think we should stop putting things off. We need to go to see Mma Manchwe.’

  Mma Ramotswe thought, I’m not putting things off. But she did not say that. Instead, she said, ‘Yes. Right now. Let’s go, Mma.’

  Mma Manchwe was behind her desk when they entered the premises of Clear Image Copies. She greeted them warmly.

  ‘You’ve looked at my price list?’ she said. ‘What did I tell you? Nobody beats my prices.’

  ‘Well, we did…’ began Mma Ramotswe.

  She was interrupted by Mma Manchwe. ‘So what did you want me to do? I can have documents designed, you know. I have a young man who designs for me.’

  Mma Ramotswe reached into her bag and took out the leaflet headed Be warned! ‘I suppose he designed this, did he?’ she asked, handing it to her.

  Mma Manchwe took a pair of reading glasses out of her pocket and put them on the end of her nose. ‘What have we here?’ she said, beginning to read. ‘Be warned. Warned about what?’

  As she read further down the document, her frown deepened. When she had finished, she handed the piece of paper back to Mma Ramotswe. ‘I most certainly did not design that – or give it to anybody to be designed. That is what I call poison, Mma, and I will have nothing to do with it.’

  Mma Ramotswe knew immediately that she was telling the truth. She might not have been able to say why she thought this; it was one of those things one knew in a way that could not be explained. It was something to do with the voice; or to do with the voice and the face combined; or perhaps to do with the eyes.

  Mma Makutsi stepped forward. ‘Then why, Mma,’ she began, ‘was it copied on your machine?’

  Mma Manchwe looked indignant. ‘On my machine? I did not do that. And anyway, how can you possibly tell?’

  Mma Makutsi was ready. ‘This is the way we tell, Mma,’ she said, producing the price list. ‘I take it that you copied your own price list?’

  She put the two pieces of paper on the table and pointed out the telltale mark. While Mma Manchwe studied it sullenly, Mma Ramotswe made a suggestion.

  ‘I think that it might have been done by somebody else,’ she said. ‘Can you think of who else might have used your machine?’

  Mma Manchwe looked up at the ceiling. ‘I have an assistant who covers for me a few times a week. She might have done it for somebody. But then it would be entered in the book. We enter all our copying jobs in the book. I don’t think I’ve seen the names of any new clients – just the usual ones.’

  ‘Unless your assistant did it for somebody without entering it – for a friend, perhaps.’

  ‘She is not allowed to do that,’ said Mma Manchwe. ‘I would fire her if she used the machine for private purposes.’

  ‘But everybody does that,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘Everybody uses their office photocopier for private copies.’

  Mma Ramotswe asked who the assistant was.

  ‘Most of the time she works in one of the shops at Riverwalk,’ said Mma Manchwe. ‘But she has two afternoons off a week, and that is when she works for me – and for a few other people too.’

  Mma Ramotswe glanced at Mma Makutsi, and she returned the glance. Riverwalk was the vital clue, she felt.

  ‘Which shop at Riverwalk, Mma?’ Mma Ramotswe asked.

  ‘There is a dress shop. I forget what it is called.’

  ‘Botswana Elegance?’ prompted Mma Makutsi.r />
  ‘That’s the one,’ said Mma Manchwe. ‘It belongs to that Sephotho woman.’

  There was complete silence, which lasted a good two minutes. Then Mma Ramotswe spoke. ‘Violet Sephotho?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Mma Manchwe. ‘I don’t know her, but they say she’s quite something.’

  ‘There are many words for Violet Sephotho,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘Something may be one of them, but there are many others.’ She glared at Mma Manchwe. ‘I shall not tell you what the other words are, Mma – I shall leave it up to your imagination.’

  As they left, Mma Ramotswe heard Mma Makutsi muttering under her breath. ‘Something, something. Fifty per cent – if that. Fifty per cent and there she is with her own dress shop. Fifty per cent.’

  Mma Ramotswe suppressed a smile. ‘You don’t like that Violet Sephotho, do you?’ she said.

  It was enough to trigger the response. ‘I do not like her,’ Mma Makutsi said between clenched teeth. ‘And here, once again, we find her behind a piece of despicable character assassination. It’s typical of her, Mma. Absolutely typical.’ She paused. ‘But why would she do it – other than out of pure malice?’

  Mma Ramotswe had been mulling over possibilities in her mind. ‘I wonder if her lease is coming up for renewal,’ she said. ‘That would give her a reason to want that shop – the one that Mma Soleti managed to get hold of.’

  ‘But how can we find out about it?’

  ‘We phone one of the big property management agents. They always know what’s happening. We ask them if they know of any suitable shops coming up on the market, preferably in Riverwalk. We tell them that we can pay very competitively.’ She looked at Mma Makutsi and smiled. ‘They, being eager to make a profit – as everybody is – will say, “As it happens, Mma, there is a shop coming up for renewal in Riverwalk and, if you’re prepared to pay a bit of a premium, we might be able to…”’

  Which is exactly what they did say when Mma Ramotswe telephoned them later that day.

  ‘Mma Makutsi,’ she said, as she replaced the telephone in its cradle. ‘We have our culprit. Violet Sephotho. We have her motive. I think that is clear enough.’