The teacher laughed. “Well, well. So it’s monkeys who have been up to no good. Well, well!”
The school gardener had been alerted by the sound of squealing, and he now appeared. Seizing the monkeys, he pulled them away from the cake, freeing them to scamper back to the trees not far away.
“Little rascals,” he shouted, shaking a fist at them as they disappeared into the trees.
The teacher called everybody back to their desks. “We shall have to be more careful in the future,” she said. “Don’t leave anything out to tempt those monkeys. That’s the way to deal with that.”
Precious said nothing.
Then the teacher continued. “And I hope that some of you have learned a lesson,” she said. “Those who accused Poloko of being a thief may like to think about what they have just seen.”
The teacher looked at Sepo and Tapiwa, who both looked down at the floor. Precious watched them. They had learned a lesson, she thought.
Later, on the way back from school, Poloko came up to her and thanked her for what she had done. “You are a very kind girl,” he said. “Thank you.”
“That’s all right,” she said.
“You’re going to be a very good detective one day. Do you still want to be one?”
She thought for a moment. It was a good thing to be a detective. You could help people who needed help. You could make people happier—as Poloko now was.
“Yes,” she said. “I think I do.”
They walked on. In the trees not far away, there were some small eyes watching them from the leaves. The monkeys. Her friends.
Poloko walked her to her house, and Precious turned to him and said, “Would you like me to make a cake? We could eat it for our tea.”
He said he would, and while Precious baked the cake, he sat outside and sniffed the delicious smell wafting through the kitchen window.
Then the cake was ready, and they each had a large slice.
“Perfect,” Poloko said. “First-class, number one cake.”
And that was when she thought, When I have a detective agency, I’ll call it the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.
Many years later, she did just that.
The Great Cake Mystery Page 3