Ladies' Detective Agency 01 - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

by Alexander McCall Smith

  The children, dressed in their best clothes, sat in rows at the back of the church when the service had finished and were taught by Mma Mothibi. She read the Bible to them, and made them recite the Ten Commandments over and over again, and told them religious stories from a small blue book which she said came from London and was not available anywhere else in the country.

  “These are the rules for being good,” she intoned. “A boy must always rise early and say his prayers. Then he must clean his shoes and help his mother to prepare the family’s breakfast, if they have breakfast. Some people have no breakfast because they are poor. Then he must go to school and do everything that his teacher tells him. In that way he will learn to be a clever Christian boy who will go to Heaven later on, when the Lord calls him home. For girls, the rules are the same, but they must also be careful about boys and must be ready to tell boys that they are Christians. Some boys will not understand this …”

  Yes, thought Precious Ramotswe. Some boys do not understand this, and even there, in that Sunday School there was such a boy, that Josiah, who was a wicked boy, although he was only nine. He insisted on sitting next to Precious in Sunday School, even when she tried to avoid him. He was always looking at her and smiling encouragingly, although she was two years older than he was. He tried also to make sure that his leg touched hers, which angered her, and made her shift in her seat, away from him.

  But worst of all, he would undo the buttons of his trousers and point to that thing that boys have, and expect her to look. She did not like this, as it was not something that should happen in a Sunday School. What was so special about that, anyway? All boys had that thing.

  At last she told Mma Mothibi about it, and the teacher listened gravely.

  “Boys, men,” she said. “They’re all the same. They think that this thing is something special and they’re all so proud of it. They do not know how ridiculous it is.”

  She told Precious to tell her next time it happened. She just had to raise her hand a little, and Mma Mothibi would see her. That would be the signal.

  It happened the next week. While Mma Mothibi was at the back of the class, looking at the Sunday School books which the children had laid out before them, Josiah undid a button and whispered to Precious that she should look down. She kept her eyes on her book and raised her left hand slightly. He could not see this, of course, but Mma Mothibi did. She crept up behind the boy and raised her Bible into the air. Then she brought it down on his head, with a resounding thud that made the children start.

  Josiah buckled under the blow. Mma Mothibi now came round to his front and pointed at his open fly. Then she raised the Bible and struck him on the top of the head again, even harder than before.

  That was the last time that Josiah bothered Precious Ramotswe, or any other girl for that matter. For her part, Precious learned an important lesson about how to deal with men, and this lesson stayed with her for many years, and was to prove very useful later on, as were all the lessons of Sunday School.

  The Cousin’s Departure

  The cousin looked after Precious for the first eight years of her life. She might have stayed indefinitely—which would have suited Obed—as the cousin kept house for him and never complained or asked him for money. But he recognised, when the time came, that there might be issues of pride and that the cousin might wish to marry again, in spite of what had happened last time. So he readily gave his blessing when the cousin announced that she had been seeing a man, that he had proposed, and that she had accepted.

  “I could take Precious with me,” she said. “I feel that she is my daughter now. But then, there is you …”

  “Yes,” said Obed. “There is me. Would you take me too?”

  The cousin laughed. “My new husband is a rich man, but I think that he wants to marry only one person.”

  Obed made arrangements for the wedding, as he was the cousin’s nearest relative and it fell to him to do this. He did it readily, though, because of all she had done for him. He arranged for the slaughter of two cattle and for the brewing of enough beer for two hundred people. Then, with the cousin on his arm, he entered the church and saw the new husband and his people, and other distant cousins, and their friends, and people from the village, invited and uninvited, waiting and watching.

  After the wedding ceremony, they went back to the house, where canvas tarpaulins had been hooked up between thorn trees and borrowed chairs set out. The old people sat down while the young moved about and talked to one another, and sniffed the air at the great quantities of meat that were sizzling on the open fires. Then they ate, and Obed made a speech of thanks to the cousin and the new husband, and the new husband replied that he was grateful to Obed for looking after this woman so well.

  The new husband owned two buses, which made him wealthy. One of these, the Molepolole Special Express, had been pressed into service for the wedding, and was decked for the occasion with bright blue cloth. In the other, they drove off after the party, with the husband at the wheel and the new bride sitting in the seat immediately behind him. There were cries of excitement, and ululation from the women, and the bus drove off into happiness.

  They set up home ten miles south of Gaborone, in an adobe-plastered house which the new husband’s brother had built for him. It had a red roof and white walls, and a compound, in the traditional style, with a walled yard to the front. At the back, there was a small shack for a servant to live in, and a lean-to latrine made out of galvanised tin. The cousin had a kitchen with a shining new set of pans and two cookers. She had a large new South African paraffin-powered fridge, which purred quietly all day, and kept everything icy cold within. Every evening, her husband came home with the day’s takings from his buses, and she helped him to count the money. She proved to be an excellent bookkeeper, and was soon running that part of the business with conspicuous success.

  She made her new husband happy in other ways. As a boy he had been bitten by a jackal, and had scars across his face where a junior doctor at the Scottish Missionary Hospital at Molepolole had ineptly sewn the wounds. No woman had told him that he was handsome before, and he had never dreamed that any would, being more used to the wince of sympathy. The cousin, though, said that he was the most good-looking man she had ever met, and the most virile too. This was not mere flattery—she was telling the truth, as she saw it, and his heart was filled with the warmth that flows from the well-directed compliment.

  “I know you are missing me,” the cousin wrote to Precious. “But I know that you want me to be happy. I am very happy now. I have a very kind husband who has bought me wonderful clothes and makes me very happy every day. One day, you will come and stay with us, and we can count the trees again and sing hymns together, as we always used to. Now you must look after your father, as you are old enough to do that, and he is a good man too. I want you to be happy, and that is what I pray for, every night. God look after Precious Ramotswe. God watch her tonight and forever. Amen.”

  Goats

  As a girl, Precious Ramotswe liked to draw, an activity which the cousin had encouraged from an early age. She had been given a sketching pad and a set of coloured pencils for her tenth birthday, and her talent had soon become apparent. Obed Ramotswe was proud of her ability to fill the virgin pages of her sketchbook with scenes of everyday Mochudi life. Here was a sketch which showed the pond in front of the hospital—it was all quite recognisable—and here was a picture of the hospital matron looking at a donkey. And on this page was a picture of the shop, of the Small Upright General Dealer, with things in front of it which could be sacks of mealies or perhaps people sitting down—one could not tell—but they were excellent sketches and he had already pinned several up on the walls of the living room of their house, high up, near the ceiling, where the flies sat.

  Her teachers knew of this ability, and told her that she might one day be a great artist, with her pictures on the cover of the Botswana Calendar. This encouraged her, and sketch followed sketch. Goats, ca
ttle, hills, pumpkins, houses; there was so much for the artist’s eye around Mochudi that there was no danger that she would run out of subjects.

  The school got to hear of an art competition for children. The Museum in Gaborone had asked every school in the country to submit a picture by one of its pupils, on the theme “Life in Botswana of Today.” Of course there was no doubt about whose work would be submitted. Precious was asked to draw a special picture—to take her time doing it—and then this would be sent down to Gaborone as the entry from Mochudi.

  She drew her picture on a Saturday, going out early with her sketchbook and returning some hours later to fill in the details inside the house. It was a very good drawing, she thought, and her teacher was enthusiastic when she showed it to her the following Monday.

  “This will win the prize for Mochudi,” she said. “Everybody will be proud.”

  The drawing was placed carefully between two sheets of corrugated cardboard and sent off, registered post, to the Museum. Then there was a silence for five weeks, during which time everybody forgot about the competition. Only when the letter came to the Principal, and he, beaming, read it out to Precious, were they reminded.

  “You have won first prize,” he said. “You are to go to Gaborone, with your teacher and myself, and your father, to get the prize from the Minister of Education at a special ceremony.”

  It was too much for her, and she wept, but soon stopped, and was allowed to leave school early to run back to give the news to her Daddy.

  They travelled down with the Principal in his truck, arriving far too early for the ceremony, and spent several hours sitting in the Museum yard, waiting for the doors to open. But at last they did, and others came, teachers, people from the newspapers, members of the Legislature. Then the Minister arrived in a black car and people put down their glasses of orange juice and swallowed the last of their sandwiches.

  She saw her painting hanging in a special place, on a room divider, and there was a small card pinned underneath it. She went with her teacher to look at it, and she saw, with leaping heart, her name neatly typed out underneath the picture: PRECIOUS RAMOTSWE (10) (MOCHUDI GOVERNMENT JUNIOR SCHOOL). And underneath that, also typed, the title which the Museum itself had provided: Cattle Beside Dam.

  She stood rigid, suddenly appalled. This was not true. The picture was of goats, but they had thought it was cattle! She was getting a prize for a cattle picture, by false pretences.

  “What is wrong?” asked her father. “You must be very pleased. Why are you looking so sad?”

  She could not say anything. She was about to become a criminal, a perpetrator of fraud. She could not possibly take a prize for a cattle picture when she simply did not deserve that.

  But now the Minister was standing beside her, and he was preparing to make a speech. She looked up at him, and he smiled warmly.

  “You are a very good artist,” he said. “Mochudi must be proud of you.”

  She looked at the toes of her shoes. She would have to confess.

  “It is not a picture of cattle,” she said. “It is a picture of goats. You cannot give me a prize for a mistake.”

  The Minister frowned, and looked at the label. Then he turned back to her and said: “They are the ones who have made a mistake. I also think those are goats. I do not think they are cattle.”

  He cleared his throat and the Director of the Museum asked for silence.

  “This excellent picture of goats,” said the Minister, “shows how talented are our young people in this country. This young lady will grow up to be a fine citizen and maybe a famous artist. She deserves her prize, and I am now giving it to her.”

  She took the wrapped parcel which he gave her, and felt his hand upon her shoulder, and heard him whisper: “You are the most truthful child I have met. Well done.”

  Then the ceremony was over, and a little later they returned to Mochudi in the Principal’s bumpy truck, a heroine returning, a bearer of prizes.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  LIVING WITH THE COUSIN AND

  THE COUSIN’S HUSBAND

  AT THE age of sixteen, Mma Ramotswe left school (“The best girl in this school,” pronounced the Principal. “One of the best girls in Botswana.”) Her father had wanted her to stay on, to do her Cambridge School Certificate, and to go even beyond that, but Mma Ramotswe was bored with Mochudi. She was bored, too, with working in the Upright Small General Dealer, where every Saturday she did the stocktaking and spent hours ticking off items on dog-eared stock lists. She wanted to go somewhere. She wanted her life to start.

  “You can go to my cousin,” her father said. “That is a very different place. I think that you will find lots of things happening in that house.”

  It cost him a great deal of pain to say this. He wanted her to stay, to look after him, but he knew that it would be selfish to expect her life to revolve around his. She wanted freedom; she wanted to feel that she was doing something with her life. And of course, at the back of his mind, was the thought of marriage. In a very short time, he knew, there would be men wanting to marry her.

  He would never deny her that, of course. But what if the man who wanted to marry her was a bully, or a drunkard, or a womaniser? All of this was possible; there was any number of men like that, waiting for an attractive girl that they could latch on to and whose life they could slowly destroy. These men were like leeches; they sucked away at the goodness of a woman’s heart until it was dry and all her love had been used up. That took a long time, he knew, because women seemed to have vast reservoirs of goodness in them.

  If one of these men claimed Precious, then what could he, a father, do? He could warn her of the risk, but whoever listened to warnings about somebody they loved? He had seen it so often before; love was a form of blindness that closed the eyes to the most glaring faults. You could love a murderer, and simply not believe that your lover would do so much as crush a tick, let alone kill somebody. There would be no point trying to dissuade her.

  The cousin’s house would be as safe as anywhere, even if it could not protect her from men. At least the cousin could keep an eye on her niece, and her husband might be able to chase the most unsuitable men away. He was a rich man now, with more than five buses, and he would have that authority that rich men had. He might be able to send some of the young men packing.

  THE COUSIN was pleased to have Precious in the house. She decorated a room for her, hanging new curtains of a thick yellow material which she had bought from the OK Bazaars on a shopping trip to Johannesburg. Then she filled a chest of drawers with clothes and put on top of it a framed picture of the Pope. The floor was covered with a simply patterned reed mat. It was a bright, comfortable room.

  Precious settled quickly into a new routine. She was given a job in the office of the bus company, where she added invoices and checked the figures in the drivers’ records. She was quick at this, and the cousin’s husband noticed that she was doing as much work as the two older clerks put together. They sat at their tables and gossiped away the day, occasionally moving invoices about the desk, occasionally getting up to put on the kettle.

  It was easy for Precious, with her memory, to remember how to do new things and to apply the knowledge faultlessly. She was also willing to make suggestions, and scarcely a week went past in which she failed to make some suggestion as to how the office could be more efficient.

  “You’re working too hard,” one of the clerks said to her. “You’re trying to take our jobs.”

  Precious looked at them blankly. She had always worked as hard as she could, at everything she did, and she simply did not understand how anybody could do otherwise. How could they sit there, as they did, and stare into the space in front of their desks when they could be adding up figures or checking the drivers’ returns?

  She did her own checking, often unasked, and although everything usually added up, now and then she found a small discrepancy. These came from the giving of incorrect change, the cousin explained. It was easy
enough to do on a crowded bus, and as long as it was not too significant, they just ignored it. But Precious found more than this. She found a discrepancy of slightly over two thousand pula in the fuel bills invoices and she drew this to the attention of her cousin’s husband.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “How could two thousand pula go missing?”

  “Stolen?” said Precious.

  The cousin’s husband shook his head. He regarded himself as a model employer—a paternalist, yes, but that is what the men wanted, was it not? He could not believe that any of his employees would cheat him. How could they, when he was so good to them and did so much for them?

  Precious showed him how the money had been taken, and they jointly pieced together how it had been moved out of the right account into another one, and had then eventually vanished altogether. Only one of the clerks had access to these funds, so it must have been him; there could be no other explanation. She did not see the confrontation, but heard it from the other room. The clerk was indignant, shouting his denial at the top of his voice. Then there was silence for a moment, and the slamming of a door.

  This was her first case. This was the beginning of the career of Mma Ramotswe.

  The Arrival of Note Mokoti

  There were four years of working in the bus office. The cousin and her husband became accustomed to her presence and began to call her their daughter. She did not mind this; they were her people, and she loved them. She loved the cousin, even if she still treated her as a child and scolded her publicly. She loved the cousin’s husband, with his sad, scarred face and his large, mechanic’s hands. She loved the house, and her room with its yellow curtains. It was a good life that she had made for herself.

  Every weekend she travelled up to Mochudi on one of the cousin’s husband’s buses and visited her father. He would be waiting outside the house, sitting on his stool, and she would curtsey before him, in the old way, and clap her hands.