Morality for Beautiful Girls tn1lda-3

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Mma Ramotswe knew that they were now coming to the reason for the consultation. It was easier to reach it this way, to allow the client to bring the matter up indirectly rather than to launch straight into an enquiry. It seemed less rude, somehow, to allow the matter to be approached in this way.

  “We can help with worries,” she said. “Sometimes we can make them vanish altogether.”

  “So I have heard,” said the Government Man. “People say that you are a lady who can work miracles. I have heard that.”

  “You are very kind, Rra.” She paused, running over in her mind the various possibilities. It was probably unfaithfulness, which was the most common problem of all the clients who consulted her, particularly if, as in the Government Man’s case, they were in busy jobs that took them away from home a great deal. Or it could be something political, which would be new terrain for her. She knew nothing about the workings of political parties, other than that they involved a great deal of intrigue. She had read all about American presidents and the difficulties that they had with this scandal and that scandal, with ladies and burglars and the like. Could there be something like that in Botswana? Surely not, and if there were, she would not choose to get involved. She could not see herself meeting informants on dark corners in the dead of night, or talking in whispers to journalists in bars. On the other hand, Mma Makutsi might appreciate the opportunity …

  The Government Man raised his hand, as if to command silence. It was an imperious gesture, but then he was the scion of a well-connected family and perhaps these things came naturally.

  “I take it that I can speak in complete confidence,” he said, glancing briefly at Mma Makutsi.

  “My assistant is very confidential,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You can trust her.”

  The Government Man narrowed his eyes. “I hope so,” he said. “I know what women are like. They like to talk.”

  Mma Makutsi’s eyes opened wide with indignation.

  “I can assure you, Rra,” said Mma Ramotswe, her tone steely, “that the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is bound by the strictest principle of confidentiality. The strictest principle. And that goes not only for me but also for that lady over there, Mma Makutsi. If you are in any doubt as to this, then you should find some other detectives. We would not object to that.” She paused. “And another thing, Rra. There is a lot of talking that goes on in this country, and most of it, in my opinion, is done by men. The women are usually too busy to talk.”

  She folded her hands on her desk. She had said it now, and she should not be surprised if the Government Man walked out. A man in his position would not be used to being spoken to in that way and he presumably would not take well to it.

  For a moment the Government Man said nothing, but simply stared at Mma Ramotswe.

  “So,” he said at last. “So. You are quite right. I am sorry that I suggested that you would not be able to keep a secret.” Then, turning to Mma Makutsi, he added, “I am sorry that I suggested that thing about you, Mma. It was not a good thing to say.”

  Mma Ramotswe felt the tension ebb away. “Good,” she said. “Now why don’t you tell us about these worries? My assistant will boil the kettle. Would you like bush tea or ordinary tea?”

  “Bush,” said the Government Man. “It’s good for worries, I think.”

  “BECAUSE YOU know who I am,” said the Government Man, “I don’t have to start at the beginning, or at least at the beginning of the beginning. You know that I am the son of an important man. You know that. And I am the firstborn, which means that I shall be the one to head the family when God calls my father to join him. But I hope that will not be for a long time.

  “I have two brothers. One had something wrong with his head and does not talk to anybody. He never talked to anybody and took no interest in anything from the time he was a little boy. So we have sent him out to a cattle post and he is happy there. He stays there all the time and he is no trouble. He just sits and counts the cattle and then, when he has finished, he starts again. That is all that he wants to do in life, even though he is thirty-eight now.

  “Then there is my other brother. He is much younger than I am. I am fifty-four, and he is only twenty-six. He is my brother by another mother. My father is old-fashioned and he had two wives and his mother was the younger. There were many girl children—I have nine sisters by various mothers, and many of them have married and have their own children. So we are a big family, but small in the number of important boys, who are really only myself and this brother of twenty-six. He is called Mogadi.

  “I am very fond of my brother. Because I am so much older than he is, I remember him very well from when he was baby. When he grew a bit, I taught him many things. I showed him how to find mopani worms. I showed him how to catch flying ants when they come out of their holes at the first rains. I told him which things you can eat in the bush and which you cannot.

  “Then one day he saved my life. We were staying out at the cattle post where our father keeps some of his herds. There were some Basarwa there, because my father’s cattle post is not far from the place where these people come in from the Kalahari. It is a very dry place, but there is a windmill which my father set up to pump water for the cattle. There is a lot of water deep underground and it tastes very good. These Basarwa people liked to come and drink this water while they were wandering around and they would do some work for my father in return for some milk from the cows and, if they were lucky, a bit of meat. They liked my father because he never beat them, unlike some people who use sjamboks on them. I have never approved of beating these people, never.

  “I took my brother out to see some Basarwa, who were living under a tree not far away. They had some slingshots out of ostrich leather and I wanted to get one for my brother. I took some meat to give to them in exchange. I thought that they might also give us an ostrich egg.

  “It was just after the rains, and there was fresh grass and flowers. You know, Mma, what it is like down there when the first rains come. The land is suddenly soft and there are flowers, flowers all around. It is very beautiful, and for a while you forget just how hot and dry and hard it has been. We walked along a path which the animals had made with their hooves, myself in the front and my little brother just behind me. He had a long stick which he was trailing along the ground beside him. I was very happy to be there, with my little brother, and with the fresh grass that I knew would make the cattle fat again.

  “He suddenly called out to me, and I stopped. There in the grass beside us was a snake, with its head up off the ground and its mouth open, hissing. It was a big snake, about as long as I am tall, and it had raised about an arm’s length of its body off the ground. I knew immediately what sort of snake this was and my heart stopped within me.

  “I was very still, because I knew that a movement could make the snake strike and it was only this far from me. It was very close. The snake was looking at me, with those angry eyes that those mambas have, and I thought that it was going to strike me and there was nothing I could do.

  “At that moment there was a scraping noise and I saw that my little brother, who was only eleven or twelve at the time, was moving the stick towards the snake, pushing its tip along the ground. The snake moved its head, and before we could make out what was happening, it had struck at the end of the stick. That gave me time to turn round, pick up my brother, and run down the path. The snake disappeared. It had bitten the stick and perhaps it had broken a fang. Whatever happened, it did not choose to follow us.

  “He saved my life. You know, Mma, what happens if a person is bitten by a mamba. There is no chance. So from that day I knew that I owed my life to this little brother of mine.

  “That was fourteen years ago. Now we do not walk through the bush together very often, but I still love my brother very much and that is why I was unhappy when he came to see me here in Gaborone and told me that he was going to marry a girl he had met when he was a student here at the university. He was doing a BSc there
and while he was doing this he came across a girl from Mahalapye. I know her father because he is a clerk in one of the ministries here. I have seen him sitting under the trees with other clerks at lunchtime, and now he waves to me every time he sees my car go past. I waved back at the beginning, but now I cannot be bothered. Why should I wave to this clerk all the time just because his daughter has met my brother?

  “My brother is staying down at the farm that we have up north of Pilane. He runs it very well and my father is very content with what he is doing. My father has given him the farm, in fact, and it is now his. This makes him a wealthy man. I have another farm which also belonged to my father, so I am not jealous of that. Mogadi married this girl about three months ago and she moved into the farmhouse that we have. My father and my mother live there. My aunts come and stay for much of the year. It is a very big house and there is room for everybody.

  “My mother did not want this woman to marry my brother. She said that she would not make a good wife and that she would only bring unhappiness to the family. I also thought that it was not a good idea, but in my case it was because I thought I knew why she wanted to marry my brother. I did not think that it was because she loved him, or anything like that; I think that she was being encouraged by her father to marry my brother because he came from a rich and important family. I shall never forget, Mma, how her father looked about the place when he came to talk about the marriage with my father. His eyes were wide with greed, and I could see him adding up the value of everything. He even asked my brother how many cattle he had—that from a man who has no cattle himself, I should imagine!

  “I accepted my brother’s decision, although I thought it was a bad one, and I tried to be as welcoming as possible to this new wife. But it was not easy. This was because all the time I could see that she was plotting to turn my brother against his family. She obviously wants my mother and father out of that house and has made herself very unpleasant to my aunts. It is like a house in which a wasp is trapped, always buzzing away and trying to sting the others.

  “That would have been bad enough, I suppose, but then something happened which made me even more concerned. I was down there a few weeks ago and I went to see my brother at the house. When I arrived, I was told that he was not well. I went through to his room and he was lying in bed holding his stomach. He had eaten something very bad, he said; perhaps it was rotten meat.

  “I asked him whether he had seen a doctor and he said that it was not serious enough for that. He would get better soon, he thought, even if he felt very ill at that point. I then went and spoke to my mother, who was sitting by herself on the verandah.

  “She beckoned me to sit beside her and, having checked to see that there was nobody else about, she told me what was on her mind.

  “‘That new wife is trying to poison your brother,’ she said. ‘I saw her go into the kitchen before his meal was served. I saw her. I told him not to finish his meat as I thought it was rotten. If I hadn’t told him that, he would have eaten the whole helping and would have died. She’s trying to poison him.’

  “I asked her why she would do this. ‘If she has just married a nice rich husband,’ I said, ‘why should she want to get rid of him so quickly?’

  “My mother laughed. ‘Because she’ll be much richer as a widow than as a wife,’ she said. ‘If he dies before she has children, then he has made a will which gives everything to her. The farm, this house, everything. And once she has that, then she can throw us out and all the aunts. But first she has to kill him.’

  “I thought at first that this was ridiculous, but the more I pondered it, the more I realised that it provided a very clear motive for this new wife and that it could well be true. I could not talk to my brother about it, as he refuses to hear anything said against his wife, and so I thought that I had better get somebody from outside the family to look into this matter and see what was happening.”

  Mma Ramotswe raised a hand to interrupt him. “There’s the police, Rra. This sounds like something for the police. They are used to dealing with poisoners and people like that. We are not that sort of detective. We help people with the problems in their lives. We are not here to solve crimes.”

  As Mma Ramotswe spoke, she noticed Mma Makutsi look crestfallen. She knew that her assistant had a different vision of their role; that was the difference, thought Mma Ramotswe between being almost forty and being twenty-eight. At almost forty—or even forty, if one were fussy about dates—one was not on the lookout for excitement; at twenty-eight, if any excitement was to be had, then one wanted to have it. Mma Ramotswe understood, of course. When she had married Note Mokoti, she had yearned for all the glamour that went with being the wife of a well-known musician, a man who turned the heads of all when he entered a room, a man whose very voice seemed redolent of the thrilling notes of jazz that he coaxed out of his shining Selmer trumpet. When the marriage ended, after a pitifully short time, with its only memorial being that minute, sad stone that marked the short life of their premature baby, she had yearned for a life of stability and order. Certainly, excitement was not what she sought, and, indeed Clovis Andersen, author of her professional bible,The Principles of Private Detection, had clearly warned, on page two if not on page one itself, that those who became private detectives to find a more exciting life were gravely mistaken as to the nature of the work.Our job, he wrote, in a paragraph which had stuck in Mma Ramotswe’s mind and which she had quoted in its entirety to Mma Makutsi when she had first engaged her,isto help people in need to resolve the unresolved questions in their lives. There is very little drama in our calling; rather a process ofpatient observation, deduction, and analysis. We are sophisticatedwatchmen, watching and reporting; there is nothing romantic in our job and those who are looking for romance should lay down this manual at this point and do something else.

  Mma Makutsi’s eyes had glazed over when Mma Ramotswe had quoted this to her. It was obvious, then, that she thought of the job in a very different way. Now, with no less a person than the Government Man sitting before them talking about family intrigue and possible poisonings, she felt that at last here was an investigation which could allow them to get their teeth into something worthwhile. And, just as this arose, Mma Ramotswe seemed intent on putting off the client!

  The Government Man stared at Mma Ramotswe. Her intervention had annoyed him, and it seemed that he was making an effort to control his displeasure. Mma Makutsi noticed that the top of his lip quivered slightly as he listened.

  “I cannot go to the police,” he said, struggling to keep his voice normal. “What could I say to the police? The police would ask for some proof, even from me. They would say that they could hardly go into that house and arrest a wife who would say that she had done nothing, with the husband there, too, saying This woman has not done anything. What are you talking about? ”

  He stopped and looked at Mma Ramotswe as if he had made out his case.

  “Well?” he said abruptly. “If I cannot go to the police, then it becomes the job of a private detective. That’s what you people are for, isn’t it? Well, Mma?”

  Mma Ramotswe returned his gaze, which in itself was a gesture. In traditional society, she should not have looked so hard into the eyes of a man of his rank. That would have been very rude. But times had changed, and she was a citizen of the modern Republic of Botswana, where there was a constitution which guaranteed the dignity of all citizens, lady private detectives among them. That constitution had been upheld from the very day in 1966 when the Union Jack had been taken down in the stadium and that wonderful blue flag had been raised to the ululating of the crowd. It was a record which no other country in Africa, not one, could match. And she was, after all, Precious Ramotswe, daughter of the late Obed Ramotswe, a man whose dignity and worth was the equal of any man, whether he was from a chiefly family or not. He had been able to look into the eye of anyone, right to the day of his death, and she should be able to do so too.

  “It is for me to de
cide whether I take a case, Rra,” she said. “I cannot help everybody. I try to help people as much as I can, but if I cannot do a thing, then I say that I am sorry but I cannot help that person. That is how we work in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. In your case, I just do not see how we could find out what we need to find out. This is a problem inside a family. I do not see how a stranger could find out anything about it.”

  The Government Man was silent. He glanced at Mma Makutsi, but she dropped her eyes.

  “I see,” he said after a few moments. “I think you do not want to help me, Mma. Well now, that is very sad for me.” He paused. “Do you have a licence for this business, Mma?”

  Mma Ramotswe caught her breath. “A licence? Is there a law which requires a licence to be a private detective?”

  The Government Man smiled, but his eyes were cold. “Probably not. I haven’t checked. But there could be. Regulation, you know. We have to regulate business. That’s why we have things like hawkers’ licences or general dealers’ licences, which we can take away from people who are not suitable to be hawkers or general dealers. You know how that works.”

  It was Obed Ramotswe who answered; Obed Ramotswe through the lips of his daughter, his Precious.

  “I cannot hear what you are saying, Rra. I cannot hear it.”

  Mma Makutsi suddenly noisily shuffled the papers on her desk.

  “Of course, you’re right, Mma,” she said. “You could not simply go up to that woman and ask her whether she was planning to kill her husband. That would not work.”

  “No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That is why we cannot do anything here.”

  “On the other hand,” said Mma Makutsi quickly. “I have an idea. I think I know how this might be done.”

  The Government Man twisted round to face Mma Makutsi.

  “What is your idea, Mma?”

  Mma Makutsi swallowed. Her large glasses seemed to shine with brightness at the force of the idea.