Precious and the Mystery of the Missing Lion: A New Case for Precious Ramotswe

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “There’s a hippo down there!” shouted Precious, struggling to recover her breath.

  The boy, whose name was Khumo (you say it KOO-MO), did not seem surprised.

  “Oh, that’s just Harry,” he said. “He’s always down there. He’s a very lazy hippo and has never chased anybody.”

  Precious was relieved, but she had still had a dreadful fright. “He looked very fierce,” she said.

  Khumo smiled. “Well, let’s leave him in peace. Why don’t you come with me now and see what’s happening in the camp. It’s something very exciting. There’s a lion.”

  Precious was not sure that she wanted to meet a lion so soon after her encounter with the hippo, but Khumo seemed to know what he was doing. So she followed him back along the track, wondering all the while what would await them when they reached the camp.

  S THEY MADE THEIR WAY to the main camp, Khumo told Precious about the lion.

  “Most of the lions around here are wild ones,” he said. “This one, though, is not from here. He came with the film-makers. He’s an actor lion.”

  Precious looked puzzled and asked her new friend to explain.

  “They brought him with them,” he said. “He’s tame. They’re going to use him in the film they’re making.”

  Precious nodded; now she understood. She had heard about dogs that had been trained to act in films – to fetch things and so on – but she had never heard of a lion doing this.

  “Are you sure he’s completely tame?” she asked nervously. They were now getting close to the camp and she could see people milling around. She could also see a large cage in which something – and it must have been the actor lion – was moving.

  “Everybody says he is,” Khumo replied. “Anyway, we’ll soon find out. It looks as if they’re going to let him out of his cage.”

  They had now reached the camp and were standing with some of the film people near the lion’s cage. There was a tall man wearing a large brown hat who seemed to be in charge of the lion.

  “Let him out now, Tom,” said somebody to this man, who then stepped forward and opened the door of the cage.

  Precious gave a shiver as the great lion came out into the sunlight. Nobody else, though, seemed to be worried, and Tom, the man with the large hat, went forward to pat the lion on the head.

  “You see?’ said Khumo. “He’s tame. You couldn’t do that to a lion who wasn’t tame, could you?”

  Precious had to agree that you could not.

  The children watched as the film crew set about their work. The scene they were filming had two actors walking across a piece of ground and seeing the lion, called Teddy by everyone, sitting under a tree. Tom took Teddy to the tree and told him to sit under it.

  “Sit, Teddy,” he said. And Teddy, like a well-trained dog, sat down obediently.

  There were cameras mounted on trolleys and there was a lot of shouting and rushing about. Nobody seemed to mind Precious and Khumo watching, and at one point somebody even asked them to hold onto a cable while it was being wound up. This made them feel very important – as if they were members of the film crew itself. And later on, when everybody took a break, the two children were handed large mugs of sweet tea and the fattest fat cake they had ever seen. A fat cake is a special treat in Botswana. This is what it looks like.

  It tastes just like a doughnut, but more delicious, if that is possible.

  Precious and Khumo ate their fat cakes and were licking the sugar off their fingers when Tom came over to ask them to help.

  “We want to film Teddy standing up suddenly and looking at something in the grass,” he said. “Would you mind hiding in the grass, and then, when I give you the signal, making some sort of sound to attract his attention. Maybe a sort of clucking sound, as if you’re a guinea fowl. Lions like guinea fowl, you know, and that will be bound to interest him.”

  They felt very important to have a job to do, and they both went off to hide in the grass as Tom had asked them. As they lay there, Precious suddenly had a worrying thought.

  “What if he thinks we really are guinea fowl?” she whispered to Khumo.

  “He won’t,” said Khumo. “He’s a very clever lion.”

  “I hope so,” said Precious. “Because if he really thought we were guinea fowl, then he might pounce on us.”

  They waited quietly, the only sound being that of their beating hearts. Precious thought that her heart was beating rather loudly – and so did Khumo. That’s the trouble about being frightened – you may be as quiet as you can manage, but your heart doesn’t seem to take much notice.

  “Right,” called Tom. “Please attract Teddy’s attention now.”

  Precious and Khumo both started to make the noise that a guinea fowl makes. It sounded a bit like the noise a hen makes, only it was a bit more ... well, spotted. This is what it sounded like.

  At first Teddy did nothing.

  “Perhaps he’s feeling a bit sleepy,” whispered Khumo. “I think we should be a bit louder.”

  They raised the volume of the noise and, sure enough, Teddy’s ears started to prick up. Then he sat up and looked with interest in their direction. After that, things happened very quickly – so quickly, in fact, that neither Precious nor Khumo had much time to react.

  With one great bound, Teddy reached the edge of the clump of tall grass in which the two children were hiding. Then, with another not quite so long bound, he was upon them.

  Precious closed her eyes. If you were going to be eaten by a lion, then she thought it was probably best not to see what was happening. But then she felt a rather rough, wet tongue licking at her face, moving on to her neck, finally getting to her knees. It was a bit like being tickled, and she could not stop herself from laughing.

  Teddy had pounced on them not to eat them or to scratch them, but to play. Now he was lying on the ground, his feet up in the air, inviting them to scratch his stomach. It was very funny.

  Tom was very pleased with what his cameras had seen, and they all went back to the camp for tea and more fat cakes.

  “You did very well,” Tom said to Precious and Khumo. “Please stay with us and help us for the rest of the day.”

  “Certainly,” said Precious.

  And Khumo, without any hesitation, said the same thing.

  T PROVED TO BE AN EXCITING DAY. And the day after that was exciting too, as there was filming to be done deep in the forest. That meant a long ride in a truck – with Teddy – along a very bumpy and overgrown track.

  Tom was very pleased with the work that Precious and Khumo did, and he made sure that at the end of the day they were rewarded with an envelope full of money. That suited them very well, as they were both saving for things, and the money would be very helpful for that.

  But then, at the end of the second day, just after they had returned to the camp and Precious was back in Aunty Bee’s house, they heard the sound of people shouting and calling. Something had clearly happened, and when Precious and her aunt went outside, they found out what it was.

  “Teddy’s disappeared!” shouted one of the film men. “We don’t know where he is.”

  Precious joined the throng of people from the camp who started looking for the missing lion. They searched under the trucks and vans; they searched in the sheds where they kept supplies; they even looked under the beds in some of the camp huts just in case he had decided to find a hiding place there. But there was no sign of him – Teddy, it seemed, had vanished into thin air.

  Darkness came down like a curtain. Now it was too late to search any more, and they all had to go to bed hoping that in the morning he would come out from wherever he was hiding in time for that day’s filming.

  “He’ll turn up,” said Aunty Bee. “Or at least I hope he’ll turn up.”

  The next morning, when the sun rose up over the tops of the trees like a great red ball, Precious went outside to look for Teddy. She studied the ground, as her father had taught her to do, for any sign that a lion had walked that wa
y, but there was nothing. She saw the footprints of a small family of warthogs,

  but nothing that looked like the large pug-marks that a lion leaves behind.

  After breakfast, when she went down to the camp with Khumo, they saw Tom sitting unhappily beneath a tree, his head sunk in his hands.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “Without Teddy, we’ll have to change the whole story of our film.”

  Precious felt very sorry for the director. It was not easy to make a film, and when one of the stars decides to disappear it must make it even more difficult.

  “I think we should try to help him,” she said to Khumo. “ I think we should go and look for him.”

  Khumo was uncertain. “But will they let us?” he asked.

  “I can ask Aunty Bee,” said Precious.

  She went to her aunt and explained what she and Khumo wanted to do. “If we are very, very, very careful,” she said, “will you let us go off and look for the missing lion?”

  Aunty Bee looked doubtful. “There are rather a lot of elephants about,” she said. “And hippos too. Not to mention all those snakes ...”

  “We won’t go near any of them,” said Precious. “I promise.”

  Aunty Bee had a canoe. She did not use it very much, but it still floated and as far as she knew there were no holes in it, which was a good thing, as holes in any sort of boat are not a very good idea.

  “I suppose you can take my canoe,” she said after a while. “But keep well away from hippos.”

  “We will,” said Precious, as she ran off to tell Khumo the good news.

  They set off about an hour later. Precious had packed some sandwiches – enough for both of them – and she also brought a spare hat, and a compass to use in case they got lost. Khumo brought a bag of toffees, a small box of sticking plasters, a box of matches, and two bottles of water. They had everything they needed.

  The canoe was an old-fashioned one, made of wood and propelled through the water with two stout paddles. It was a little bit wobbly, but canoes often are and you quickly get used to them. Soon they were slipping through the water of the great river, and after half an hour they were well into the wild forests and plains that surrounded the camp.

  They looked about them very carefully as they made their way. There was plenty to see on the banks of the river. There were great trees from which vines hung down like swinging ropes. There were slippery patches of mud used by crocodiles to launch themselves into the water. There were places where herds of zebra and antelopes came nervously down to the edge of the river to drink, watching all the time for lions that might creep up behind them, or crocodiles that might lurk in the water in front of them. It was dangerous being a zebra or antelope as there were plenty of other creatures round about who might imagine that you were just right for their breakfast, lunch or even their dinner.

  After a few hours of paddling, they stopped on a small island in the middle of the river. Beaching the canoe, they found some comfortable grass on which to have their picnic of the sandwiches that Precious had prepared. They were very hungry, as paddling a canoe takes a lot of energy and breakfast had been some time ago.

  They had just finished their last sandwich when Precious noticed a movement on the riverbank opposite their island.

  “What was that?” she asked Khumo, shading her eyes from the bright glare of the sun. “I think I saw something over there.”

  Khumo rose to his feet – slowly, so as not to disturb whatever it was that Precious had seen. “I can’t see anything,” he said. But then, quite suddenly, he did see something, and it made him take in his breath with a gasp.

  “Lions,” he whispered. “A whole pride of them.”

  “Sit down,” whispered Precious. “We don’t want them to see us.”

  They remained quite still as the pride of lions made its way down to the water to drink. There were six of them altogether, and it did not take long for Precious and Khumo to identify which one was Teddy.

  “That’s him,” whispered Khumo, pointing to a lion standing on the edge of the group.

  Precious saw that it was Teddy. He seemed to be quite happy with his new friends, and they watched them all until, at a signal from the biggest lion, who was also the leader – a roar – they turned round and made their way back into the bush.

  Once the lions had gone, Precious and Khumo pushed their canoe back into the water, climbed into it, and paddled back down the river. They did not take a break on the way back, as they wanted to get to Tom as soon as possible to give him the good news that they had found his missing lion.

  OM WAS VERY PLEASED.

  “Do you remember exactly where you saw the lions?” he asked. “Will you be able to take us to them?”

  Khumo looked a bit doubtful. “I think so,” he began. “It was where the river went a bit like this ...” He made a movement of his hands. “And then it went a bit like this ...” He made another movement to show a change of direction.

  Tom looked worried. Rivers were always going like this, and then this, and he was not sure whether Khumo’s directions would be good enough. But he did not know, of course, that Precious was the girl who was destined to become Botswana’s most famous detective, and that she had stored away in her memory every detail of the trip down the river.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I know exactly where the spot is. It is after the river turns to the left just before you reach a very old tree that has half fallen into the water. There are some sand banks in the middle of the river that are about as deep as the top of my knees, and then there is an island that has a bush at one end, a clump of rocks at the other, and an ant-hill in the middle. The lions came down to drink on the shore right on the other side. So they’ll be somewhere near there.”

  Tom looked impressed. “You are a very observant girl,” he said. “I’m sure that will help us to find the place.”

  Precious smiled modestly. She was not at all boastful, and she wanted to make sure that Khumo would get some of any praise that was being given. “Khumo helped a lot,” she said.

  Tom thanked Khumo too, and it was agreed that once everybody was ready, they would set off once again to see if they could find Teddy. Precious was not sure how they would manage to get him back – particularly if he was having a good time with his new lion friends – but Tom seemed to think this would not be too hard.

  “He’s a very tame lion,” he said. “I’m sure that once he finds that he has to hunt for his food and not have it delivered to him in a big dish, he will be less keen to stay out in the wild.”

  There was enough time before they left for Precious to go and tell her aunt all about their adventure. Aunty Bee was relieved that they had got home without getting into any trouble, and was very proud of the fact that they had managed to find Teddy. She was perfectly happy for Precious to go out again, this time with Tom and the other people from the film crew.

  “They’ll look after you,’ she said. And then she stopped and thought. “Or maybe you will be the one to look after them.”

  Precious smiled. “We’ll see,” she said.

  Aunty Bee looked at her fondly. “You know something?” she said. “Your father said that he thought you had the makings of a great detective. And I think he might be right.”

  They took a much bigger boat this time – large enough for ten people to sit in it quite comfortably and not get at all wet. This boat had an engine, and it made a throaty roar as they set off from the camp. Precious looked back and waved to her aunt, and Khumo waved too, continuing to do so until they rounded a bend in the river and lost sight of the camp.

  It did not take them long to make the trip. There were quite a few islands, but Tom was able to identify the right one from the description that Precious had given. Now they were in sight of the place on the shore where the lions had been, and were able to steer their boat gently in to the muddy bank.

  They got their feet a bit wet as they went ashore, but the water was warm and that did no
t matter.

  “We must be very quiet now,” said Tom, putting a finger to his lips. “Lions have very good hearing and we don’t want them to take fright and run away.”

  Once everybody was on dry land and the boat had been firmly tied to a tree trunk at the edge of the water, the whole party began to walk very slowly and carefully through the thick grass and scrub bush. Tom led the way, and then came one of his men, and behind them were Precious and Khumo. The other men who had come with them brought up the rear, looking anxiously around them from time to time.

  “You have to be very careful when looking for lions,” Tom whispered. “Sometimes when you are looking for a lion, the lion creeps round behind you and then, before you know what’s happened, you’re being stalked by the lion rather than the other way round.”

  Precious gave a shiver when she heard this. She did not like the thought of a lion creeping up behind her.

  “Don’t worry,” said Khumo. “Tom will be very careful.”

  “I hope so,” said Precious.

  They walked for about an hour. “No sign of anything yet,” said Tom. “Have you seen any tracks?”

  Precious shook her head. “Only old ones,” she said. ‘I think lions must have been here once, but I think it was quite a few days ago – maybe even weeks.”

  She had just finished saying this when she noticed something. It was not something that most people would notice, but you have to remember that she was a detective-in-training and so she saw things that other people walked right past.

  “Wait,” she said, her voice low. “Look at this.”