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

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “Boys fall all the time. They hardly ever break anything.”

  The nurse placed her hands on the child’s shoulders and twisted his torso.

  “See. There is nothing wrong with him. Nothing. If he had broken anything, he would have cried out.”

  But years later, when he remained small, the mother thought of the fall and blamed herself for believing that nurse who was only good for doing bilharzia tests and checking for worms.

  THE BOY was more curious than other children. He loved to look for stones in the red earth and polish them with his spittle. He found some beautiful ones too—deep-blue ones and ones which had a copper-red hue, like the sky at dusk. He kept his stones at the foot of his sleeping mat in his hut and learned to count with them. The other boys learned to count by counting cattle, but this boy did not seem to like cattle—which was another thing that made him odd.

  Because of his curiosity, which sent him scuttling about the bush on mysterious errands of his own, his parents were used to his being out of their sight for hours on end. No harm could come to him, unless he was unlucky enough to step on a puff adder or a cobra. But this never happened, and suddenly he would turn up again at the cattle enclosure, or behind the goats, clutching some strange thing he had found—a vulture’s feather, a dried tshongololo millipede, the bleached skull of a snake.

  Now the boy was out again, walking along one of the paths that led this way and that through the dusty bush. He had found something which interested him very much—the fresh dung of a snake—and he followed the path so he might see the creature itself. He knew what it was because it had balls of fur in it, and that would only come from a snake. It was rock rabbit fur, he was sure, because of its colour and because he knew that rock rabbits were a delicacy to a big snake. If he found the snake, he might kill it with a rock, and skin it, and that would make a handsome skin for a belt for him and his father.

  But it was getting dark, and he would have to give up. He would never see the snake on a night with no moon; he would leave the path and cut back across the bush towards the dirt road that wound its way back, over the dry riverbed, to the village.

  He found the road easily and sat for a moment on the verge, digging his toes into soft white sand. He was hungry, and he knew that there would be some meat with their porridge that night because he had seen his grandmother preparing the stew. She always gave him more than his fair share—almost more than his father—and that angered his two sisters.

  “We like meat too. We girls like meat.”

  But that did not persuade the grandmother.

  He stood up and began to walk along the road. It was quite dark now, and the trees and bushes were black, formless shapes, merging into one another. A bird was calling somewhere—a night-hunting bird—and there were night insects screeching. He felt a small stinging pain on his right arm, and slapped at it. A mosquito.

  Suddenly, on the foliage of a tree ahead, there was a band of yellow light. The light shone and dipped, and the boy turned round. There was a truck on the road behind him. It could not be a car, because the sand was far too deep and soft for a car.

  He stood on the side of the road and waited. The lights were almost upon him now; a small truck, a pickup, with two bounding headlights going up and down with the bumps in the road. Now it was upon him, and he held up his hand to shade his eyes.

  “Good evening, young one.” The traditional greeting, called out from within the cab of the truck.

  He smiled and returned the greeting. He could make out two men in the cab—a young man at the wheel and an older man next to him. He knew they were strangers, although he could not see their faces. There was something odd about the way the man spoke Setswana. It was not the way a local would speak it. An odd voice that became higher at the end of a word.

  “Are you hunting for wild animals? You want to catch a leopard in this darkness?”

  He shook his head. “No. I am just walking home.”

  “Because a leopard could catch you before you caught it!”

  He laughed. “You are right, Rra! I would not like to see a leopard tonight.”

  “Then we will take you to your place. Is it far?”

  “No. It is not far. It is just over there. That way.”

  THE DRIVER opened the door and got out, leaving the engine running, to allow the boy to slide in over the bench seat. Then he got back in, closed the door and engaged the gears. The boy drew his feet up—there was some animal on the floor and he had touched a soft wet nose—a dog perhaps, or a goat.

  He glanced at the man to his left, the older man. It would be rude to stare and it was difficult to see much in the darkness. But he did notice the thing that was wrong with the man’s lip and he saw his eyes too. He turned away. A boy should never stare at an old man like this. But why were these people here? What were they doing?

  “There it is. There is my father’s place. You see—over there. Those lights.”

  “We can see it.”

  “I can walk from here if you like. If you stop, I can walk. There is a path.”

  “We are not stopping. You have something to do for us. You can help us with something.”

  “They are expecting me back. They will be waiting.”

  “There is always somebody waiting for somebody. Always.”

  He suddenly felt frightened, and he turned to look at the driver. The younger man smiled at him.

  “Don’t worry. Just sit still. You are going somewhere else tonight.”

  “Where are you taking me, Rra? Why are you taking me away?”

  The older man reached out and touched the boy on the shoulder.

  “You will not be harmed. You can go home some other time. They will know that you are not being harmed. We are kind men, you see. We are kind men. Listen, I’m going to tell you a little story while we travel. That will make you happy and keep you quiet.

  “There were some herd boys who looked after the cattle of their rich uncle. He was a rich man that one! He had more cattle than anybody else in that part of Botswana and his cattle were big, big, like this, only bigger.

  “Now these boys found that one day a calf had appeared on the edge of the herd. It was a strange calf, with many colours on it, unlike any other calf they had ever seen. And, ow! they were pleased that this calf had come.

  “This calf was very unusual in another way. This calf could sing a cattle song that the boys heard whenever they went near it. They could not hear the words which this calf was using, but they were something about cattle matters.

  “The boys loved this calf, and because they loved it so much they did not notice that some of the other cattle were straying away. By the time that they did notice, it was only after two of the cattle had gone for good that they saw what had happened.

  “Their uncle came out. Here he comes, a tall, tall man with a stick. He shouts at the boys and he hits their calf with his stick, saying that strange calves never brought any luck.

  “So the calf died, but before it died it whispered something to the boys and they were able to hear it this time. It was very special, and when the boys told their uncle what the calf had said he fell to his knees and wailed.

  “The calf was his brother, you see, who had been eaten by a lion a long time before and had come back. Now this man had killed his brother and he was never happy again. He was sad. Very sad.”

  The boy watched the man’s face as he told the story. If he had been unaware of what was happening until that moment, now he knew. He knew what was going to happen.

  “Hold that boy! Take his arms! He’s going to make me go off the road if you don’t hold him.”

  “I’m trying. He is struggling like a devil.”

  “Just hold him. I’ll stop the truck.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MMA MAKUTSI DEALS WITH THE MAIL

  THE SUCCESS of the first case heartened Mma Ramotswe. She had now sent off for, and received, a manual on private detection and was going through it chapter b
y chapter, taking copious notes. She had made no mistakes in that first case, she thought. She had found out what information there was to be had by a simple process of listing the likely sources and seeking them out. That did not take a great deal of doing. Provided that one was methodical, there was hardly any way in which one could go wrong.

  Then she had had a hunch about the crocodile and had followed it up. Again, the manual endorsed this as perfectly acceptable practice. “Don’t disregard a hunch,” it advised. “Hunches are another form of knowledge.” Mma Ramotswe had liked that phrase and had mentioned it to Mma Makutsi. Her secretary had listened carefully, and then typed the sentence out on her typewriter and handed it to Mma Ramotswe.

  Mma Makutsi was pleasant company and could type quite well. She had typed out a report which Mma Ramotswe had dictated on the Malatsi case and had typed out the bill for sending to Mma Malatsi. But apart from that she had not really been called on to do anything else and Mma Ramotswe wondered whether the business could really justify employing a secretary.

  And yet one had to. What sort of private detective agency had no secretary? She would be a laughingstock without one, and clients—if there were really going to be any more, which was doubtful—could well be frightened away.

  Mma Makutsi had the mail to open, of course. There was no mail for the first three days. On the fourth day, a catalogue was received, and a property tax demand, and on the fifth day a letter which was intended for the previous owner.

  Then, at the beginning of the second week, she opened a white envelope dirty with finger marks and read the letter out to Mma Ramotswe.

  Dear Mma Ramotswe,

  I read about you in the newspaper and about how you have opened this big new agency down there in town. I am very proud for Botswana that we now have a person like you in this country.

  I am the teacher at the small school at Katsana Village, thirty miles from Gaborone, which is near the place where I was born. I went to Teachers’ College many years ago and I passed with a double distinction. My wife and I have two daughters and we have a son of eleven. This boy to which I am referring has recently vanished and has not been seen for two months.

  We went to the police. They made a big search and asked questions everywhere. Nobody knew anything about our son. I took time off from the school and searched the land around our village. We have some kopjes not too far away and there are boulders and caves over there. I went into each one of those caves and looked into every crevice. But there was no sign of my son.

  He was a boy who liked to wander, because he had a strong interest in nature. He was always collecting rocks and things like that. He knew a lot about the bush and he would never get into danger from stupidity. There are no leopards in these parts anymore and we are too far away from the Kalahari for lions to come.

  I went everywhere, calling, calling, but my son never answered me. I looked in every well of every farmer and village nearby and asked them to check the water. But there was no sign of him.

  How can a boy vanish off the face of the Earth like this? If I were not a Christian, I would say that some evil spirit had lifted him up and carried him off. But I know that things like that do not really happen.

  I am not a wealthy man. I cannot afford the services of a private detective, but I ask you, Mma, in the name of Jesus Christ, to help me in one small way. Please, when you are making your enquiries about other things, and talking to people who might know what goes on, please ask them if they have heard anything about a boy called Thobiso, aged eleven years and four months, who is the son of the teacher at Katsana Village. Please just ask them, and if you hear anything at all, please address a note to the undersigned, myself, the teacher.

  In God’s name, Ernest Molai Pakotati, Dip.Ed.

  Mma Makutsi stopped reading and looked across the room at Mma Ramotswe. For a moment, neither spoke. Then Mma Ramotswe broke the silence.

  “Do you know anything about this?” she asked. “Have you heard anything about a boy going missing?”

  Mma Makutsi frowned. “I think so. I think there was something in the newspaper about a search for a boy. I think they thought he might have run away from home for some reason.”

  Mma Ramotswe rose to her feet and took the letter from her secretary. She held it as one might hold an exhibit in court—gingerly, so as not to disturb the evidence. It felt to her as if the letter—a mere scrap of paper, so light in itself—was weighted with pain.

  “I don’t suppose there’s much I can do,” she said quietly. “Of course I can keep my ears open. I can tell the poor daddy that, but what else can I do? He will know the bush around Katsana. He will know the people. I can’t really do very much for him.”

  Mma Makutsi seemed relieved. “No,” she said. “We can’t help that poor man.”

  A letter was dictated by Mma Ramotswe, and Mma Makutsi typed it carefully into the typewriter. Then it was sealed in an envelope, a stamp stuck on the outside, and it was placed in the new red out-tray Mma Ramotswe had bought from the Botswana Book Centre. It was the second letter to leave the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, the first being Mma Malatsi’s bill for two hundred and fifty pula—the bill on the top of which Mma Makutsi had typed: “Your late husband—the solving of the mystery of his death.”

  THAT EVENING, in the house in Zebra Drive, Mma Ramotswe prepared herself a meal of stew and pumpkin. She loved standing in the kitchen, stirring the pot, thinking over the events of the day, sipping at a large mug of bush tea which she balanced on the edge of the stove. Several things had happened that day, apart from the arrival of the letter. A man had come in with a query about a bad debt and she had reluctantly agreed to help him recover it. She was not sure whether this was the sort of thing which a private detective should do—there was nothing in the manual about it—but he was persistent and she found it difficult to refuse. Then there had been a visit from a woman who was concerned about her husband.

  “He comes home smelling of perfume,” she said, “And smiling too. Why would a man come home smelling of perfume and smiling?”

  “Perhaps he is seeing another woman,” ventured Mma Ramotswe.

  The woman had looked at her aghast.

  “Do you think he would do that? My husband?”

  They had discussed the situation and it was agreed that the woman would tackle her husband on the subject.

  “It’s possible that there is another explanation,” said Mma Ramotswe reassuringly.

  “Such as?”

  “Well …”

  “Many men wear perfume these days,” offered Mma Makutsi. “They think it makes them smell good. You know how men smell.”

  The client had turned in her chair and stared at Mma Makutsi.

  “My husband does not smell,” she said. “He is a very clean man.”

  Mma Ramotswe had thrown Mma Makutsi a warning look. She would have to have a word with her about keeping out of the way when clients were there.

  But whatever else had happened that day, her thoughts kept returning to the teacher’s letter and the story of the missing boy. How the poor man must have fretted—and the mother, too. He did not say anything about a mother, but there must have been one, or a grandmother of course. What thoughts would have been in their minds as each hour went past with no sign of the boy, and all the time he could be in danger, stuck in an old mine shaft, perhaps, too hoarse to cry out anymore while rescuers beat about above him. Or stolen perhaps—whisked away by somebody in the night. What cruel heart could do such a thing to an innocent child? How could anybody resist the boy’s cries as he begged to be taken home? That such things could happen right there, in Botswana of all places, made her shiver with dread.

  She began to wonder whether this was the right job for her after all. It was all very well thinking that one might help people to sort out their difficulties, but then these difficulties could be heartrending. The Malatsi case had been an odd one. She had expected Mma Malatsi to be distraught when she showed her the evidence
that her husband had been eaten by a crocodile, but she had not seemed at all put out. What had she said? But then I have lots to do. What an extraordinary, unfeeling thing for somebody to say when she had just lost her husband. Did she not value him more than that?

  Mma Ramotswe paused, her spoon dipped half below the surface of the simmering stew. When people were unmoved in that way, Mma Christie expected the reader to be suspicious. What would Mma Christie have thought if she had seen Mma Malatsi’s cool reaction, her virtual indifference? She would have thought: This woman killed her husband! That’s why she’s unmoved by the news of his death. She knew all along that he was dead!

  But what about the crocodile and the baptism, and the other sinners? No, she must be innocent. Perhaps she wanted him dead, and then her prayer was answered by the crocodile. Would that make you a murderer in God’s eyes if something then happened? God would know, you see, that you had wanted somebody dead because there are no secrets that you can keep from God. Everybody knew that.

  She stopped. It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A CONVERSATION WITH

  MR J.L.B. MATEKONI

  THE BOOKS did not look good. At the end of the first month of its existence, the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency was making a convincing loss. There had been three paying clients, and two who came for advice, received it, and declined to pay. Mma Malatsi had paid her bill for two hundred and fifty pula; Happy Bapetsi had paid two hundred pula for the exposure of her false father; and a local trader had paid one hundred pula to find out who was using his telephone to make unauthorised long-distance calls to Francistown. If one added this up it came to five hundred and fifty pula; but then Mma Makutsi’s wages were five hundred and eighty pula a month. This meant that there was a loss of thirty pula, without even taking into account other overheads, such as the cost of petrol for the tiny white van and the cost of electricity for the office.