The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “Let’s think of it in minutes,” she said at last. “One hour is sixty minutes. So if you divide sixty by three, what do you get? That is how long it would take three men to do the work done by one.”

  Puso closed his eyes. Opening them, he pursed his lips with effort before he replied, “Ten minutes? No, maybe five.”

  Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “No, that’s not right. The answer is twenty minutes, Puso. And do you know how I got that answer?”

  The boy shrugged. “They could do it much more quickly if they had somebody like Mma Potokwane ordering them about. She’d make them dig faster, wouldn’t she, Mma?”

  She did not reply to this, even if what Puso said was quite true. There was nobody like Mma Potokwane to get things done, and that applied, she suspected, as much to ditches as it did to anything else.

  “I think you should try to do this by yourself,” she said. “If you can’t do these sums, then ask the teacher to help you. I am not sure how you do these things these days—it is all rather different.”

  And it was different, as she discussed with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni when, an hour or so later, they had their own rather delayed dinner. He said that he was not at all sure if schools taught mental arithmetic any more. “Take Charlie,” he said, referring to the older of his two apprentices. “If you ask him to do some simple calculation—such as what the capacity of a fuel tank might be if you take a bit of it off—he looks blank and reaches for his pocket calculator. We can do those things in our head, can’t we, Mma?”

  Mma Ramotswe thought about this. It was true that she could work out how much change was due at the supermarket till, but when it came to fuel tanks and their capacity, she was not so confident. But the general point that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was making certainly stood: there were some things that just had to be learned through effort, and she was not sure how popular effort currently was. “It is all different, Rra,” she said. “The world is all different. But people like Charlie can do other things, you know. These people who cannot add up can do other things very well.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked doubtful. “I’m keen to hear what those things are,” he said.

  “They are good at …,” began Mma Ramotswe, quickly searching her mind. “They are good at computers and things like that.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But there are things other than computers, Mma. There are proper machines with cogs and grease. Are they good at those? Are they good at fixing ploughs?”

  The mention of ploughs reminded Mma Ramotswe of Mma Potokwane, who had recently asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to fix the small plough that they used to till the fields at the orphan farm. He had done it, of course, as he always did, and charged no fee, again as he always did. Now she told him about the visit the matron had paid to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency that morning.

  “She came in an unknown car,” she said. “She told us that it had been given to the orphan farm by a big donor. Mr. Ditso Ditso.”

  “Ow!” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “That man is very big.”

  “Yes. But the car is only the beginning. He has said that he will give a whole lot more in future.”

  “He is very kind as well.”

  “Yes,” agreed Mma Ramotswe. “But the trouble is, Mma Potokwane doesn’t like a new scheme he has cooked up.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni listened gravely as Mma Ramotswe told him about the reservations that Mma Potokwane had expressed as to the effect that the proposed changes at the orphan farm would have. “And then,” she went on, “Mma Potokwane wondered about whether his money was honestly acquired. Do you think it is, Rra?”

  He did not hesitate. “I don’t think so.”

  She greeted this with interest. “Really, Rra? Have you heard something?”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni shook his head. “No, I have not heard anything. I have heard nothing, in fact.”

  “Then how can you say that his money was not honestly earned?”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked slightly uneasy. “You will laugh at me, I think.”

  “I will never laugh at you, Rra.”

  “In that case, I can tell you. I know this because of his car. He drives a dishonest car.”

  Mma Ramotswe tried to control herself. She made a supreme effort, but it did not work, and she burst into a peal of laughter.

  “There,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “You laughed at me! You said that you wouldn’t, but you did.”

  “I’m sorry, Rra. I did not mean it. It’s just that … it’s just that I can’t see how a car can be dishonest.”

  “But it can,” he protested. “There are certain cars that are always chosen by dishonest people, just as there are cars that only the honest will drive. When you’re a mechanic for many years, you become able to notice these things.”

  “And he drives a dishonest one?”

  “Very,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Have you seen? It’s covered with chrome and flashy bits and pieces. Any mechanic—any mechanic at all, Mma—will say when he sees such a car: ‘There goes a bad man.’ A mechanic knows these things, Mma. He just does.”

  Later that night, as she lay awake in the darkness, Mma Ramotswe considered these words. A mechanic knows these things … It sounded very general, very unscientific, but it was, she thought, probably true. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had always been a very good judge of character, and if he said that there was something about Mr. Ditso Ditso that was suspect, then he was probably right. But the difficulty for her was that it was one thing for somebody to say that another person was bad; it was quite another thing to prove it. And that was what Mma Potokwane had asked her to do: to provide proof that could be shown to the board of the orphan farm that one of their most influential members was bad, and so was his money. It would not be easy; it is never easy to provide proof even when we feel, in our very bones, that we know something to be the case. She was sorry that Mma Potokwane had asked her to do this, but, as always, when Mma Potokwane asked you to do something, whether it was to dig a ditch or to find out information about a rich man, it was impossible to say no. Completely impossible.

  CHAPTER THREE

  YOUR HOUSE HAS GOT MY NAME ON IT

  MMA MAKUTSI HAD informed Mma Ramotswe that she would not be coming into the office until mid-morning the next day. It was an announcement rather than a request, and reflected a subtle change in the internal arrangements of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. This change was not threatening in any way: Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi had always got along together very well, even if it occasionally had to be made clear—in the gentlest way—that Mma Ramotswe was the head of the agency and Mma Makutsi was not. There had also been a disparity in status. Not that this was anything upon which Mma Ramotswe would ever be inclined to founder, but in the past there had been no escaping the fact that while Mma Ramotswe was the wife of a prominent mechanic and garage owner, the daughter of a highly regarded man who knew a great deal about cattle, and a pioneering—indeed the only—private detective in Botswana, Mma Makutsi was none of these things. She had not exactly come from nowhere—Bobonong was not nowhere, even if it could hardly be described as somewhere—but her place, her family, her village all seemed a very long way from Gaborone. And her material circumstances had been very different too. When she emerged from the Botswana Secretarial College she had very little: a couple of dresses and one and a half pairs of shoes, one shoe having been lost in a move from one rented room to another. And to have one and a half pairs of shoes is effectively to have only one pair, unless, of course, the single shoe could in some way be considered a potential substitute for one shoe of the complete pair. This, however, would require that they match, which is rarely the case.

  Mma Makutsi had borne her straitened circumstances with dignity. Mma Ramotswe had never heard her complain—not once, not even when, towards the end of the month in those last, trying days before payday, she knew that Mma Makutsi’s purse was empty, or close to empty. Mma Makutsi would never ask for an advance on next month’s pay, a
nd had declined such offers when Mma Ramotswe had made them.

  “If there’s one thing they taught us at the Botswana Secretarial College,” she explained, “it is this: never take from next month what belongs to next month. That is a good rule, Mma, and if more people paid attention to it, then we would not be in the trouble we are in today.”

  Mma Ramotswe was not sure that they were in trouble. Some people were undoubtedly in trouble, but not everyone; yet she knew what Mma Makutsi meant in a general sense, and was ready to agree.

  Now, of course, it was all quite different. Mma Makutsi’s marriage to Phuti Radiphuti meant that she had become a member of a family that was not only financially comfortable, but actually rather well off. Phuti’s father, the elder Mr. Radiphuti, had by dint of hard work built up a very successful business, the Double Comfort Furniture Store. This store was now probably the largest furniture business in Botswana, and employed well over sixty people. Phuti, his anointed successor, had shown a real aptitude for the selling of furniture, and had steered the business to even greater prosperity. The profits had been ploughed back into the concern, and also into the acquisition of a large herd of cattle. Phuti did not even know the number of head of cattle he possessed, having only a rough idea; this was unusual in a country where people not only knew how many cattle they had, but also who each beast’s parents and grandparents were. On this, the late Obed Ramotswe had once observed that in Botswana there were families of cattle, just as there were families of people; and that within these families there were members who spelled trouble and those who did not, just as there were such differences within human families. A recalcitrant, troublesome bullock was easier to understand if one knew, as Obed Ramotswe always would, that this bullock came from a cattle family in which the young males had a tendency to such behaviour.

  There were some who whispered that Mma Makutsi had chosen Phuti Radiphuti because of what he had, rather than what he was. Such remarks were not only uncharitable but quite unfounded. Those who were aware of the truth of the matter—and Mma Ramotswe was one such—knew that Mma Makutsi had had no inkling of Phuti’s situation when she first set eyes on him on that fateful night at the ballroom-dancing lesson. She had danced with him in spite of his clumsiness and inability to get the steps right; she had listened patiently to him notwithstanding his speech impediment, the stammer which at that stage had made him virtually unintelligible. That had gone, of course, as his confidence had grown, and she had gently coached him in the ways of less troubled speech. All of that was done out of love and affection, with not a thought to what their engagement and subsequent marriage would bring. And observing all this on the sidelines was that shameless gold-digger Violet Sephotho, who seethed with envy at the unfolding of Mma Makutsi’s good fortune.

  Mma Ramotswe had been immensely relieved when Mma Makutsi had indicated that she wanted to continue working after her marriage.

  “It is much better to do something rather than do nothing, Mma,” Mma Makutsi announced. “And when you have professional training, as I do, it is a shame not to use it.”

  “You are very wise, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You are wise, and I am grateful.”

  “No, Mma, I am the grateful one,” said Mma Makutsi. “You are the person who has given me everything. You gave me a job when I was finding it difficult to get one—in spite of getting—”

  “Ninety-seven per cent,” supplied Mma Ramotswe helpfully.

  “Exactly, Mma. Ninety-seven per cent, and it was still impossible to find anything. When some of those girls who got barely fifty per cent at the Botswana Secretarial College, girls such as—”

  “Violet Sephotho,” Mma Ramotswe contributed.

  “Precisely, Mma. She is the big example. Anyway, you are the one who took me on and made me into a detective. You are the one, Mma, and I shall be grateful to you until the day I die. Right up to that day and beyond, Mma.”

  For a moment Mma Ramotswe imagined Mma Makutsi in heaven, dressed in white, as people were thought to be clad there, her large glasses somehow more luminous, more reflecting, than in the mere light of this earth … Mma Makutsi sitting, perhaps ready to take dictation from the Lord himself … It was a ridiculous thought, but she could not help herself from thinking it, and it made her smile.

  The advent of Phuti had certainly changed Mma Makutsi’s fortunes, but those had improved slightly anyway by the time of their first meeting. This improvement had come from two sources: the giving by Mma Makutsi of typing lessons to men, and the gradual growth in the revenues of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, which had resulted in a number of pay rises. This had led to her moving to rather better accommodation, and to the eventual overhaul of her wardrobe, particularly in that department dearest to her, the department of shoes.

  There were a number of possible reasons for Mma Makutsi’s attachment to shoes. One of these was profound: as a young girl, she had had none, and she remembered looking with envy at those so placed as to afford them. At the age of eight she was still unshod—which was not unusual in a remote village in that rather hard part of the country. But over the next year or so, shoes started to appear on the feet of other members of her class at school, and her heart ached, ached, for a pair. The other children’s shoes tended to be hand-me-downs—nobody had new shoes then—and Grace Makutsi would have been content even with handed-down hand-me-downs. But she had to wait, though a sympathetic friend lent her a pair of shoes for the duration of her birthday—blissful, remembered hours, even if the shoes in question were slightly too small and pinched her feet in places.

  With such memories, what could one do but love shoes, long for them, dream of the day when one might have several pairs safely stacked away; comfortable shoes, shoes that fitted one’s feet, shoes with no history of other owners, of other feet? That day dawned for her, of course, and it brought its expected pleasure. But then something rather extraordinary happened—Mma Makutsi began to imagine that her shoes talked to her. It happened quite unexpectedly, and at first she assumed that the voice had come from some passer-by; some person who had perhaps passed by and not been seen, but who had for some reason chosen to mutter Hallo there, Boss. But then it had happened once more, again unexpectedly, when the shoes had said to her: Watch out, Boss, rough ground ahead.

  She had felt none of the alarm that one might normally be expected to feel on hearing voices: a worrying development for some. Rather, she had dismissed it as a mere figment of her imagination, similar to those snatches of melody that we sometimes hear—the memory of music; those half-formed sentences—the memory of conversation; in short, nothing to worry about. Our heads are full of such things, Mma Ramotswe had once pointed out to Mma Makutsi, and she had agreed. If, then, one heard one’s shoes talking, it was really coming from oneself, and was nothing more alarming than that.

  So she came to accept that the shoes would occasionally express an opinion. And she also accepted that this view might sometimes contradict what she was thinking, or even be slightly rude, or hectoring, perhaps. One cannot expect complete compliance from one’s shoes, or unqualified admiration—although that would certainly be nice. One must be prepared, she thought, for at least some criticism from one’s footwear, the occasional sharp comment, the odd note of jealousy sounded by working shoes of party shoes—that sort of thing.

  Now that she was married to Phuti Radiphuti there would be plenty of opportunities to purchase new shoes, but only in good time. Mma Makutsi was very aware that there were people watching her behaviour to see whether her newly acquired position would go to her head. She was determined to deny such people the chance to crow and to make remarks such as: Give money to a person from Bobonong and that’s what you get—every time! She would not have that; she would be discreet and would not surround herself with the trappings of prosperity.

  Except for a house … And that was the reason she would be late in to work that morning: she and Phuti Radiphuti were due to meet the man whom Phuti had selected to build the hou
se that they were planning to live in and where, both he and Mma Makutsi fervently hoped, they would raise their children. For this task he had chosen a man to whom he had recently sold two large sofas: Mr. Clarkson Putumelo, the holder of a diploma in building from the Botswana School of Construction and Allied Trades, and proprietor and managing director of the This Way Up Building Company. The sale of the sofas had been an easy and satisfying transaction. Phuti had come across Mr. Putumelo browsing through the soft-furnishings section of the store and had asked if he could help him. Mr. Putumelo had enquired about sofas and had been shown several. He had selected a very large one, in bright green leather, and had gone off to fetch his wife, a woman whose dimensions were almost as generous as those of the sofa. Mr. Putumelo had suggested that his wife try the sofa, which she did, expressing immediate satisfaction with its comfort in a voluble and high-pitched voice. But then, when she had attempted to get up, she had been so embraced by the padding that she had been unable to do so, and both Phuti and Mr. Putumelo had been obliged to pull hard at her outstretched arms to bring her back to her feet. Mr. Putumelo had not been in the slightest bit embarrassed, and had simply said, “This is always happening with this woman.” Phuti might have suggested a less commodious option—there were several sofas that had clearly been designed with this issue in mind—but this proved not to be necessary. Mr. Putumelo asked about a possible discount for two, was offered ten per cent off, and immediately committed himself. This painless transaction had put the idea into Phuti’s mind that this might be the man to undertake the building of his house. He had heard that building a house could be a traumatic and distressing task: if the builder you chose was as affable as Mr. Putumelo, then presumably that difficult process would be all the easier. He asked, and Mr. Putumelo readily agreed. “I am the man to build you a house,” he said with a smile. “I can tell that a mile off. Your house has got my name on it.”