The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni came into the house and tossed the keys of his truck on to a table. “There are some people,” he began, “who should not be allowed on the road. Maybe they shouldn’t even be allowed to walk anywhere, either. Maybe we should hang a large sign around their neck saying Very Dangerous, or No Sense, or something like that.”

  Mma Ramotswe spoke soothingly. “You have been on the Lobatse Road, Rra. It always makes you cross.”

  “The road itself is not the problem,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, stretching out his arms to dispel an incipient cramp. “It is the people who use the road. There was one man, you know, who came up behind me, and although he couldn’t possibly see what was coming—we were right on the brow of a hill and there were lines on the road warning you not to overtake—in spite of that, he just pulled past me. And then there was this big Botswana Defence Force lorry coming the other way and it was full of soldiers, I think, and the driver of that had to go right over on to the verge and kicked up a big cloud of dust and little stones flying all over the place, and one of those stones comes—zing—and makes a little crack in my windscreen. And this stupid man just drives on like a … like a … like an ostrich.”

  “Like an ostrich?”

  “You know what I mean, Mma. You know how ostriches run, and how they go this way and that, swerving around. Anyway, he was lucky that he didn’t make that Defence Force driver go right off the road because that would have put him in big trouble. It would be like declaring war, Mma. You don’t declare war on the Botswana Defence Force.”

  Mma Ramotswe agreed that such a thing would be unwise. “I’m very sorry to hear about these stupid people on the road,” she said. “I’m sorry that we still have such people in these modern days.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “And so am I.” He sniffed at the air. “Is that mutton stew, Mma? Is that what I can smell?”

  “It is, Rra. There is a big pot waiting for you—for us—in the oven. It will be ready after you have washed your hands. And while we are eating, I can tell you of a very strange thing that happened to me today. Or happened to both of us, should I say. To Mma Makutsi and me.”

  He went through to the bathroom to wash his hands, but they continued their conversation down the corridor. The children were never disturbed by the sound of voices and would sleep through even the most animated conversation elsewhere in the house.

  “So something happened,” he called out. “You found out some big important bit of information? You won a big prize—ten thousand pula? You saw a lion under your desk?”

  She laughed. “These are all quite possible developments, Rra.” For a moment she imagined Mma Makutsi suddenly whispering across the office, “Don’t make any sudden movements, Mma, but I think there is a lion under your desk. I think I can see its tail.” And she would reply, “I shall take what action is necessary, Mma Makutsi, but we really should finish dictation first …”

  There came the sound of splashing water, and then the gurgle of the basin draining. “So what was it?” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni asked. “You had a visitor?”

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “What did you say, Mma?”

  She raised her voice. “I said yes, Rra. We had a visitor, but you will never, never guess who it was. Not in a year of guessing. Not even then, with twenty, fifty guesses a day; even then you would never get it.”

  There was a momentary silence at the other end of the corridor. A tap was run again, and then there came the sound of the towel roller turning. “Well, Rra,” Mma Ramotswe went on. “Try to guess. I’ll give you one clue: he is very important.”

  “That man who wrote that book of yours. What is his name? That Chlorine Andersen, or whatever he’s called.”

  “Clovis, not Chlorine.”

  “Him?”

  She sounded crestfallen. “Yes, Rra. How did you know?”

  He came back into the room, wiping his hands on the sides of his khaki trousers. “I guessed. You said that I would never guess, and so I chose the most unlikely name I could think of. And that was that man, Clovis Andersen. That’s how I did it, Mma. Simple.”

  OVER A LARGE HELPING of mutton stew, Mma Ramotswe narrated the story of her extraordinary meeting with Clovis Andersen. It was the same story that Mma Makutsi had, just an hour or so earlier, told Phuti Radiphuti; but more accurate, perhaps, in Mma Ramotswe’s telling of it than in that of her assistant. Mma Makutsi had a tendency to embellish stories for dramatic effect, or at least to tell the tale from her own perspective. In her version, then, Clovis Andersen had introduced himself first to her, rather than to Mma Ramotswe, had been facing her desk when he sat down, and had addressed almost all of his remarks to her. But in this, surely, she could be forgiven; for who among us does not see the world as turning towards him or her rather than towards others? The weather is weather in so far as it affects us; great events are great events in that they have an impact on our lives; life, in short, was to be judged by what it had in store for Mma Makutsi, or for those within her immediate circle. This was neither solipsism nor selfishness—Mma Makutsi was actually quite generous; rather, it was a matter of perspective. It was a universe made up of several key institutions, principal among which was the Botswana Secretarial College and all that it represented (the motto of the college being Be Accurate). Then there was the Double Comfort Furniture Store, to which she was now firmly attached as the wife of its managing director (and the motto of that concern was Be Comfortable); the Government of Botswana, its ministers and permanent secretaries; and finally the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and its owner and founder, Mma Ramotswe. This was her world, and these were the bodies to which she was unswervingly loyal.

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni listened with interest to the story that Mma Ramotswe told, only interrupting her occasionally for clarification of some salient point.

  “Out of the blue?” he asked. “He came out of the blue? Just like that?”

  “Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. She had not told him about her dream; there would be an opportunity to discuss that later. “He came into the office and, believe it or not, Rra, to begin with Mma Makutsi and I had no idea of who he was. He was a stranger, obviously, but that was all we could tell. And there are so many strangers about these days, there was no reason why we should know; he could have been anyone.”

  “But do they not have a photograph of him on the cover of his book?” asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I thought that they put photos of authors on books. So that you know what you’re going to get.”

  Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “There is no photograph of Mr. Andersen. He is a very modest man. As you would be too, Rra, if you wrote a book. The Principles of Car Maintenance, for example. You would have a photograph of a car on it, not of you.”

  “I have not yet written a book,” mused Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I have thought of it, but I have not started one yet.”

  Mma Ramotswe was eager to continue with her story, but could not let this remark go uncommented upon. “This book of yours, Rra: Would it be about car maintenance, or is it something different?”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked bashful. “It will be something different, I think.”

  She looked at him expectantly. “Well, Rra?”

  He hesitated, as if deciding whether to trust her with a secret. “I thought of writing something for ladies.”

  Mma Ramotswe’s eyebrows shot up. “For ladies? That is very interesting, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni! What exactly will this book for ladies be?”

  “It will be on how to fix things in the house,” he said. “There are many things that a lady can fix herself. Washing-machine repairs, for example, are not all that difficult. Then there are things that can go wrong with cars. There is no reason why ladies should not change tyres, or do simple things like that. You do not need a man to do those things.” He paused. “That will be my book, Mma, if I ever write it, which I do not think I shall. I thought I might call it Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s Book of Hints for Ladies.”

&nbs
p; Mma Ramotswe clapped her hands together. “It will be a first-class book, Rra! They will sell it at that bookshop at Riverwalk. It will be in the window and take up all the space. Everybody will be buying it.”

  “I must write it first,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “And the problem is that I do not know how to do that. I am just a mechanic, Mma Ramotswe—as you well know. I am not a person who can write a book. You need a BA for that, and I do not have a BA.”

  They returned to the subject of Clovis Andersen.

  “What did he want?” asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

  “He did not want anything,” said Mma Ramotswe. “He was passing by and he thought he would call in and say hello. It was just because he is a detective too. It is called a professional courtesy call, I think.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni took a forkful of his mutton stew. “Passing by? How is it that a famous person like that is just passing by the Tlokweng Road? How many famous people do you see on the Tlokweng Road, Mma Ramotswe? I have never seen one—not one. It is not a place where famous people like to go.”

  “Those were my thoughts too,” said Mma Ramotswe. “So I asked him, and he told me.”

  She waited while Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni dealt with his mutton stew. Then she resumed. “He said that he was in Botswana because he was invited here to visit some lady.”

  “Some Motswana lady?”

  She shook her head. “No, an American lady who has lived here for a few years. This lady is working here on a scheme that the American government has to build libraries in schools. They are building a library in Serowe, I think, and another one at Selebi-Phikwe. There will be many libraries all over the place, and it will be very nice for the children. That is what she is doing.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. “It sounds like good work. And so Mr. Andersen knows this lady, and she asked him to come to see her. Has he not got a wife back wherever he comes from? Is there no wife to say, ‘You must not go off and visit library ladies’?”

  Mma Ramotswe raised a finger in the air. “No, Rra, that is the point. There was a wife—there was a Mrs. Andersen, but she is late now.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni lowered his head, as was polite to do, even if one did not know the late person. “I am very sorry to hear that.”

  “Yes, it is very sad. So he has no wife now …”

  “And he is hoping that the library lady …”

  “No, he is not hoping that. But I think the library lady is hoping that she will be the new Mrs. Andersen.”

  “You mean she’s keener than he is?”

  “That is exactly what I mean. He did not use those precise words, of course, but that is the impression I formed. I think that she is keen to marry him, but he has different ideas. I think he wants her just as a friend.”

  “But what is the problem?” asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “Do they not like one another? Is that not the most important thing?”

  “I think they do like one another. In fact, he said to me, ‘I am very fond of this lady, but I do not love her.’ That is what he said, Rra.”

  He shrugged. “There are many people who marry one another without being in love. There are many good marriages like that. I could make you a long list, Mma.”

  She looked away. Was their own marriage based on love, or was it something else that brought them together? Affection? Friendship? The comfort of sharing their lives? She knew what she felt about Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni: she loved him. It was as simple as that. He was her husband, and she loved him. And she had every reason to believe, she felt, that he had loved her when he asked her to marry him and she had agreed. She was sure that he had loved her when they stood together, before Bishop Mwamba, under that tree at the orphan farm, with the sound of the children’s singing rising up into that great, empty sky and the words of the marriage service—those profound words—hanging in the air, proclaimed by the Bishop and repeated by the two of them so that all might hear; she was sure that he had loved her then, and she believed that he loved her still. She would not ask him, though, because you should never ask that question of another; you should wait for him or her to say it, so that you know, then, that it comes from the heart, from that part of us that can never lie, can never conceal the truth.

  She acknowledged the veracity of what he said. “Yes, there are many such marriages, but I think that people still like to believe they are in love when they get married. I think that is important.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked thoughtful. “So he does not love this lady? Then why did he come out to see her here? Surely that is unkind, if she thinks that he’s coming out to Botswana so that he can ask her to marry him, and all the time he has no intention of doing that. Surely that is not very kind.”

  She admitted that it could seem a bit like raising somebody’s hopes, but would it not have been more unkind to refuse to come at all? He saw that. “It is a very difficult situation,” he said. “It must have been very hard for Mr. Andersen.” He stopped for a moment before continuing: “Why does he not love her, Mma? Is there a reason?”

  Mma Ramotswe settled back in her seat. “That is the point, Rra. There is a very big reason why poor Mr. Andersen cannot love this lady who builds libraries. It is because he is still in love with his late wife. That is the reason.”

  Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni finished the last of the mutton stew on his plate and looked enquiringly at Mma Ramotswe. Sometimes he was allowed a second helping, but these days, following the discovery that a belt he had been wearing for years no longer fitted him, he was on a less calorific regime.

  “No more,” she said. “We can eat the rest tomorrow.”

  He sighed, but did not argue.

  “So, Mma Ramotswe, what is Mr. Andersen to do?”

  “I do not know, Rra. All that I know is that he is sad in his heart.” She touched her chest. “That is the place where his sadness is. Right there. And I do not think that it is ever very easy to deal with sadness in that part of the body.”

  He nodded his assent to that comment. “You are right, Mma. It is very difficult.”

  “But I shall do my best to cheer him up,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I have invited him to come to the office tomorrow to discuss some of our cases. He was very happy to be invited—I think that he has nothing to do all day while the library lady is building libraries. And he is here for three weeks, Rra, which is a long time when you have nothing to do.” She paused. “Except to be sad. Three weeks of sadness is a long time, I think.”

  It was, reflected Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. Three weeks of sadness was a long time, by any standards, but it would be particularly long when one was far from home in a strange country, when everybody else would have their friends and family about them and would seem so occupied with their own lives. In such circumstances you might easily forget who you were, and how you once were happy. He almost expressed these thoughts to Mma Ramotswe, but did not do so, inhibited, perhaps, by the feeling that he was just a mechanic, not a poet or a philosopher, and that on the lips of mechanics such words might sound false or contrived, and certainly not as authentic as anything they might say on the subject of gearboxes, or fuel systems, or any of those other matters in respect of which he knew he stood on far firmer ground.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE THIS WAY UP BUILDING COMPANY

  GRACE MAKUTSI, Dip. Sec. (97%), did not accompany her husband, Mr. Phuti Radiphuti (of the Double Comfort Furniture Store), to his next meeting with Mr. Clarkson Putumelo, the proprietor of the This Way Up Building Company. This was not because she was indifferent to the design of the house that Mr. Putumelo was to build for them—she was extremely interested in that—but because she felt that she had not forgiven the builder his rudeness towards her and would avoid being in his presence until such time as he changed his attitude. That, she knew, was unlikely; in Mma Makutsi’s opinion, attitudes were qualities with which one was born, and the likelihood of their being changed was, sadly, remote.

  That is not to say it was impossible, as in her time she had wit
nessed a number of marked changes in attitude so profound, in fact, as to be quite astonishing. There was a man in northern Botswana, for instance, who was a known cattle thief; and yet while he was visiting a relative up near Kasane, he had come under the influence of a charismatic preacher and had been baptised in the waters of the Zambezi River. The change in that man had been so remarkable that there was talk of its being attributable to the special qualities of the Zambezi River. People said that as far as washing away sin was concerned, there was nothing to beat Zambezi water and that the religious zeal of those immersed in lesser waters—the Notwane River, to name just one river readily on hand for baptism ceremonies—was far less impressive than those of Zambezi converts. Of course it would be difficult to measure something as elusive as inner virtue, but in the case of this man there had certainly been a dramatic change. Far from stealing the cattle of others, he now actively sought out those that had been stolen, identified the thieves, and then reported the matter to the owners and the authorities. In all of this he was conspicuously successful, owing to his intimate knowledge of the ways of cattle thieves, his having been one in the first place. Set a thief to catch a thief: Mma Makutsi had read that somewhere, and it had struck her as containing a valuable insight—almost worthy of elevation into one of Clovis Andersen’s famous rules in The Principles of Private Detection.