Morality for Beautiful Girls (6 page)

“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,
is
to help people in need to resolve the unresolved questions in their lives. There is very little drama in our calling; rather a process of
patient observation, deduction, and analysis. We are sophisticated
watchmen, 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 decide 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.

“Well,” she began. “It is important to get into the house and listen to what those people are talking about. It is important to watch that woman who is planning to do these wicked things. It is important to look into her heart.”

“Yes,” said the Government Man. “That is what I want you people to do. You look into that heart and find the evil. Then you shine a torch on the evil and say to my brother:
See! See this bad heart in your wife. See how she is plotting, plotting all the time!
”

“It wouldn’t be that simple,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Life is not that simple. It just isn’t.”

“Please, Mma,” said the Government Man. “Let us listen to this clever woman in glasses. She has some very good ideas.”

Mma Makutsi adjusted her glasses and continued. “There are servants in the house, aren’t there?”

“Five,” said the Government Man. “Then there are servants for outside. There are men who look after the cattle. And there are the old servants of my father. They cannot work anymore, but they sit in the sun outside the house and my father feeds them well. They are very fat.”

“So you see,” said Mma Makutsi. “An inside servant sees everything. A maid sees into the bed of the husband and wife, does she not? A cook sees into their stomachs. Servants are always there, watching, watching. They will talk to another servant. Servants know everything.”

“So you will go and talk to the servants?” asked the Government Man. “But will they talk to you? They will be worried about their jobs. They will just be quiet and say that there is nothing happening.”