Precious and Grace (10 page)

“Oh, no reason, Charlie.” She pointed to a turning in the road ahead. “We should start there, Charlie. There are some old houses down there. We could look at them.”

IN THE OFFICE
of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Mma Makutsi had just received a copy of that day's
Botswana Daily News,
delivered by Phuti's driver from the Double Comfort Furniture Store. Pinned to the front was a note in Phuti's handwriting drawing her attention to page six.
A very good photograph, Grace!
Phuti had written.
And a first-class article.

Fanwell looked over her shoulder as she opened the paper. Then, as she reached page six, he emitted a cry of delight. It was utterly unforced—a shout of joy.

“There you are, Mma! The whole page, or almost.” They had both noticed the small news item beneath the main article, but now was not the time to bother with that.

“What do you think of the photograph, Fanwell?” asked Mma Makutsi.

“I think it is A1 excellent, Mma,” enthused Fanwell. “And look, your certificate comes out very well. You can see the ninety-seven per cent very clearly. See, you can read it without looking up close. Ninety-seven per cent.”

“I'm very glad,” said Mma Makutsi. “For the college's sake, of course—not for mine.”

“And you look very beautiful, Mma. Any man reading the paper will be saying to himself, ‘This is a very beautiful lady, this detective lady.' That's what they'll be saying, Mma—I'm not making it up.”

Mma Makutsi giggled modestly. “Oh, I don't think so, Fanwell.”

She read out the entire article to Fanwell, who listened gravely. At the end, as she put the paper down on her desk, he said, “That will bring results, Mma.”

“I hope so,” said Mma Makutsi. “I think that Mma Susan is rather a sad lady, you know. I think that it is very important for her to find what she is looking for.”

Fanwell picked up the paper again. For a moment he was silent, and then he let out another cry.

“Mma! Mma! Look at this other article. Same page as you. Oh, Mma…”

He passed the newspaper to Mma Makutsi, who adjusted her glasses to read the smaller article at the bottom of the page. She read it out to Fanwell, who listened open-mouthed.

Woman of the Year Nominations
ran the headline.
Five nominations have been received with the necessary number of signatures for the Woman of the Year Award. The two top-runners are both from Gaborone and both have successful business careers behind—and before—them. They are Ms. Gloria Poeteng, a senior client manager with the Standard Bank, a lady going places in the banking world, and Ms. Violet Sephotho, a business consultant, who has featured widely on radio and television and who is well known in Gaborone business and social circles. Don't forget to cast your votes in this popular contest for the lady who will be chosen to represent the best in Botswana and southern Africa.

Mma Makutsi dropped the paper. “Violet Sephotho!” she exclaimed.

“I can't believe it,” said Fanwell. “What will Mma Ramotswe say?”

“She will have a heart attack,” said Mma Makutsi.

“Oh, Mma, that will be very serious…”

“Not a real one, Fanwell. There are heart attacks that are real and make you late, and heart attacks that are not real heart attacks but are big, big shocks. She'll have that sort of heart attack, I think.”

For Mma Makutsi, it was a blow on more than one level. It was bad enough hearing of Violet's shortlisting, but what made it particularly hard to bear was the fact that it was on
her
page, right underneath
her
photograph. It spoiled everything and made it hard to imagine how she could show her article, as she had planned to do, to her friends.

Fanwell sensed the problem. “Cut the other article out,” he said. “That way you won't have to look at it.”

Mma Makutsi approved of this suggestion, and reached for the scissors she kept in her top drawer. As she did so, the telephone rang, and she looked at it with annoyance. Abandoning her task, she picked up the receiver and answered, her irritation showing in her tone of voice. But that soon changed: it was Rosie—the first of the three Rosies who were to call the agency over the next hour.

THEIR PROGRESS WAS SLOW.
As they drove down the roads that divided the Village into its fenced plots, scrutinising each for possible investigation, Mma Ramotswe realised just how much must have changed over the past few decades. Older houses were still there—shady bungalows tucked away among now well-established growths of shrubs and trees—but in many cases the generous yards that had surrounded these houses had been sub-divided, and newer houses been erected cheek by jowl with the older. The process had been a discreet one, like that of a river moving stones and mud banks, placing one here and one there, and then, with the next high water, moving a larger rock to rest among the smaller ones. You would not notice this going on if you saw it every day, but, after a while, the shape of things could be quite different from what it had been when you first walked by. That, thought Mma Ramotswe, was why Susan had been unable to find the place where she had lived. The house might still be there, exactly where it had been all those years ago, but the things around it could all be these new things, shifted about by the river of human activity.

Charlie was impatient. “Maybe around this corner, Mma,” he said. “There are some old houses there. I have been past that way—I remember them.”

She had explained to him about the patience required for investigative work, but she was not sure that he had understood.

“You know what a painting is like, Charlie? You look at a painting and you see there are many strokes of the brush—tiny strokes. These little things make up the whole picture, but you need every one of those little strokes.”

He had looked at her blankly, and she realised that he might never have looked at a picture. He saw photographs, of course—he understood those, but had he ever looked at a picture that some human hand had painstakingly painted?

“A building, Charlie,” she had said. “Think of bricks. You need lots and lots of bricks to make a building.”

Charlie's blank expression turned into a wry smile. “Oh, I know that, Mma. You need a lot of bricks to make a building. But what's that got to do with investigations?”

“It's the same thing, Charlie. You have to make the whole thing with lots of small things. So when you want to know the whole story of whatever it is you want to know about…”

“The whole story? What happened in the beginning?”

“Yes. And why it happened, and what happened next—then you need to know all the facts. And these facts might be very small. And they might seem to have nothing to do with the main question, but they can be very important.” She paused. “And all of that, Charlie, requires patience.”

“I know that, Mma. You don't need to tell me.”

And now, sitting in the van with Charlie, who was looking ahead of them and not really paying much attention to where they currently were, she reflected on the possibility that young men were a completely alien breed, and that however much you tried to get them to see things the way you saw them, you were destined to fail. And that perhaps part of the secret of leading a life in which you would not always be worrying about things, or complaining about them, was to accept that there were people who just saw things differently from you and always would. Once you understood that, then you could accept the people themselves as they were and not try to change them. What was even more important, perhaps, was that you could love those people who looked at things so differently, because you realised that they were not trying to make life hard for you by being what they were, but were simply doing their best. Then, when you started to love them, love would do the work that it always did and it would begin to transform them and then they would end up seeing things in the same way that you did.

She told Charlie to stop.

“Where, Mma?” he asked as he pulled over. “That place over there?”

She pointed to a gate off the road a few yards ahead of them. “Look at that house, Charlie. See it?”

The short driveway behind the gate was largely obscured by trees that had been allowed to grow unrestrained. There were a couple of acacia trees, a bottlebrush tree with its red, feathery flowers, and a number of flame trees, with their elongated seed pods like desiccated flat loaves. Beyond that, only its roof visible from the road, was a house. From the style of the roof, which was of corrugated tin, it was clear that the house was an older one.

“Do you see the big tree?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

Charlie nodded. “And it's a jacaranda, Mma?”

“It is,” answered Mma Ramotswe.

Charlie was excited. “We have found the place, Mma. This must be the place. The old house. The jacaranda tree. Everything's right.”

Mma Ramotswe made a calming gesture. “Don't reach conclusions too quickly, Charlie,” she said. “Some things might be right—other things might be wrong. We cannot tell yet.”

They left the van by the side of the road and walked up to the gate. Somewhere inside the house a dog barked, but became silent. A door slammed.

“Ko! Ko!”
called Mma Ramotswe.

Behind the square white pillars of the verandah, a door opened and a woman appeared. She was carrying a broom, which she propped against the wall as she approached the front steps. She uttered polite greetings, glanced at Charlie, and then looked again at Mma Ramotswe.

“You're Mma Ramotswe, aren't you? You're that lady from that…” She waved a hand in the direction of the Tlokweng Road.

“The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And this is my assistant, Charlie.”

Charlie looked pleased. It was the first time he had been called her assistant.

“I am called Mma Bothoko,” said the woman. She pointed to a group of seats on the verandah. They were white-painted metal, and shabby. They did not look comfortable.

“Please sit down,” Mma Bothoko said. “I will fetch you water.”

It was the polite, old-fashioned thing to do. The offer of water signalled to visitors that they were welcome.

“I'm sure this must be the place,” whispered Charlie as Mma Bothoko went back into the house to fetch water. “Look at that tree, Mma. It is just like the tree in the photograph.”

“There are many houses with jacaranda trees beside them,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“But this one is a very old one, Mma,” said Charlie. “Look at it. That big branch is just like the branch in the picture.”

“And the verandah?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “Are the pillars the same?”

She had the photograph in her bag and she brought it out. Charlie pointed at it exuberantly. “See,” he said. “Same pillars. Square—just like this place.”

“All verandahs were like that in those days,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It was the style.”

Mma Bothoko returned, carrying a tray with three glasses and a large green jug. Mma Ramotswe glanced at her as she sat down, noticing the lines around the eyes and the dry, cracked skin of the hands. She was, she thought, at least seventy, possibly slightly older.

“Are you the grandmother here, Mma?” she asked, as the water was poured out.

Mma Bothoko shook her head. “No, this house belongs to us. It is my husband and I who live here. He is…”

Before she could finish, Mma Ramotswe realised who they were.

“Of course,” she said. “He is the chairman of the Law Board.”

“That is right, Mma. But you know that, don't you?”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. “This city is a village still, Mma. You knew who I was.”

“Everybody knows who you are,” said Mma Bothoko. “They see your sign when they drive down the Tlokweng Road. It is a very unusual business. A ladies' detective agency—there are not many of those, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe noticed that as she raised the glass to her lips, Mma Bothoko's hand shook. That could be nervousness, or it could be the onset of an illness. Clovis Andersen said
watch the body language,
but he very specifically warned against judging people's nervousness.
Innocent people can be very nervous,
he wrote.
A shaking hand may mean nothing. Once again, the rule is: don't jump to conclusions!

There was a polite silence. Then Mma Ramotswe said, “You'll be wondering why I'm here, Mma.”

Mma Bothoko put down her glass. As she looked at Mma Ramotswe, her lower lip trembled.

“You want to speak to me, I suppose,” she said.

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “Yes, I want to speak to you about a long time ago.”

Mma Bothoko said nothing. She reached for her glass. Her hand shook more noticeably as she took another sip of water. Charlie saw it now and threw Mma Ramotswe a glance.

“Have you lived here for a long time, Mma?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

The question seemed to distract Mma Bothoko, who asked Mma Ramotswe to repeat it before she answered.

“We have been here for a very long time, Mma. This house belonged to my father-in-law before my husband took it over. He—my husband's father—had it from the time it was built in 1968.”

“So nobody else has lived here?”

“No. Just us.”

Mma Ramotswe put down her glass. “Then in that case…”

She had intended to say that they would not keep her, but before she could do so Mma Bothoko had begun to wail.

“Oh, Mma, it was a long time ago. It was very long. And nobody knew the pressure he had been under. Nobody knew what it was like for him in those days.”

Mma Ramotswe held up her hands. “Mma, I didn't—”

But Mma Bothoko was not for stopping. “Things were different then, Mma. It was not easy to tell what was what—maybe you're too young, Mma, maybe you don't know about how it was—but speak to anybody my age, Mma, and they'll tell you. Thomas was no different from anybody else. If anything, he was better than the rest of them.”