By the time she had reached the shared premises of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, she had decided that she could not possibly follow Herbert Mateleke, and that the only thing to do was to stick to the procedure that she used in so many of her cases. If she wanted to find out the answer to anything, then she simply had to ask somebody. It was that simple, it really was, and she had done this on numerous occasions, with conspicuously successful results. Sometimes the answer she received was direct; on other occasions it was not so direct, but was nonetheless unambiguous. She remembered how, in one investigation into pilfering in an office-disappearing petty cash and so on-she had simply called the staff to attend a meeting. Then, as they all stood before her, some twelve people, she had said, “Now then, everybody, the manager says that money has been stolen, and I wonder who’s doing it?” And immediately all pairs of eyes had turned and looked at one member of staff, who had stared steadfastly at the ground. People know, she thought; they know things that they might be unwilling to say. Nobody in that office would have been willing to denounce the offender openly, but we reveal so much through our eyes. Our eyes, she thought, show what is in the heart.
That experience, called to mind as she made her way into the office, pointed the way. Yes, she would go and speak to Herbert Mateleke and talk to him about somebody else having an affair, and his eyes would give her all the information she needed. After that, she might be in a position to ask him, rather more directly, whether she could help him in any way with any difficulties he was experiencing. But then there would be an additional problem: he might speak to her in confidence, and that would mean that she could not reveal what he said to Mma Mateleke, and she was now, in a way, her client, and… and all that underlined the fact that she should not have said yes in the first place. She sighed; Clovis Andersen was useful, but he usually only came up with general propositions. There was nowhere in the book where you could go and get concrete advice about a situation such as this. Oh, to be able to speak to somebody like Clovis Andersen in person-but he was somewhere far away, and he would never have heard of Mma Ramotswe and the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, nor of Botswana, perhaps, and he might even be late by now. The back cover of The Principles of Private Detection, so well thumbed in the hands of Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi, said nothing about who the author was, other than to describe him as a “man of vast experience in the field,” and to show a photograph of a man with greying hair and a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. That was all; there was no mention of an office, or a place, or a family; and the photograph had no background to give any clue as to where he was-which was deliberate, perhaps. The great Clovis Andersen would not want people like her, she thought, pestering him with questions about how to deal with the husband of a friend who might be having an affair, or who might simply be trying to escape a nagging wife, as some husbands were known to do.
Mma Makutsi, now back from compassionate leave, would not have guessed that her employer had been entertaining these doubts. Mma Ramotswe did not believe in burdening others with her worries, and so she greeted her assistant with a cheery smile and a suggestion that she might think of putting on the kettle for late-morning tea. She had just had tea, of course, but that had been a business cup of tea, and that did not count.
Mma Makutsi looked up from her desk, and Mma Ramotswe knew immediately that something was wrong. Phuti, she thought. He was still in hospital. He had taken a turn for the worse. Infection had set in. He had fallen. Perhaps he had got out of bed and forgotten that he had only one foot now, and…
“He is out of hospital,” said Mma Makutsi.
Mma Ramotswe clapped her hands. “Oh, Mma, that is very good news. Very good news indeed.” She paused; Mma Makutsi’s expression still did not seem like that of one whose fiancé has just been discharged from hospital.
“He is at his aunt’s place,” said Mma Makutsi glumly. “You know that woman. She has taken him.”
Mma Ramotswe sat down at her desk. “That must be because they often do not want to let people go out by themselves,” she said. “They like to hand them over to the care of relatives, so that they will be looked after.” She watched the effect of her words on Mma Makutsi. The younger woman remained glum.
“Is a fiancée not a relative, Mma?” Mma Makutsi asked indignantly. “Does a ring mean nothing these days? Is the lady who is going to look after him for the rest of his life not close enough to be able to take care of him when he comes out of hospital with only one…” Her voice faltered, and Mma Ramotswe began to rise from her desk. The remaining words were drowned in tears. “With only one foot,” Mma Makutsi wailed. “And the other foot just… just thrown away like some old rubbish… And he will have to have crutches to begin with, and I would help him… And he is a good man, Mma, and it’s so unfair that an accident happens to a good man when there are all these bad men walking about the place with two complete legs and not having accidents…”
It was a river, a torrent, of grief; grief for what had happened to Phuti Radiphuti, but for other things too, things that were under the surface, but which rose up now to express their pain too, old things that went back a long time. Mma Ramotswe sensed this, and moved quickly to Mma Makutsi’s side, putting her arms about her, trying to comfort her. There were tears on Mma Makutsi’s face, and these were streaming down her cheeks, taking with them the cream that she put on her skin, for the problems she had with that.
“Oh, Mma, you are crying. He is out of hospital-that is the important thing. She must have gone and told them that she was the aunt. Phuti would not have had much say in it.”
“They should not have let that woman take him away,” sobbed Mma Makutsi. “She has taken him to her place and she will poison him.”
Mma Ramotswe could not stop herself from gasping. “Poison him? Mma, what are you saying?”
“She will poison him,” Mma Makutsi repeated. But her voice lacked conviction; she knew how outrageous her accusation was.
“You must not say things like that,” Mma Ramotswe chided her. “You are upset, Mma, I can tell that, but it is very dangerous to talk about poisoning people. It is very dangerous, Mma. Do you hear me?” It was a serious point; Mma Makutsi may have been upset, but in a country where, for all its good points, there lingered in the minds of some a belief in witchcraft and poisoning, it was explosive talk. And Mma Makutsi realised this, and reminded herself that she was not some superstitious and uneducated person from the back of beyond, but an assistant detective in the modern city of Gaborone and a graduate, moreover, of the Botswana Secretarial College (with ninety-seven per cent).
“Maybe she won’t poison him,” Mma Makutsi sniffed. “But why did she say, when I telephoned her, that I could not speak to him? She said he is resting, and that she would see if he could phone me later.”
Mma Ramotswe crossed the room to the shelf where the kettle was kept. Tea was often the solution in fraught moments, and she was sure that Mma Makutsi would think more reasonably once tea had been served.
“Perhaps she is merely telling the truth. After you have come out of hospital it is always a good idea to rest. You do not go and play football the moment you come out of hospital…” She tailed off. The words had come out without her thinking much about them; football was a very unfortunate choice, in the circumstances. She corrected herself. “I mean, you do not run around…” It was another tactless choice of words.