The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (13) Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 verydifferent 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, and 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 forthe 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