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

him in the ways of less troubled speech. All of that was done out of love and affection, with not a thought to what their engagement and subsequent marriage would bring. And observing all this on the sidelines was that shameless gold-digger Violet Sephotho, who seethed with envy at the unfolding of Mma Makutsi’s good fortune.
    Mma Ramotswe had been immensely relieved when Mma Makutsi had indicated that she wanted to continue working after her marriage.
    “It is much better to do something rather than do nothing, Mma,” Mma Makutsi announced. “And when you have professional training, as I do, it is a shame not to use it.”
    “You are very wise, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You are wise, and I am grateful.”
    “No, Mma, I am the grateful one,” said Mma Makutsi. “You are the person who has given me everything. You gave me a job when I was finding it difficult to get one—in spite of getting—”
    “Ninety-seven per cent,” supplied Mma Ramotswe helpfully.
    “Exactly, Mma. Ninety-seven per cent, and it was still impossible to find anything. When some of those girls who got barely fifty per cent at the Botswana Secretarial College, girls such as—”
    “Violet Sephotho,” Mma Ramotswe contributed.
    “Precisely, Mma. She is the big example. Anyway, you are the one who took me on and made me into a detective. You are the one, Mma, and I shall be grateful to you until the day I die. Right up to that day and beyond, Mma.”
    For a moment Mma Ramotswe imagined Mma Makutsi in heaven, dressed in white, as people were thought to be clad there, her large glasses somehow more luminous, more reflecting, than in the mere light of this earth … Mma Makutsi sitting, perhaps ready to take dictation from the Lord himself … It was a ridiculous thought, but she could not help herself from thinking it, and it made her smile.
    The advent of Phuti had certainly changed Mma Makutsi’s fortunes, but those had improved slightly anyway by the time of their first meeting. This improvement had come from two sources: the giving by Mma Makutsi of typing lessons to men, and the gradual growth in the revenues of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,which had resulted in a number of pay rises. This had led to her moving to rather better accommodation, and to the eventual overhaul of her wardrobe, particularly in that department dearest to her, the department of shoes.
    There were a number of possible reasons for Mma Makutsi’s attachment to shoes. One of these was profound: as a young girl, she had had none, and she remembered looking with envy at those so placed as to afford them. At the age of eight she was still unshod—which was not unusual in a remote village in that rather hard part of the country. But over the next year or so, shoes started to appear on the feet of other members of her class at school, and her heart ached,
ached
, for a pair. The other children’s shoes tended to be hand-me-downs—nobody had new shoes then—and Grace Makutsi would have been content even with handed-down hand-me-downs. But she had to wait, though a sympathetic friend lent her a pair of shoes for the duration of her birthday—blissful, remembered hours, even if the shoes in question were slightly too small and pinched her feet in places.
    With such memories, what could one do but love shoes, long for them, dream of the day when one might have several pairs safely stacked away; comfortable shoes, shoes that fitted one’s feet, shoes with no history of other owners, of other feet? That day dawned for her, of course, and it brought its expected pleasure. But then something rather extraordinary happened—Mma Makutsi began to imagine that her shoes talked to her. It happened quite unexpectedly, and at first she assumed that the voice had come from some passer-by; some person who had perhaps passed by and not been seen, but who had for some reason chosen to mutter
Hallo there, Boss
. But then it had happened once more, again unexpectedly,