Mma Ramotswe spoke gently. “He is not behaving well?”
Mma Mateleke shut her eyes. She shook her head slowly. She bit her lip.
“So,” said Mma Ramotswe. “He is being unkind?”
This brought a shaking of the head. “No, Mma. He is a generous man. He always gives me as much money as I ask for. It is not that.”
Mma Ramotswe hesitated. An accusation of adultery was a serious matter, even if made in the context of a private consultation, which this effectively was. “He is … He’s involved with another woman?”
Mma Mateleke looked up. “You’ve heard that too, Mma?”
“No. I was asking you a question.”
Mma Mateleke looked disappointed, or so Mma Ramotswe thought, although she quickly realised that she must have misread her friend’s expression; a wife does not wish to hear news of her husband’s unfaithfulness.
“I think he’s having an affair,” said Mma Mateleke. “I think there is another woman somewhere. Some younger woman. Some younger, glamorous woman.”
“Do you know who she is?” asked Mma Ramotswe. Violet Sephotho? She had briefly entertained such a possibility in the cathedral, but no, surely not—that would be too much of a coincidence—but it would be somebody like Violet Sephotho, no doubt. Gaborone was full of aspiring Violet Sephothos.
Mma Mateleke shook her head. “No. I have not heard her name.”
“What do you know about her? Do you know where she lives?”
Mma Mateleke shrugged. “I have not seen her. In fact, Mma, I have no actual proof. All I’m saying to you is that I think that he’s having an affair. You’re the one who can find the proof for me.”
The waitress arrived and placed a tray down on the table. She was a young woman, barely into her twenties, and she seemed keen to please. Mma Mateleke seemed indifferent to her, but Mma Ramotswe thanked her, and told her that the tea smelled very good. The waitress smiled wordlessly and went back inside.
Mma Ramotswe warned her friend about jumping to conclusions. “It’s a very common fear for us women,” she said. “Most women worry that their husband’s eye might start to wander. And his hands too, Mma. That’s natural enough. But you shouldn’t imagine that he’s having an affair unless you have some reason to think that. Have you got any reasons?”
“Reasons? You’re asking me for reasons? I’m telling you, Mma, any woman whose husband is carrying on just knows what’s going on. You feel it. He sits there smiling and you think, What has he got to smile about? And then you suddenly find out that he has bought himself some of that aftershave stuff and is putting it on his face. You think, So why is he putting that stuff on now when he never used to put it on? Never? That is the sort of thing you think, Mma, and it all adds up. Then you say to yourself, He is having an affair—I know it.”
Mma Ramotswe felt unhappy about the lack of proof, but that was as a detective. As a woman she knew exactly what Mma Mateleke was talking about, and she knew, too, that her fears were likely to be well founded. Men had affairs; that is what men did, and even if she had previously assumed that Herbert Mateleke was a settled, rather conservative man, she had to admit that even settled, conservative men had affairs. In fact, they were often the worst of all.
There was another thing that was worrying her. Herbert Mateleke might not be a close friend, but he was the husband of a friend, and that was worrying. Clovis Andersen had advice to give on this topic and, as usual, it was wise counsel. Do not act for friends if you can possibly avoid it, he wrote in The Principles of Private Detection. And then he continued, And the reason for this? Experience has taught me that if you act for a friend you will take the friend’s perspective on things. You will see things that the friend wants you to see because you are emotionally involved in the case. So here is Rule 32: Remember when to say no to a case. Better to lose a fee than to lose a friend.
Mma Ramotswe sipped at her tea. Mma Mateleke had yet to ask her to investigate on her behalf, but she was sure that such a request was coming. And it was.
“I know that you are very busy, Mma Ramotswe,” said Mma Mateleke, adding, “Everybody is busy these days. The whole of Botswana is busy.”
Mma Ramotswe considered this last observation. Was the whole of Botswana busy? Certainly people seemed busy enough in Gaborone, but she was not so sure about the country areas. In fact, there were many people out in the country who did not appear very busy at all. These were the people who sat outside their houses and watched the cattle amble past, or those who stood under trees and spoke with friends, or who put a chair somewhere in the sun and then sat on it. And that, surely, was how life should be. What was the point of rushing around as if everything had to be done today when there was plenty of time ahead of you, years and years, if you were lucky?
“But even if you are busy,” Mma Mateleke continued, “you might still find the time to do this favour I’m asking of you, my sister.”
My sister—the two words were very powerful, and Mma Ramotswe knew it. This was an appeal to something that went beyond the normal incidence of friendship. This was an appeal to the African sense of mutual help, and the duty to give such help. You did not call somebody your sister unless you believed in all that—as Mma Ramotswe did. And Mma Mateleke, of course, knew that Mma Ramotswe believed.
“You can ask me,” said Mma Ramotswe, “and I shall say yes.” The words came out almost without having been thought about, but she knew that she was bound by them.
Mma Mateleke, who had been sitting with shoulders hunched in tension, now relaxed. “Please will you find this evidence that I need. Please will you find who is this woman he is having an affair with. Her name. Where she lives. What she looks like. It will not be hard for you.”
Mma Ramotswe had to acknowledge that it would not. It was difficult to conceal an affair in Gaborone, as there were not all that many places to go, and where there were a thousand eyes and ears. If Herbert Mateleke was seeing somebody else, then she would find out quite quickly. There was something, though, that was still troubling her, and she now raised this with her friend. “May I ask you, Mma, what you intend to do with the information, once you have it? I always ask clients that—it is not just you.”
This inquiry seemed to take Mma Mateleke by surprise; it was as if the answer were so obvious that the question need not have been asked. “It is so that I can divorce him,” she said abruptly. “Why else would I want to know?”
Several other reasons crossed Mma Ramotswe’s mind, but she did not reveal them. So that you might forgive him, she thought. So that you might plead with the other woman not to break up your marriage, and might succeed. So that you might reflect on why he feels it necessary to have an extramarital affair in the first place.
“Very well,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I will look into this. I don’t think that it will take long. And …” She hesitated.
“And what, Mma?”
“And it may be that Herbert is innocent,” she said. “After all, some men are, you know.”
CHAPTER TEN
SOME PEOPLE JUST SIT IN THEIR CARS
MMA RAMOTSWE was in a thoughtful mood when she returned to the office. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni—and Mma Potokwane too, for that matter—had occasionally said that she had a soft heart and that “no” was not one of the words that her heart understood. She had laughed at the appraisal; in her view, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was every bit as soft-hearted as she was—he would never turn anybody away, and would fix even the most mechanically hopeless cars—and as for Mma Potokwane, well, everybody knew that she would do anything for those orphans she looked after, and if that was not a sign of a soft heart, then what was? So although she knew that she should have declined to help Mma Mateleke, she also knew that she could not refuse her friend. But she did not relish the task that lay ahead of her, as it would involve watching somebody she knew, and that was not a good idea.
It was easy enough watching a stranger. One could sit in one’s van and pretend to be reading, or even sleeping.
Plenty of people did that: they sat in their cars, talking to friends or listening to the car radio, or even just sitting. Nobody would have reason to be suspicious of that. But if one sat in one’s van outside the house of somebody one knew, and then followed him as he turned out of the drive, one would obviously be noticed. She imagined the scene, as Herbert Mateleke asked her, “Mma Ramotswe, I saw you sitting outside my house yesterday afternoon. It was you, wasn’t it? I’m sure it was. And then when I drove off down the road, you followed me. Perhaps you wanted me to show you the way, Mma …” And she would not know what to say, but would mumble something about how small the town was, in spite of being so big, and how easy it was to bump into people one knew along the road, just as easy, in fact, as in one of those tiny villages …
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 …” S
he 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.
Mma Ramotswe glanced over her shoulder as she put tea into the pot. Mma Makutsi was staring at her.
“What is this about football, Mma Ramotswe? Phuti has never played football. And how can you run around when you have only one foot, Mma?”
“This is good tea,” said Mma Ramotswe, in an attempt to divert attention from football, and feet, and running. “You will enjoy it, I think. Five Roses tea. It is very good.”
“I have always used that tea,” said Mma Makutsi stiffly. “I do not think this will be any different. But why talk about running around, Mma? He will not be running.”
“It was just a way of saying that after you come out of hospital you have to take things easily. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni knows a man who went into hospital and then came out and immediately went on a charity walk for the Lions Club, and now he is late.”
“He became late on the walk?”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. “They said to him that he should not go, that he was still weak, but he would not listen. He was struck by lightning.”
“And that is how he became late?”
“Yes.” It happened, and surprisingly often. The powerful electrical storms that built up in the rainy season discharged great bolts of lightning that ended the lives of unfortunates out in the open; in a landscape of low trees and wide spaces, a man might be the most tempting conductor.