Ladies' Detective Agency 01 - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith Read Free Book Online

Botswana of Today.” Of course
there was no doubt about whose work would be submitted. Precious was asked to
draw a special picture—to take her time doing it—and then this
would be sent down to Gaborone as the entry from Mochudi.
    She drew her
picture on a Saturday, going out early with her sketchbook and returning some
hours later to fill in the details inside the house. It was a very good
drawing, she thought, and her teacher was enthusiastic when she showed it to
her the following Monday.
    “This will win the prize for
Mochudi,” she said. “Everybody will be proud.”
    The
drawing was placed carefully between two sheets of corrugated cardboard and
sent off, registered post, to the Museum. Then there was a silence for five
weeks, during which time everybody forgot about the competition. Only when the
letter came to the Principal, and he, beaming, read it out to Precious, were
they reminded.
    “You have won first prize,” he said.
“You are to go to Gaborone, with your teacher and myself, and your
father, to get the prize from the Minister of Education at a special
ceremony.”
    It was too much for her, and she wept, but soon
stopped, and was allowed to leave school early to run back to give the news to
her Daddy.
    They travelled down with the Principal in his truck,
arriving far too early for the ceremony, and spent several hours sitting in the
Museum yard, waiting for the doors to open. But at last they did, and others
came, teachers, people from the newspapers, members of the Legislature. Then
the Minister arrived in a black car and people put down their glasses of orange
juice and swallowed the last of their sandwiches.
    She saw her painting
hanging in a special place, on a room divider, and there was a small card
pinned underneath it. She went with her teacher to look at it, and she saw,
with leaping heart, her name neatly typed out underneath the picture: PRE CIOUS RAMOTSWE ( 10 ) (MOCHUDI GOVERNMENT
JUNIOR SCHOOL) . And underneath that, also typed, the title which the
Museum itself had provided: Cattle Beside Dam.
    She stood rigid,
suddenly appalled. This was not true. The picture was of goats, but they had
thought it was cattle! She was getting a prize for a cattle picture, by false
pretences.
    “What is wrong?” asked her father. “You
must be very pleased. Why are you looking so sad?”
    She could not
say anything. She was about to become a criminal, a perpetrator of fraud. She
could not possibly take a prize for a cattle picture when she simply did not
deserve that.
    But now the Minister was standing beside her, and he was
preparing to make a speech. She looked up at him, and he smiled warmly.
    “You are a very good artist,” he said. “Mochudi must be
proud of you.”
    She looked at the toes of her shoes. She would
have to confess.
    “It is not a picture of cattle,” she said.
“It is a picture of goats. You cannot give me a prize for a
mistake.”
    The Minister frowned, and looked at the label. Then he
turned back to her and said: “They are the ones who have made a mistake.
I also think those are goats. I do not think they are cattle.”
    He
cleared his throat and the Director of the Museum asked for silence.
    “This excellent picture of goats,” said the Minister,
“shows how talented are our young people in this country. This young lady
will grow up to be a fine citizen and maybe a famous artist. She deserves her
prize, and I am now giving it to her.”
    She took the wrapped
parcel which he gave her, and felt his hand upon her shoulder, and heard him
whisper: “You are the most truthful child I have met. Well
done.”
    Then the ceremony was over, and a little later they
returned to Mochudi in the Principal’s bumpy truck, a heroine returning,
a bearer of prizes.

    CHAPTER
FOUR
    LIVING WITH THE COUSIN AND
THE COUSIN’S
HUSBAND
    A T THE age of sixteen, Mma Ramotswe left
school (“The best girl in this school,” pronounced the Principal.
“One of the best girls in Botswana.”) Her