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

incorrect change, the cousin explained. It was easy
enough to do on a crowded bus, and as long as it was not too significant, they
just ignored it. But Precious found more than this. She found a discrepancy of
slightly over two thousand pula in the fuel bills invoices and she drew this to
the attention of her cousin’s husband.
    “Are you
sure?” he asked. “How could two thousand pula go
missing?”
    “Stolen?” said Precious.
    The
cousin’s husband shook his head. He regarded himself as a model
employer—a paternalist, yes, but that is what the men wanted, was it not?
He could not believe that any of his employees would cheat him. How could they,
when he was so good to them and did so much for them?
    Precious showed
him how the money had been taken, and they jointly pieced together how it had
been moved out of the right account into another one, and had then eventually
vanished altogether. Only one of the clerks had access to these funds, so it
must have been him; there could be no other explanation. She did not see the
confrontation, but heard it from the other room. The clerk was indignant,
shouting his denial at the top of his voice. Then there was silence for a
moment, and the slamming of a door.
    This was her first case. This was
the beginning of the career of Mma Ramotswe.
    The Arrival of Note
Mokoti
    There were four years of working in the bus office. The
cousin and her husband became accustomed to her presence and began to call her
their daughter. She did not mind this; they were her people, and she loved
them. She loved the cousin, even if she still treated her as a child and
scolded her publicly. She loved the cousin’s husband, with his sad,
scarred face and his large, mechanic’s hands. She loved the house, and
her room with its yellow curtains. It was a good life that she had made for
herself.
    Every weekend she travelled up to Mochudi on one of the
cousin’s husband’s buses and visited her father. He would be
waiting outside the house, sitting on his stool, and she would curtsey before
him, in the old way, and clap her hands.
    Then they would eat together,
sitting in the shade of the lean-to verandah which he had erected to the side
of the house. She would tell him about the week’s activity in the bus
office and he would take in every detail, asking for names, which he would link
into elaborate genealogies. Everybody was related in some way; there was nobody
who could not be fitted into the far-flung corners of family.
    It was
the same with cattle. Cattle had their families, and after she had finished
speaking, he would tell her the cattle news. Although he rarely went out to the
cattle post, he had reports every week and he could run the lives of the cattle
through the herd-boys. He had an eye for cattle, an uncanny ability to detect
traits in calves that would blossom in maturity. He could tell, at a glance,
whether a calf which seemed puny, and which was therefore cheap, could be
brought on and fattened. And he backed this judgement, and bought such animals,
and made them into fine, butterfat cattle (if the rains were good).
    He
said that people were like their cattle. Thin, wretched cattle had thin,
wretched owners. Listless cattle—cattle which wandered
aimlessly—had owners whose lives lacked focus. And dishonest people, he
maintained, had dishonest cattle—cattle which would cheat other cattle of
food or which would try to insinuate themselves into the herds of others.
    Obed Ramotswe was a severe judge—of men and cattle—and she
found herself thinking: what will he say when he finds out about Note
Mokoti?
     
    SHE HAD met Note Mokoti on a bus on
the way back from Mochudi. He was travelling down from Francistown and was
sitting in the front, his trumpet case on the seat beside him. She could not
help but notice him in his red shirt and seersucker trousers; nor fail to see
the high cheekbones and the arched eyebrows. It was a proud face, the face of a
man used to being looked at and