The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party by Alexander McCall Smith Read Free Book Online

perhaps. “Maybe not,” she said hesitantly. “Even if they deserve it, maybe not.”
    DINNER THAT EVENING was a rich oxtail stew made with onions, carrots and mashed potatoes. Phuti arrived at six, and he and Mma Makutsi spent a pleasant half hour sitting at the table waiting for the stew to be ready and discussing the events of the day. Although Mma Makutsi respected the confidentiality of her clients, she did not think that this prevented passing on information to fiancés and spouses, who could be expected to be discreet about what they heard. She knew that Mma Ramotswe discussed her cases with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, and she understood why this was necessary. “You have to be able to talk to your husband,” Mma Ramotswe had said to her. “If you don’t, then everything gets bottled up inside you and pop! it explodes.”
    Mma Makutsi imagined Mma Ramotswe exploding. It would be like a large bottle of fizzy drink shaken up and then, as she put it so vividly, going pop! “One cannot go pop,” she had said. “It is not good for you.”
    “No,” said Mma Ramotswe, “it is not. That is why it’s important to be able to talk to somebody.”
    “Phuti is very careful about these things,” said Mma Makutsi. “If I tell him something, he never passes it on to anybody else. He sits there and listens, and then he comes up with some remark that is very helpful. He says, ‘What about this?’ or, ‘What about that?’ You know how men are, Mma. They often say ‘what about something or other.’ ”
    Now, as she served the oxtail stew, she told Phuti about Mma Ramotswe’s meeting with Botsalo Moeti. He listened quietly, and was silent for a moment when she had finished.
    “Envy,” he said.
    She waited for him to explain further.
    “Just envy,” he said. “That’s all.”
    She had not thought of that. Mma Ramotswe had discussed the case with her on her return to the office, and they had both agreed that Mr. Moeti must have incurred the enmity of somebody who was cruel and spiteful enough to cut the tendons of his cattle; they had not thought of envy. But Mma Makutsi knew all about that; she had grown up in rural Botswana, and knew just how powerful envy could be in the country and in the villages. It was a familiar story.
    “Somebody with fewer cattle,” she suggested.
    Phuti nodded. “Or no cattle at all. Somebody who sees this Moeti doing well and growing fat. Somebody who thinks that it is not fair that he should have what he himself does not have. You know how it is, Grace.”
    “I do. I have lived in the country. I remember a man having his grain store burned down because he had a much better crop than some other people.”
    Phuti thought this a very apt example. “And who burned itdown? You don’t need to tell me: it was somebody who had a bad crop because they were too lazy to weed the ground or take away the stones. That is the sort of person who is envious.”
    “So if Mma Ramotswe were to ask Mr. Moeti who is the laziest person in the district, then that will be the person she should look out for?”
    Phuti smiled at the suggestion. “That’s one way, I suppose.”
    Mma Makutsi warmed to the theme. “Sometimes the best answer to a difficult problem is the simplest one,” she said. “We had a case once when we had to find out who was stealing government food at a college. The answer was the husband of one of the cooks. And how did we find this out? We saw how fat he was getting.”
    Phuti chuckled. “There you are. It seems that people give themselves away most of the time. They cannot hide things.”
    “Not from the eyes of a detective,” said Mma Makutsi, with an air of satisfaction. “We are trained to spot things, you see.”
    The conversation moved on to the wedding. A date had at last been set and preparations were being made. The bride price—a tricky issue—had finally been resolved, with a payment of twenty cattle being made by the Radiphuti family to the senior male member of