To the Land of Long Lost Friends: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (20) by Alexander McCall Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

Would you mind if I took over that case—if you’ve finished with it, of course.”
    Mma Ramotswe was surprised. “I don’t think there’s much else to be done,” she said. “We’ve told her that her suspicions as to her husband—or her hopes, perhaps—are unfounded. What else is there to do?”
    “I think that man is up to something,” said Mma Makutsi.
    “But that’s got nothing to do with us. All we were asked to do was to find out whether he was having an affair. We have said that we do not think that he is.”
    “I still think that man is up to something. And all I’m asking is to be allowed to do a bit more digging about.”
    Mma Ramotswe was doubtful. “But we can’t bill the client any longer,” she said. “She paid for the answer to a single question. Now she has that, and there can’t be any more bills. The case is closed, Mma.”
    Mma Makutsi shook her head. “This is nothing to do with billing anybody. This is just to find out for the sake of getting to the truth.” She paused, reaching for a small pile of papers on her desk. She shuffled these, putting the larger ones on the bottom of the pile and the smaller on the top. Mma Ramotswe wondered whether this was some system of filing that had yet to be explained to her—some system advocated, for all she knew, by the Botswana Secretarial College, and faithfully implemented by that college’s most faithful graduate and disciple. Or was it the simple desire for order that many of us had, in greater or smaller measure? Although there were some people, of course, who did not have it at all, and who lived their lives with small things and big things jumbled up and who were, when all was said and done, happy…She looked at Mma Makutsi across the room and smiled. We were all different, she thought, and it was important to remind oneself of that. It was important, too, to imagine what it must be like to be another person. That was a simple thing to do, and its effect could be salutary. Mma Makutsi came from Bobonong; she had battled to get where she had got; she saw things in a way that somebody who came from Bobonong and who had struggled against the odds would see them. And she did all of that rather well; she performed the task of being Mma Makutsi with considerable distinction—with ninety-seven per cent, really.
    And now she was saying something, and Mma Ramotswe had to concentrate.
    “Sometimes the truth can’t be put on anybody’s bill,” Mma Makutsi pronounced, and then continued, “but it’s still important to get to it, Mma—to get to the truth behind all the…all the things that cover up the truth.” She moved the papers again, and then put them to the side of her desk.
    Now Mma Ramotswe did not hesitate. “If that’s what you want to do, Mma, I can’t see any harm in it, although I must say I don’t think you are going to find anything. I don’t want to discourage you, but…”
    “I shall find what I shall find,” said Mma Makutsi. “Clovis Andersen says that, you know. He says: You will find what you will find . I can show it to you, if you like, Mma. It’s in chapter eight, if my memory serves me correctly.”
    Mma Ramotswe did not argue. There was no reason why Mma Makutsi should not spend her time pursuing any issue she chose. Since her marriage to Phuti Radiphuti, she had been financially independent and drew only a very small salary, no more than a nominal one, from the agency. This meant that her time was effectively at her own disposal, and if she wanted to spend it pursuing a private investigation, even one that would probably lead nowhere, then that was her prerogative.
    “It will be interesting,” Mma Ramotswe said. “We shall see.”
    Mma Makutsi nodded. “Most men are up to something, Mma. That is something I have learned as a woman. Most men are up to something—and it is the job of us women to find out what that is.”
    Mma Ramotswe’s eyes widened. Could that possibly be true? Was Mr. J.L.B.