Precious and Grace (17 page)

Mr. Polopetsi's problems were, of course, far from over, but at least she had a plan that might extract him from the difficulties he had created for himself. A happy outcome could not be guaranteed, but she could try, and if it worked, she was reasonably confident that he would not do anything quite so foolish again. Her plan would have to be implemented before too long, before more people were sucked into the pyramid scheme by Mr. Polopetsi's friend, but she had a few days, she imagined, to make the necessary arrangements. That would include a frank discussion with Mr. Polopetsi himself, who would have to agree to the risk entailed. She was not looking forward to that conversation, but there was no way round it.

Now was not the time to worry about Mr. Polopetsi; now was the time to announce to Mma Makutsi and to Charlie that the search for Susan's house was over. As she entered the office, they were both there—Mma Makutsi at her desk, and Charlie leaning against the filing cabinet, waiting for the kettle to boil.

Mma Makutsi looked up and greeted Mma Ramotswe with a broad smile. “So you're back, Mma—none the worse for your terrible ordeal.”

“I don't think it was quite that bad, Mma Makutsi,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But yes, I am now back.”

Charlie exchanged a conspiratorial glance with Mma Makutsi. “And there is interesting news,” said Charlie.

“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I have some very interesting news.”

Charlie looked nonplussed. “No, Mma, I did not mean that you had interesting news. I meant there
is
interesting news.”

“Very interesting,” said Mma Makutsi. “Something arrived in the post. Charlie collected it this afternoon.”

Charlie nodded towards Mma Ramotswe's desk. “It is on your desk, Mma—it's an invitation.”

Mma Ramotswe crossed the room. There were several letters on her desk—Mma Makutsi always opened every envelope, irrespective of whether it was addressed to Mma Ramotswe or herself. That, she said, was sound secretarial practice, as advocated by the Botswana Secretarial College. “If one person opens everything,” she said, “fewer things go missing. That has been scientifically proved.”

Mma Ramotswe picked up the topmost letter. She recognised the letterhead immediately—it was from the Gaborone Chamber of Commerce, on a committee of which she had briefly served the previous year. They still wrote to her from time to time, notifying her of talks or events that might interest her. So the invitation was from them…probably to one of their drinks parties, which she always politely declined as they went on for far too long and you always ended up hungry at the end.

“The President and Council of the Gaborone Chamber of Commerce,” she read out loud, “have great pleasure in inviting you and one guest to the presentation of the Woman of the Year Award to…” She hardly dared read on, but then there was the name, and she breathed a great sigh of relief. “…to Ms. Gloria Poeteng.”

Mma Ramotswe looked at Mma Makutsi, who was beaming with pleasure. “Well,” she said, “that is very good news.”

“It was a close-run thing,” said Mma Makutsi. “It could easily have gone the other way. I'd heard that Violet Sephotho was everywhere, telling everybody to cast their votes for her.”

“Well, it didn't work,” said Charlie. “Nobody must have voted for her.”

Mma Ramotswe was not so sure. “Oh, I think she has her supporters. Perhaps this other lady, this Gloria Poeteng, asked more people to vote for her than Violet did. It could be as simple as that.”

“We must go, Mma. You and I should accept the invitation. We can represent the agency.”

Mma Ramotswe shrugged. “Violet will be there,” she pointed out. “Remember that she will be the runner-up.”

“I know that, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi. “That is why I'm particularly keen to go. It will be a great pleasure to see Violet get second prize. She will not like that, you know.”

Mma Ramotswe did not like the thought of going off to crow over somebody, even somebody as unpleasant as Violet Sephotho. But Mma Makutsi was adamant. “We must be represented,” she said. “It is good for business.”

Mma Ramotswe did not argue. She understood why Mma Makutsi should feel as she did. Over the years Violet Sephotho had shown her contempt for Mma Makutsi, right from those early days at the Botswana Secretarial College; she had missed no opportunity to mock or belittle her, and had even tried to lure Phuti away from her. There was no excuse for such behaviour, in Mma Ramotswe's view, and if Mma Makutsi should take some pleasure in witnessing a defeat of Violet, then that was understandable. Of course you should never rejoice in the misfortune of another—the Bishop had said something about that in his last sermon at the Anglican Cathedral and Mma Ramotswe had thoroughly agreed with him, even if now she found it difficult to remember his exact words. Still, she could recall the general gist of his remarks well enough, even if she could not really quote them to Mma Makutsi now, it being difficult to quote words that you've somehow forgotten.

“Very well, Mma,” she said. “We shall go. Will you send off a reply…or should I do it?”

“Gladly,” said Mma Makutsi, reaching for a piece of paper. “I shall write and accept without delay.”

“Without delay,” echoed Charlie. “Those are very good words, I think. Without delay.
Please will you pay my bill without delay. Please leave without delay. Please improve your attitude without delay
…”

Mma Makutsi shot Charlie a warning glance. Their working relationship had improved beyond all measure—she attributed that to his growing up at last—but there were still rough edges to it. In particular, she did not like it when Charlie appeared to mimic her, although he always denied that he was doing it.

It was not this issue that Mma Ramotswe was thinking about, though; she was contemplating the delicacy of asking Mma Makutsi to do anything these days. She had hesitated before asking her to write the reply to the Chamber of Commerce invitation, but in the end that proved easy enough because it was something that Mma Makutsi was especially keen to do. The difficulty lay more in those routine tasks that she did not enjoy so much, or in respect of those instances that unambiguously involved one person giving an order and another complying. Was she still entitled to ask Mma Makutsi to take a letter that she dictated? That had been simple when Mma Makutsi had been the agency's secretary, but as she had been promoted, becoming an assistant detective and then an associate director and then co-principal director (had she remembered that correctly?), could you say to a co-principal director, “Please take a letter, Mma Makutsi”?

Mma Ramotswe thought you could not. And yet if you could not ask Mma Makutsi to take dictation, then whom could you ask? Charlie? The problem with Charlie was his spelling, which was erratic. He was willing enough to transcribe what you said, but it took a great deal of time, as he had no knowledge of shorthand and wrote out every word with intense concentration and a frown on his brow that made one imagine that there was some fundamental problem with what was being said in the letter.

So if Mma Makutsi was too elevated now to perform ordinary secretarial tasks, and if Charlie, although willing, was not much good at them, what was she to do? Should she write her own letters? Many quite high-ranking people did that these days—Mma Makutsi had pointed out an article in a magazine she received,
Secretarial News,
which suggested that now the secretarial role had been transformed into an executive one, people who previously relied on others to type their letters were now typing them themselves. “That's the future,” said Mma Makutsi. “That's the way things have been going, and I spotted it a long time ago, Mma. It is not news to me.”

Of course none of this applied to filing. That was, as Mma Makutsi had often said, an art, and it was an art that she was both keen and proud to practise. Moreover it was not a skill that could be acquired by anybody—you had to have the right sort of mind to do it properly. “Some people think they can file, Mma,” she said, “but they are wrong. Filing is not a mechanical business—you have to understand
why
a particular letter should go in a particular file.”

But now the reply to the invitation had been typed and Mma Makutsi was reading through it. “I shall sign it for both of us,” she said. “That will save you the bother, Mma Ramotswe.”

“But it's no real bother, Mma,” Mma Ramotswe said.

Her protest went unheard. The reply was folded and put into an envelope.

Mma Ramotswe looked out of the window. The sky was heavier now and that meant there was a prospect of rain—not that day, perhaps, but some day soon; rain—the country's relief, the blessing for which the land called out so desperately.

Charlie addressed her: “You said something about interesting news, Mma.”

“Oh yes. Interesting news.” She sat back in her chair. “This business of Mma Susan's house…”

Charlie's face lit up. “You've found it, Mma?”

“Yes, Charlie, I've found it.”

Charlie clapped his hands together enthusiastically. “Well done, Mma. I thought we would never find it. All those houses…”

Mma Ramotswe noticed that Mma Makutsi looked doubtful.

“Are you sure, Mma Ramotswe? Many of these houses look the same, you know.”

“I am very sure, Mma. I have been to the Botswana Housing Commission and checked their records. It's all there. The name of the doctor on the lease is there, Mma. Her father's name.”

“Well that settles that,” said Charlie. “Where is it?”

“It's exactly where Mma Rosie said it was. Right next door to me, as it happens. It's an extraordinary coincidence, I know, but I have checked everything. It is my neighbour's house.”

Mma Makutsi fiddled with a piece of paper on her desk. “That doesn't prove anything about that woman,” she said quietly.

“What woman?” asked Charlie.

“That woman who claimed to be Rosie. That woman we had in the car. The one whose story was inconsistent.”

Mma Ramotswe drew a deep breath. Whenever an argument arose, a tactic that she had long practised was to imagine herself in the skin of the person disagreeing with her. It was a simple device—one she had learned from her father—and it seemed to work. Obed Ramotswe had employed it when negotiating the purchase of cattle. If you thought yourself into the skin of the other side, he said, then you might see the shortcomings of the cattle you were trying to sell. And if you did that, you could address those issues. Yes, that cow was a bit thin, but she had been in an overgrazed area and time was needed to get her back up to her proper weight; and yes, that bull
was
limping, but there was a positive side to it: a bull who limped would not wander, would not waste the energy he needed for his real task on pointless meandering through the bush—such a bull would be on permanent duty, and surely that was a good thing, was it not?

Now, sitting at her desk and facing Mma Makutsi on the other side of the room, she imagined that she was the one behind that other desk, behind those outsized spectacles with their round lenses, with that whole hinterland of Bobonong and the Botswana Secretarial College behind her, not to mention the ninety-seven per cent. What would you see from such a position, and with what eyes would you see it? You would see a desk with Mma Precious Ramotswe behind it, looking back at you; Mma Ramotswe, who started the business and still owned it, who was widely known as
the
private detective, when nobody, or virtually nobody, knew that there was a Mma Makutsi in the business too, who had dealt with many delicate cases rather successfully, but who never really got the credit; who had to contend with Charlie and his young man's impetuousness; who had to answer the telephone and then pass on the caller to Mma Ramotswe because nobody seemed to call and ask for Mma Makutsi in the first instance. That is what you would see.

The insight was instructive.

“Mma Makutsi,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I can understand why you are suspicious of that woman.”

“Good,” said Mma Makutsi. “Because she is suspicious—it's not a case of my making things up.”

There was quick reassurance. “You would never do that, Mma. You are very careful with your facts.”

“Good,” said Mma Makutsi. “Because I am. I'm very careful with the facts.”

“But,” began Mma Ramotswe. “But how…”

Mma Makutsi was staring at her. The spectacles flashed a warning—a shard of light from the window flashed across the room like a signal from a mirror held to the sun.

The issue could not simply be ignored, and Mma Ramotswe persisted. “But how could she have identified the right house if she was an impostor?”

The question hung in the air between them, almost tangible in its awkwardness.

Mma Makutsi sucked in her cheeks, and for a moment, and without thinking about it, Mma Ramotswe did the same. It was a consequence of the exercise in empathy; having imagined herself to be Mma Makutsi, the sucking in of cheeks when faced with a difficult question seemed entirely natural.

“She might have known the real Rosie,” said Mma Makutsi. “She might have been a friend of that woman—a sister, even. If that were so, then she would have known quite a bit about the family. She would have known where they lived because the real Rosie would have told her.”

Mma Ramotswe thought about this. Mma Makutsi was right—up to a point—but you could be right but still be unreasonable. It was feasible, but then all sorts of alternative—and unlikely—explanations of anything were perfectly feasible, and you could not go through life suspecting that other people were impostors. Holding such a default position would make life impossible. You would think of everybody whom you met:
You might not be who you claim to be.
It would be impossible. You would have to ask everybody for identification the moment you met them.