The Great Cake Mystery (8 page)

She then put this sticky mixture back in the hole in the cake and covered the whole thing with icing. For good measure, she stuck a few red and yellow jelly sweets on the top. Nobody will be able to resist such a cake, she thought. Certainly no monkey could.

“That's a nice cake you've cooked,” her father said over breakfast. “Is that for your teacher?”

Precious smiled. “No, I don't think so.” She could imagine what would happen if the teacher ate that particular cake.

“For your friends?” asked her father.

Precious thought for a moment. She remembered her dream and the way the monkeys in it had welcomed her to their trees. Yes, they were her friends, she thought. In spite of all their tricks and their mischievousness, they were her friends.

She carried the cake to school in a box. When she arrived, she put the box down carefully and took out its mouthwatering contents.

“Look at that cake!” shouted somebody.

“Don't leave it there,” said another. “If you leave it there, Precious, then Poloko will be sure to steal it!”

Other children laughed at this, but Precious did not. “Don't say that,” she said crossly. But they said it again.

“Poloko will eat that entirely up,” one of the boys said. “That's why he's so fat. He's a fat thief!”

Precious hoped that Poloko had not
heard this, but she feared that he had. She saw Poloko walking away, his head lowered. People were so unkind, she thought. How would they like to be called a thief? Well, she would show them just how wrong they were.

With the cake left outside, on the shelf where the children left their bags, school began. Precious walked into the classroom and tried to concentrate on the lesson that
the teacher was giving, but it was not easy. Her mind kept wandering, and she found herself imagining what was going on outside. The cake was sitting there, the perfect temptation for any passing monkey, and it could only be a question of time before …

It happened suddenly. One moment everything was quiet, and the next there came a great squealing sound from outside. The squealing became louder and was soon a sort of howling sound, rather like the siren of a fire engine.

The teacher and the entire class looked up in astonishment.

“What on earth is going on?” asked the teacher. “Open the door, Sepo, and see what's happening.”

The entire class took this as an invitation to go to the door, and they were soon all gathered round the open door and the windows too, peering out to see what was going on.

What was happening was that two monkeys
were dancing up and down alongside the shelf, their hands stuck firmly in the mixture of glue and cake. Struggle as they might to free themselves, each time they pulled out a hand a long strand of glue dragged it back in. They were thoroughly and completely stuck to the cake.

“See,” shouted Precious in triumph. “There are the thieves. See there!”

The teacher laughed. “Well, well. So it's
monkeys who have been up to no good. Well, well!”

The school gardener had been alerted by the sound of squealing, and he now appeared. Seizing the monkeys, he pulled them away from the cake, freeing them to scamper back to the trees not far away.

“Little rascals,” he shouted, shaking a fist at them as they disappeared into the trees.

The teacher called everybody back to their desks. “We shall have to be more careful in the future,” she said. “Don't leave anything out to tempt those monkeys. That's the way to deal with that.”

Precious said nothing.

Then the teacher continued. “And I hope that some of you have learned a lesson,” she said. “Those who accused Poloko of being
a thief may like to think about what they have just seen.”

The teacher looked at Sepo and Tapiwa, who both looked down at the floor. Precious watched them. They had learned a lesson, she thought.

Later, on the way back from school, Poloko came up to her and thanked her for what she had done. “You are a very kind girl,” he said. “Thank you.”

“That's all right,” she said.

“You're going to be a very good detective one day. Do you still want to be one?”

She thought for a moment. It was a good thing to be a detective. You could help people who needed help. You could make people happier—as Poloko now was.

“Yes,” she said. “I think I do.”

They walked on. In the trees not far away,
there were some small eyes watching them from the leaves. The monkeys. Her friends.

Poloko walked her to her house, and Precious turned to him and said, “Would you like me to make a cake? We could eat it for our tea.”

He said he would, and while Precious baked the cake, he sat outside and sniffed the delicious smell wafting through the kitchen window.

Then the cake was ready, and they each had a large slice.

“Perfect,” Poloko said. “First-class, number one cake.”

And that was when she thought,
When I have a detective agency, I'll call it the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
.

Many years later, she did just that.