Blue Shoes and Happiness

CHAPTER THREE FREE FOOD MAKES YOU FAT

IT TOOK EVERYBODY some time to settle down after the incident with the cobra. The apprentices, convinced that they had played a vital role in dealing with the snake, were full of themselves for the rest of the day, embroidering the truth at every opportunity as they told the story in detail to every caller at the garage. Mr Polopetsi, the new employee whom Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had taken on at the garage—on the understanding that he could also help out, when required, in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency—heard all about it when he arrived an hour or so later. He had been sent by Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to collect tyres from a depot on the other side of town, a job which often required a long wait. Now, returning in the truck which was used for garage business, he was regaled with an account of the event by Charlie, who this time was careful to mention the presence of the manager of the Mokolodi Game Reserve, even if only in a supporting role.

“Mma Makutsi was very lucky,” he said once Charlie had finished the tale. “Those snakes strike like lightning. That quick. You cannot dodge them if they decide to strike.”

“Charlie was too quick for it,” said the younger apprentice. “He saved Mma Makutsi’s life.” He paused, and then added, “Not that she thanked him for it.”

Mr Polopetsi smiled. “I am sure that she is very grateful,” he said. “But you boys should remember that nobody is too quick for a snake. Keep out of their way. I saw some very bad snake-bite cases when I was working at the hospital. Very bad.” And he remembered, as he spoke, the woman who had been brought in from Otse; the woman who had been bitten by a puff-adder when she had rolled over in the night and disturbed the fat, languid snake that had slid into her one-room hut for the warmth. He had been on duty in the pharmacy and had been standing outside the entrance to the emergency department when she had been carried out of the government ambulance, and he had seen her leg, which had swollen so much that the skin had split. And then he had heard the next day that she had not lived and that there were three children and no father or grandmother to look after them; he had thought then of all the children there were in Africa who now had no parents and of what it must be like for them, not to have somebody who loved you as your parents loved you. He looked at the apprentices. They did not think of things like that, and who could expect them to? They were young men, and as a young man one was immortal, no matter what the evidence to the contrary.

At a garage there is no time for thinking such thoughts; there is work to do. Mr Polopetsi unloaded the new tyres, with their pristine treads and their chalk markings; Mr J.L.B. Matekoni attended to the delicate task of adjusting the timing on an old French station wagon—a car he did not like, which always went wrong and which in his view should have been given a decent burial a long time ago; and the two apprentices finished the servicing of Bishop Mwamba’s well-behaved white car. Inside the adjoining office of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi shuffled papers about their desks. They had very little real work to do, as it was a slack period for the agency, and so they took the opportunity to do some filing, a task in which Mma Makutsi took the lead, on account of her training at the Botswana Secretarial College.

“They used to say that good filing was the key to a successful business,” she said to Mma Ramotswe as she looked through a pile of old receipts.

“Oh yes,” said Mma Ramotswe, not with great interest. She had heard Mma Makutsi on the subject of filing on a number of occasions before and she felt that there was very little more to be said on the subject. The important thing, in her mind, was not the theory behind filing but the simple question of whether it worked or not. A good filing system enabled one to retrieve a piece of paper; a bad filing system did not.

But it seemed that there was more to be said. “You can file things by date,” Mma Makutsi went on, as if lecturing to a class. “Or you can file them by the name of the person to whom the document relates. Those are the two main systems. Date or person.”

Mma Ramotswe shot a glance across the room. It seemed odd that one could not file according to what the paper was all about. She herself had no office training, let alone a diploma from the Botswana Secretarial College, but surely a subject-based system was possible too. “What about subject matter?” she asked.

“There is that too,” Mma Makutsi added quickly. “I had forgotten about that. Subject matter too.”

Mma Ramotswe thought for a moment. In her office they filed papers under the name of the client, which she thought was a perfectly reasonable system, but it would be interesting, she thought, to set up a system of cross-referencing according to the subject matter of the case. There would be a large file for adultery, in which she could put all the cases which dealt with that troublesome issue, although it would probably be necessary to subdivide in that case. There could be a section for suspicious husbands and one for suspicious wives, perhaps, and even one for male menopause cases now that she came to think about it. Many of the women who came to see her were worried about their middle-aged husbands, and Mma Ramotswe had read somewhere about the male menopause and all the troubles to which it gave rise. She could certainly add her own views on that, if anybody should ask her.

MMA RAMOTSWE and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni went home for lunch at Zebra Drive, something they enjoyed doing when work at the garage permitted. Mma Ramotswe liked to lie down for twenty minutes or so after the midday meal. On occasion she would drop off to sleep for a short while, but usually she just read the newspaper or a magazine. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni would not lie down, but liked to walk out in the garden under the shade netting, looking at his vegetables. Although he was a mechanic, like most people in Botswana he was, at heart, a farmer, and he took great pleasure in this small patch of vegetables that he coaxed out of the dry soil. One day, when he retired, they would move out to a village, perhaps to Mochudi, and find land to plough and cattle to tend. Then at last there would be time to sit outside on the stoep with Mma Ramotswe and watch the life of the village unfold before them. That would be a good way of spending such days as remained to one; in peace, happy, among the people and cattle of home. It would be good to die among one’s cattle, he thought; with their sweet breath on one’s face and their dark, gentle eyes watching right up to the end of one’s journey, right up to the edge of the river.

MMA RAMOTSWE returned from the lunch break to find Mma Makutsi waiting for her at the office door. The younger woman seemed agitated.

“There’s a woman waiting inside.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “Has she said what she wants, Mma?” she asked.

Mma Makutsi looked rather annoyed. “She is insisting on talking to you, Mma. I offered to listen to her, but she said that she wanted the senior lady. That is what she said. The senior lady. That’s you.”

Noticing Mma Makutsi’s look of disapproval, Mma Ramotswe suppressed a smile. Her assistant was always irritated when this sort of thing happened. People would phone and ask to be put through to the boss, provoking from Mma Makutsi an indignant request for an explanation of what the query was about.

“I do not see why they cannot talk to me first,” she said peevishly. “Then I can put them through to you after I have told you who they are and what it’s about.”

“But that means they might have to repeat themselves,” Mma Ramotswe pointed out. “They might think it better to wait until …” She broke off. Mma Makutsi was unlikely to be convinced by this argument.

And this woman waiting for her in the office was another of these people who had been unwilling to tell Mma Makutsi what her business was. Well, one had to be understanding; it was often a big step to go and see a private detective about some private trouble, and one had to be gentle with people. She was not sure whether she herself would have the courage to consult a perfect stranger about something intimate. If Mr J.L.B. Matekoni were to begin misbehaving, for example—and it was inconceivable that he should—would she be able to go and talk to somebody about it, or would she suffer in silence? She rather thought that she might suffer in silence; that was her reaction, but others were different, of course. Some people were only too happy to pour out their most private problems into the ear of anybody who would listen. Mma Ramotswe had once sat next to such a woman on a bus; and this woman had told her, in the time that it takes to travel down the road from Gaborone to Lobatse, all about her feelings towards her mother-in-law, her concerns for her son, who was doing very well at school but who had met a girl who had turned his head and taken his mind quite off his schoolwork, and about her prying neighbour whom she had seen on several occasions looking into her bedroom through a pair of binoculars. Perhaps such people felt better if they talked, but it could be trying for those chosen to be their audience.

The woman sitting in the office looked up as Mma Ramotswe came into the room. They exchanged polite greetings—in the prescribed form—while Mma Ramotswe settled herself behind her desk.

“You are Mma Ramotswe?” asked the woman.

Mma Ramotswe inclined her head, taking in the little details that would allow her to place this woman. She was thirty-five, perhaps; of traditional build, like Mma Ramotswe herself (perhaps even more traditional); and, judging from the ring on her finger, married to a man who was able to afford a generously sized gold band.Clothing , said Clovis Andersen inThe Principles of Private Detection , provides more clues than virtually anything else (other than a pocket book or wallet!). Look at the clothing. It talks.

Mma Ramotswe looked at the woman’s clothing. Her skirt, which was tightly stretched across her traditional thighs, was made of a reasonably good material and was of a neutral grey colour. It said nothing, thought Mma Ramotswe, other than that the woman cared about her clothes and had a bit of money to spend on them. Above the skirt, the blouse was white and … She paused. There on one sleeve, just below the elbow, was a red-brown stain. Something had been dribbled down the sleeve, a sauce perhaps.

“Are you a cook, Mma?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

The woman nodded. “Yes,” she said, and was about to say something else when she stopped herself and frowned in puzzlement. “How did you know that, Mma? Have we met one another before?”

Mma Ramotswe waved a hand in the air. “No,” she said. “We have not met, but I have this feeling that you are a cook.”

“Well, I am,” said the woman. “You must be a very clever woman to work that out. I suppose that is why you do the job you do.”

“People’s jobs tell us a lot about them,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You are a cook, perhaps, because … Now let me think. Is it because you like eating? No, that cannot be. That would be too simple. You are a cook, then, because … You are married to a cook. Am I right?”

The woman let out a whistle of surprise. “I cannot believe that you know all this,” she exclaimed. “This is very strange.”

For a moment Mma Ramotswe said nothing. It was tempting to take undeserved credit, but she decided that she could not.

“The reason why I know all this, Mma,” she said, “is because I read the papers. Three weeks ago—or was it four?—your photograph was in the paper. You were winner of the Pick-and-Pay cooking competition. And the paper said that you were a cook at a college here in Gaborone and that your husband was a cook at the President Hotel.” She smiled. “And so that, Mma, is how I know these things.”

The disclosure was greeted by a burst of laughter from Mma Makutsi. “So you see, Mma,” she said, “we knew these things the moment you walked in here. I did not need to talk to you at all!”

Mma Ramotswe cast a warning glance in Mma Makutsi’s direction. She had to watch her with the clients; she could sometimes be rude to them if she thought that they were treating her with inadequate respect. It was a strange tendency, stemming, thought Mma Ramotswe, from this ninety-seven per cent business. She would have to talk to her about it some day and refer her, perhaps, to the relevant section of Clovis Andersen’s book in which he described proper relations with clients. One should never seek to score a point at the expense of a client, warned Clovis Andersen. The detective who tries to look smart at the expense of the client is really not smart at all—anything but.

Mma Ramotswe signalled to Mma Makutsi for a cup of tea. Tea helped clients to talk, and this woman looked ill at ease and needed to relax.

“May I ask you your name, Mma?” Mma Ramotswe began.

“It is Poppy,” the woman said. “Poppy Maope. I am normally just called Poppy.”

“It is a very pretty name, Mma. I should like to be called Poppy.”

The compliment drew a smile. “I used to be embarrassed about it,” said Poppy. “I used to try to hide my name from people. I thought it was a very silly name.”

Mma Ramotswe shook her head. There was nothing embarrassing about the name Poppy, but there was no telling what names people would find embarrassing. Take Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, for instance. Very few people, if any, knew what his initials stood for. He had told her, of course, as he was then her fiancé, but nobody else seemed to know; certainly not Mma Makutsi, who had asked her outright and had been informed that unfortunately she could not be told.

“Some names are private,” Mma Ramotswe had said. “This is the case with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. He has always been known as Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, and that is the way he wishes it to be.”

The tea made, Mma Makutsi brought two cups over and placed them on the desk. As she put them down, Mma Ramotswe saw her looking at the client, as if preparing to say something, and threw her a warning glance.

“I have come to see you on a very private matter,” Poppy began. “It is very hard to talk about it.”

Mma Ramotswe stretched out a hand across the desk, just far enough to touch Poppy lightly on the forearm. It is a marriage matter, she thought, and these are never easy to talk about; they often bring tears and sorrow, just at the talking of them.

“If it is a marriage question, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe gently, “just remember that we—that is, Mma Makutsi over there and myself—we have heard everything that there is to be said on such matters. There is nothing we have not heard.”

“Nothing,” confirmed Mma Makutsi, sipping at her tea. And she thought of that client, a man, who had come in the previous week and told them that extraordinary story and how difficult it had been for both of them not to laugh when he had described how … Oh, it was important not to think of that, or one would begin to laugh all over again.

Poppy shook her head vehemently. “It is not a marriage matter,” she said. “My husband is a good man. We are very happily married.”

Mma Ramotswe folded her arms. “I am happy to hear that,” she said. “How many people can say that in these troubled times? Ever since women allowed men to think that they did not need to get married, everything has gone wrong. That is what I think, Mma.”

Poppy thought for a moment. “I think you may be right,” she said. “Look at the mess. Look at what all this unfaithfulness has done. People are dying because of that, aren’t they? Many people are dying.”

For a moment the three of them were silent. There was no gainsaying what Poppy had said. It was just true. Just true.

“But I have not come to talk about that,” said Poppy. “I have come because I am very frightened. I am frightened that I am going to lose my job, and if I do, then how are we going to pay for the house we have bought? All my wages go on the payments for that, Mma. Every thebe. So if I lose my job we shall have to move, and you know how difficult it is to get somewhere nice to live. There are just not enough houses.”

Mma Ramotswe took up a pen from her desk and twined her fingers about it. Yes, this woman was right. She, Mma Ramotswe, was fortunate in owning her house in Zebra Drive. If she had to try to buy it today it would be impossible. How did people survive when housing was so expensive? It was a bit of a mystery to her.

Poppy was looking at her.

“Please go on, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I hope you don’t mind if I fiddle with this pen. I am still listening to you. It is easier to listen if one has something to do with one’s hands.”

Poppy made a gesture of assent. “I do not mind, Mma. You can fiddle. I will carry on talking and will tell you why I am frightened. But first I must tell you a little bit about my job, as you must know this if you are to help me.

“I was always interested in cooking, Mma. When I was a girl I was always the one in the kitchen, cooking all the food for the family. My grandmother was the one who taught me. She had always cooked and she could make very simple food taste very good. Maize meal. Sorghum. Those very plain things tasted very good when my grandmother had added her herbs to them. Herbs or a little bit of meat if we were lucky, or even chopped-up Mopani worms. Oh, those were very good. I cannot resist Mopani worms, Mma. Can you?”

“No Motswana can resist them,” said Mma Ramotswe, smiling. “I would love to have some right now, but I’m sorry, Mma …”

Poppy took a sip of her tea. “Yes, Mopani worms! Anyway, I went off to do a catering course in South Africa. I was very lucky to get a place on it, and a scholarship too. It was one whole year and I learned a very great deal about cooking while I was on it. I learned how to cook for one hundred, two hundred people, as easily as we cook for four or five people. It is not all that difficult, you know, Mma Ramotswe, as long as you get the quantities right.

“I came back to Botswana and got my first job up at one of the diamond mines, the one at Orapa. They have canteens for the miners there, and I was assistant to one of the chefs in charge of that. It was very hard work and those miners were very hungry! But I learned more and more, and I also met my husband, who was a senior cook up there. He cooked in the guest house that the mining company had for their visitors. They liked to give these visitors good food and the man I married was the cook who did that.

“My husband decided one day that he had had enough of living up at the diamond mine. ‘There is nothing to do here,’ he said. ‘There is just dust and more dust.’

“I said to him that we should not move until we had made more money, but he was fed up and wanted to come to Gaborone. Fortunately, he got a job very easily through somebody who had stayed in the guest house and who knew that the President Hotel was looking for another chef. So he came down here, and I soon found a job at that college, the big new one which they built over that way—you know the place, Mma. I was very happy with this job and I was happy that we were able to live in Gaborone, where everything is happening and where it is not just dust, dust, dust.

“And everything went very well. I was not the senior cook—there is another woman who has that job. She is called Mma Tsau. She was very good to me and she made sure that I got a pay-rise after I had been there one year. I was very happy, until I discovered something bad that was going on.

“Mma Tsau has a husband, whom I had seen about the place once or twice. One day, one of the cleaning ladies said to me, ‘That man is eating all the food, you know. He is eating all the best food.’

“I had no idea what this lady meant, and so I asked her which man she was talking about. She told me that it was Mma Tsau’s husband and that there was a storeroom in the college where he came for a meal from time to time and was given all the best meat by his wife. On other days, she said, Mma Tsau would take home packets of the best meat to cook for her husband at their house. This food belonged to the college, she said, but it went straight into the mouth of Mma Tsau’s husband, who was getting fatter and fatter as a result of all these good meals he was having.

“I did not believe this at first. I had noticed that he was a very fat man, but I had thought that this must be because he was married to a good cook. The husbands of good cooks are often fatter than other men—and that is natural, I suppose.

“I decided one day to see whether what the cleaning lady had told me was true. I had noticed that at lunchtimes Mma Tsau used to leave the kitchen from time to time, but I was always so busy that I hardly paid any attention to it. There is always something happening in a busy kitchen, and there are many reasons why the head cook may need to leave the stoves for a short time. There are supplies to be checked up on. There are telephones to answer. There are assistants to chase up.

“On that day I kept an eye on Mma Tsau. She went outside at one point to call one of the helpers, who was standing outside in the sun and not doing enough work. I looked out of the window and saw her shaking a finger at this woman and shouting at her, but I did not hear what she said. I had a good idea of it, though.

“Then, a few minutes later, I noticed that she went to the door of one of the warming ovens and took out a covered dish. It was an oven that we never used, as we had too much capacity in that kitchen. She took this dish, which was covered by a metal plate, and went out of the kitchen. I moved over to a window and saw her walking towards a small block near the kitchen. There was an old office there, which was not used any more, and a storeroom. She went in, was inside for a few moments, and then came out again, without the dish, but wiping her hands on her apron.

“I waited a few minutes. Mma Tsau was now busy supervising the assistants who were dishing out the stew to the students. She was telling them that they should not give helpings that were too generous, or there would not be enough for the students who came in for their lunch a bit later. I overheard her telling one of them that they should not give more food to those students whom they liked, who smiled at them when they reached the head of the line, or who were related to them. I could not believe that I was hearing that, if what I thought I had just seen was true. I think that you should not say one thing and then do exactly the opposite yourself, should you, Mma Ramotswe? No. That is what I thought too.

“This was now the best time for me to leave the kitchen, while Mma Tsau was lecturing the assistant. I went outside and ran across to the block which I had seen her enter. I had decided that the best thing to do would be to pretend to be looking for something, and so I did not knock on the door, but just pushed it open. There was a man inside, that fat man, the husband of Mma Tsau. He was sitting at a small table with a large plate of steak in front of him. There were vegetables too—some potatoes with gravy on them and a pile of carrots. He had a bottle of tomato sauce on the table in front of him and a copy ofThe Daily News , which he was reading as he ate.

“I pretended to be surprised, although what I saw was exactly what I had expected to see. So I greeted him and said that I was sorry to have disturbed his lunch. He smiled and said that it did not matter, and that I should look for whatever it was that I was searching for. Then he went back to eating his steak, which smelled very good in the small space of that room.”

As the story progressed, Mma Ramotswe’s mouth opened wider and wider with astonishment. Mma Makutsi also seemed transfixed by the tale which their client was telling, and was sitting quite still at her desk, hanging on every word.

Poppy now paused. “I hope that you do not think that I was being too nosy,” she said. “I know that you should not look into things that are not your business.”

Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “But itwas your business, Mma,” she said. “It was surely your business. It is always the business of people who work in a place that somebody else in that place is stealing. That is everybody’s business.”

Poppy looked relieved. “I am glad you said that, Mma. I would not like you to think that I was one of those nosy people. I was worried …”

“So,” interrupted Mma Ramotswe. “You have to decide what to do. Is that why you have come to see me today?”

This conclusion seemed reasonable to Mma Ramotswe, but Poppy held up her hands in denial. “No, Mma,” she said. “I decided what to do straightaway. I went to Mma Tsau the next day and asked her about her husband. I said, ‘Why is your husband eating all this college food? Do you not have enough food of your own?’

“She was inspecting a pot at the time, and when I asked her this question she dropped it, she was so surprised. Then she looked closely at me and told me that she did not know what I was talking about and that I should not make up wild stories like that in case anybody believed that what I said was true.

“‘But I saw him myself,’ I told her. ‘I saw him in the storeroom over there eating steaks from the college kitchen. I saw him, Mma.’”

Mma Makutsi, who had been silent, could no longer contain herself. “Surely she did not try to deny that, Mma,” she said. “That wicked woman! Taking the meat from the students and giving it to that fat husband of hers! And our taxes paying for that meat too!”

Poppy and Mma Ramotswe both looked at Mma Makutsi. Her outrage was palpable.

“Well, she didn’t,” Poppy continued. “Once I had told her that I had seen what was going on, she just became silent for a while. But she was watching me with her eyes narrowed—like this. Then she said that if I told anybody about it, she would make sure that I lost my job. She explained to me that this would be easy for her to do. She said that she would simply tell the college managers that I was not up to the job and that they would have to get somebody else. She said that they would believe her and that there would be nothing I could do.”

“I hope that you went straight to the police,” said Mma Makutsi indignantly.

Poppy snorted. “How could I do that? I had no proof to give the police, and they would believe her rather than me. She is the senior cook, remember. I am just a junior person.”

Mma Ramotswe looked up at the ceiling. She had recently read an article about this sort of problem and she was trying to remember the word which was used to describe it. Whistle-blowing! Yes, that was it. The article had described how difficult it was for whistle-blowers when they saw something illegal being done at work. In some countries, it had said, there were laws to protect the whistle-blower—in some countries, but she was not sure whether this was true of Botswana. There was very little corruption in Botswana, but she was still not sure whether life was made any easier for whistle-blowers.

“Whistle-blowing,” she said aloud. “That’s what it is—whistle-blowing.”

Poppy looked at her blankly. “Who is blowing a whistle?” she asked.

“You are,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Or you could blow a whistle.”

“I do not see what whistles have to do with it,” said Poppy.

“If you went to the police you would be a whistle-blower,” explained Mma Ramotswe. “It’s a way of describing a person who lets others know about what is going on behind the scenes.”

“Behind what scenes?” asked Poppy.

Mma Ramotswe decided to change tack. There were some people who were rather literal in their understanding of things, and Poppy, it seemed, was one of these.

“Well, let us not think too much about whistles and such things,” she said. “The important thing is this: you want us to do something about this woman and her stealing. Is that right?”

The suggestion seemed to alarm Poppy. “No,” she said. “I do not want that, Mma. You must wait until I finish telling you my story.”

Mma Ramotswe made an apologetic gesture, and Poppy began to speak again.

“I was frightened, Mma. I could not face losing my job and so I did nothing. I did not like the thought of that man eating all that government food, but then I thought of what it would be like not to have a house, and so I just bit my tongue. But then, three days ago, Mma Tsau came to me just as I was about to leave work to go home. My husband has a car and was waiting for me at the end of the road. I could see him sitting in the car, looking up at the sky, as he likes to do. When you are a chef all you see is the kitchen ceiling and clouds of steam. When you are outside, you like to look at the sky.

“Mma Tsau drew me aside. She was shaking with anger and I thought that I had made some very bad mistake in my work. But it was not that. She gripped me by the arm and leaned forward to speak to me. ‘You think you’re clever,’ she said. ‘You think that you can get me to give you money not to say anything about my husband. You think that, don’t you?’

“I had no idea what she was talking about. I told her that, but she just laughed at me. She said that she had torn up the letter I had written. Then she said that on the very first opportunity that she could find, she would get rid of me. She said that it might take a few months, but she would make very sure that I would lose my job.”

Poppy stopped. Towards the end of her tale, her voice had risen, and by the time that she finished, the words were coming in gasps. Mma Ramotswe leaned forward and took her hand. “Do not be upset, Mma,” she said gently. “She is just making threats. Often these people don’t do what they threaten to do, isn’t that right, Mma Makutsi?”

Mma Makutsi glanced at Mma Ramotswe before she answered. She thought that people like that often did exactly what they threatened to do—and worse—but now was not the time to express such doubts. “Hot air,” she said. “You would think that in Botswana we had enough hot air, with the Kalahari just over there, but there are still people like this Mma Tsau who add to the hot air. And you do not need to worry about hot air, Mma.”

Poppy looked over towards Mma Makutsi and smiled weakly. “I hope that you’re right, Mma,” she said. “But I am not sure. And anyway, what was this letter? I did not write to her about it.”

Mma Ramotswe rose from her seat and walked to the window. Poppy had spoken about how chefs liked to look at the sky when they had the chance; well, so did private detectives, she thought; ladies and private detectives. Indeed, everybody should look at the sky when they could, because the sky had many answers, provided one knew how to see them. And now, as she looked at the sky, over the tops of the acacia trees and up into that echoing emptiness, it seemed to her so very obvious that Poppy was not the only person who knew about the food and that the other person who knew—who, again so obviously, must have been the cleaning woman—was taking the opportunity to blackmail Mma Tsau. Unfortunately for Poppy, she was getting the blame, but that was quite typical of life, was it not? The wrong people often got the blame, the wrong people suffered for what the right people did. And the sky in all this, the sky which had seen so much of it, was neutral, absolutely neutral.

The problem with blackmail, thought Mma Ramotswe, is this: the victim is often a wrongdoer, but, once blackmailed, attracts our sympathy. But why should we feel sorry for somebody who is simply being made to pay for the wrong that he did? It occurred to Mma Ramotswe that this was a problem that deserved serious consideration. Perhaps it was even a question to put to Aunty Emang. Aunty Emang …