Tears of the Giraffe

CHAPTER THIRTEEN A PROBLEM IN MORAL PHILOSOPHY

THERE WERE some clients who engaged Mma Ramotswe's sympathies on the first telling of their tale. Others one could not sympathise with because they were motivated by selfishness, or greed, or sometimes self-evident paranoia. But the genuine cases-the cases which made the trade of private detective into a real calling-could break the heart. Mma Ramotswe knew that Mr Letsenyane Badule was one of these.

He came without an appointment, arriving the day after Mma Ramotswe had returned from her trip to Molepolole. It was the first day of Mma Makutsi's promotion to assistant detective, and Mma Ramotswe had just explained to her that although she was now a private detective she still had secretarial duties.

She had realised that she would have to broach the subject early, to avoid misunderstandings.

"I can't employ both a secretary and an assistant," she said.

"This is a small agency. I do not make a big profit. You know that. You send out the bills."

Mma Makutsi's face had fallen. She was dressed in her smartest dress, and she had done something to her hair, which was standing on end in little pointed bunches. It had not worked.

"Am I still a secretary, then?" she said. "Do I still just do the typing?"

Mma Ramotswe shook her head. "I have not changed my mind," she said. "You are an assistant private detective. But somebody has to do the typing, don't they? That is a job for an assistant private detective. That, and other things."

Mma Makutsi's face brightened. "That is all right. I can do all the things I used to do, but I will do more as well. I shall have clients."

Mma Ramotswe drew in her breath. She had not envisaged giving Mma Makutsi her own clients. Her idea had been to assign her tasks to be performed under supervision. The actual management of cases was to be her own responsibility. But then she remembered. She remembered how, as girl she had worked in the Small Upright General Dealer Store in Mochudi and how thrilled she had been when she had first been allowed to do a stock-taking on her own. It was selfishness to keep the clients to herself. How could anybody be started on a career if those who were at the top kept all the interesting work for themselves?

"Yes," she said quietly. "You can have your own clients. But I will decide which ones you get. You may not get the very big clients... to begin with. You can start with small matters and work up."

"That is quite fair," said Mma Makutsi. "Thank you, Mma. I

do not want to run before I can walk. They told us that at the Botswana Secretarial College. Learn the easy things first and then learn the difficult things. Not the other way round."

"That's a good philosophy," said Mma Ramotswe. "Many young people these days have not been taught that. They want the big jobs right away. They want to start at the top, with lots of money and a big Mercedes-Benz."

"That is not wise," said Mma Makutsi. "Do the little things when you are young and then work up to doing the big things later."

"Mmm," mused Mma Ramotswe. "These Mercedes-Benz cars have not been a good thing for Africa. They are very fine cars, I believe, but all the ambitious people in Africa want one before they have earned it. That has made for big problems."

"The more Mercedes-Benzes there are in a country," offered Mma Makutsi, "the worse that country is. If there is a country without any Mercedes-Benzes, then that will be a good place. You can count on that."

Mma Ramotswe stared at her assistant. It was an interesting theory, which could be discussed at greater length later on. For the meantime, there were one or two matters which still needed to be resolved.

"You will still make the tea," she said firmly. "You have always done that very well."

"I am very happy to do that," said Mma Makutsi, smiling. "There is no reason why an assistant private detective cannot make tea when there is nobody more junior to do it."

IT HAD been an awkward discussion and Mma Ramotswe was pleased that it was over. She thought that it would be best if

she gave her new assistant a case as soon as possible, to avoid the buildup of tension, and when, later that morning, Mr Let-senyane Badule arrived she decided that this would be a case for Mma Makutsi.

He drove up in a Mercedes-Benz, but it was an old one, and therefore morally insignificant, with signs of rust around the rear sills and with a deep dent on the driver's door.

"I am not one who usually comes to private detectives," he said, sitting nervously on the edge of the comfortable chair reserved for clients. Opposite him, the two women smiled reassuringly. The fat woman-she was the boss, he knew, as he had seen her photograph in the newspaper-and that other one with the odd hair and the fancy dress, her assistant perhaps.

"You need not feel embarrassed," said Mma Ramotswe. "We have all sorts of people coming through this door. There is no shame in asking for help."

"In fact," interjected Mma Makutsi. "It is the strong ones who ask for help. It is the weak ones who are too ashamed to come.

Mma Ramotswe nodded. The client seemed to be reassured by what Mma Makutsi had said. This was a good sign. Not everyone knows how to set a client at ease, and it boded well that Mma Makutsi had shown herself able to choose her words well.

The tightness of Mr Badule's grip on the brim of his hat loosened, and he sat back in his chair.

"I have been very worried," he said. "Every night I have been waking up in the quiet hours and have been unable to get back to sleep. I lie in my bed and I turn this way and that and cannot get this one thought out of my head. All the time it is there,

going round and round. Just one question, which I ask myself time after time after time."

"And you never find an answer?" said Mma Makutsi. "The night is a very bad time for questions to which there are no answers."

Mr Badule looked at her. 'You are very right, my sister. There is nothing worse than a nighttime question."

He stopped, and for a moment or two nobody spoke. Then Mma Ramotswe broke the silence.

"Why don't you tell us about yourself, Rra? Then a little bit later on, we can get to this question that is troubling you so badly. My assistant will make us a cup of tea first, and then we can drink it together."

Mr Badule nodded eagerly. He seemed close to tears for some reason, and Mma Ramotswe knew that the ritual of tea, with the mugs hot against the hand, would somehow make the story flow and would ease the mind of this troubled man.

I AM not a big, important man, began Mr Badule. I come from Lobatse originally. My father was an orderly at the High Court there and he served many years. He worked for the British, and they gave him two medals, with the picture of the Queen's head on them. He wore these every day, even after he retired. When he left the service, one of the judges gave him a hoe to use on his lands. The judge had ordered the hoe to be made in the prison workshop and the prisoners, on the judge's instructions, had burned an inscription into the wooden handle with a hot nail. It said: First Class Orderly Badule, served Her Majesty and then the Republic of Botswana loyally for fifty years.

Well done tried and trusty servant, from Mr Justice Maclean, Puisne Judge, High Court of Botswana.

That judge was a good man, and he was kind to me too. He spoke to one of the fathers at the Catholic School and they gave me a place in standard four. I worked hard at this school, and when I reported one of the other boys for stealing meat from the kitchen, they made me deputy-head boy.

I passed my Cambridge School certificate and afterwards I got a good job with the Meat Commission. I worked hard there too and again I reported other employees for stealing meat. I did not do this because I wanted promotion, but because I am not one who likes to see dishonesty in any form. That is one thing I learned from my father. As an orderly in the High Court, he saw all sorts of bad people, including murderers. He saw them standing in the court and telling lies because they knew that their wicked deeds had caught up with them. He watched them when the judges sentenced them to death and saw how big strong men who had beaten and stabbed other people became like little boys, terrified and sobbing and saying that they were sorry for all their bad deeds, which they had said they hadn't done anyway.

With such a background, it is not surprising that my father should have taught his sons to be honest and to tell the truth always. So I did not hesitate to bring these dishonest employees to justice and my employers were very pleased.

"You have stopped these wicked people from stealing the meat of Botswana," they said. "Our eyes cannot see what our employees are doing. Your eyes have helped us."

I did not expect a reward, but I was promoted. And in my new job, which was in the headquarters office, I found more

meat, This time in a more indirect and clever way, but it was still stealing meat. So I wrote a letter to the General Manager and said: "Here is how you are losing meat, right under your noses, in the general office." And at the end I put the names, all in alphabetical order, and signed the letter and sent it off.

They were very pleased, and, as a result, they promoted me even further. By now, anybody who was dishonest had been frightened into leaving the company, and so there was no more work of that sort for me to do. But I still did well, and eventually I had saved enough money to buy my own butchery. I received a large cheque from the company, which was sorry to see me go, and I set up my butchery just outside Gaborone. You may have seen it on the road to Lobatse. It is called Honest Deal Butchery.

My butchery does quite well, but I do not have a lot of money to spare. The reason for this is my wife. She is a fashionable lady, who likes smart clothes and who does not like to work too much herself. I do not mind her not working, but it upsets me to see her spend so much money on braiding her hair and having new dresses made by the Indian tailor. I am not a smart man, but she is a very smart lady.

For many years after we got married there were no children. But then she became pregnant and we had a son. I was very proud, and my only sadness was that my father was not still alive so that he could see his fine new grandson.

My son is not very clever. We sent him to the primary school near our house and we kept getting reports saying that he had to try harder and that his handwriting was very untidy and full of mistakes. My wife said that he would have to be sent to a

private school, where they would have better teachers and where they would force him to write more neatly, but I was worried that we could not afford that.

When I said that, she became very cross. "If you cannot pay for it," she said, "then I will go to a charity I know and get them to pay the fees."

"There are no such charities," I said. "If there were, then they would be inundated. Everyone wants his child to go to a private school. They would have every parent in Botswana lining up for help. It is impossible."

"Oh it is, is it?" she said. "I shall speak to this charity tomorrow, and you will see. You just wait and see."

She went off to town the next day and when she came back she said it had all been arranged. "The charity will pay all his school fees to go to Thornhill. He can start next term."

I was astonished. Thornhill, as you know, Bomma, is a very good school and the thought of my son going there was very exciting. But I could not imagine how my wife had managed to persuade a charity to pay for it, and when I asked her for the details so that I could write to them and thank them she replied that it was a secret charity.

"There are some charities which do not want to shout out their good deeds from the rooftops," she said. "They have asked me to tell nobody about this. But if you wish to thank them, you can write a letter, which I will deliver to them on your behalf."

I wrote this letter, but got no reply.

"They are far too busy to be writing to every parent they help," said my wife. "I don't see what you're complaining about. They're paying the fees, aren't they? Stop bothering them with all these letters."

There had only been one letter, but my wife always exaggerates things, at least when it concerns me. She accuses me of eating "hundreds of pumpkins, all the time," when I eat fewer pumpkins than she does. She says that I make more noise than an aeroplane when I snore, which is not true. She says that I am always spending money on my lazy nephew and sending him thousands of pula every year. In fact, I only give him one hundred pula on his birthday and one hundred pula for his Christmas box. Where she gets this figure of thousands of pula, I don't know. I also don't know where she gets all the money for her fashionable life. She tells me that she saves it, by being careful in the house, but I cannot see how it adds up. I will talk to you a little bit later about that.

But you must not misunderstand me, ladies. I am not one of these husbands who does not like his wife. I am very happy with my wife. Every day I reflect on how happy I am to be married to a fashionable lady-a lady who makes people look at her in the street. Many butchers are married to women who do not look very glamorous, but I am not one of those butchers. I am the butcher with the very glamorous wife, and that makes me proud.

I AM also proud of my son. When he went to Thornhill he was behind in all his subjects and I was worried that they would put him down a year. But when I spoke to the teacher, she said that I should not worry about this, as the boy was very bright and would soon catch up. She said that bright children could always manage to get over earlier difficulties if they made up their mind to work.

My son liked the school. He was soon scoring top marks in

mathematics and his handwriting improved so much that you would think it was a different boy writing. He wrote an essay which I have kept, "The Causes of Soil Erosion in Botswana," and one day I shall show that to you, if you wish. It is a very beautiful piece of work and I think that if he carries on like this, he will one day become Minister of Mines or maybe Minister of Water Resources. And to think that he will get there as the grandson of a High Court orderly and the son of an ordinary butcher.

You must be thinking: What has this man got to complain about? He has a fashionable wife and a clever son. He has got a butchery of his own. Why complain? And I understand why one might think that, but that does not make me any more unhappy. Every night I wake up and think the same thought. Every day when I come back from work and find that my wife is not yet home, and I wait until ten or eleven o'clock before she returns, the anxiety gnaws away at my stomach like a hungry animal. Because, you see, Bomma, the truth of the matter is that I think my wife is seeing another man. I know that there are many husbands who say that, and they are imagining things, and I hope that I am just the same-just imagining-but I cannot have any peace until I know whether what I fear is true.

WHEN MR Letsenyane Badule eventually left, driving off in his rather battered Mercedes-Benz, Mma Ramotswe looked at Mma Makutsi and smiled.

"Very simple," she said. "I think this is a very simple case, Mma Makutsi. You should be able to handle this case yourself with no trouble."

Mma Makutsi went back to her own desk, smoothing out the fabric of her smart blue dress. "Thank you, Mma. I shall do my best."

Mma Ramotswe nodded. "Yes," she went on. "A simple case of a man with a bored wife. It is a very old story. I read in a magazine that it is the sort of story that French people like to read. There is a story about a French lady called Mma Bovary, who was just like this, a very famous story. She was a lady who lived in the country and who did not like to be married to the same, dull man."

"It is better to be married to a dull man," said Mma Makutsi. "This Mma Bovary was very foolish. Dull men are very good husbands. They are always loyal and they never run away with other women. You are very lucky to be engaged to a..."

She stopped. She had not intended it, and yet it was too late now. She did not consider Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to be dull; he was reliable, and he was a mechanic, and he would be an utterly satisfactory husband. That is what she had meant; she did not mean to suggest that he was actually dull.

Mma Ramotswe stared at her. "To a what?" she said. "I am very lucky to be engaged to a what?"

Mma Makutsi looked down at her shoes. She felt hot and confused. The shoes, her best pair, the pair with the three glittering buttons stitched across the top, stared back at her, as shoes always do.

Then Mma Ramotswe laughed. "Don't worry," she said. "I know what you mean, Mma Makutsi. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni is maybe not the most fashionable man in town, but he is one of the best men there is. You could trust him with anything. He would never let you down. And I know he would never have any secrets from me. That is very important."

Grateful for her employer's understanding, Mma Makutsi was quick to agree.

'That is by far the best sort of man," she said. "If I am ever lucky enough to find a man like that, I hope he asks me to marry him."

She glanced down at her shoes again, and they met her stare. Shoes are realists, she thought, and they seemed to be saying: No chance. Sorry, but no chance.

"Well," said Mma Ramotswe. "Let's leave the subject of men in general and get back to Mr Badule. What do you think? Mr Andersen's book says that you must have a working supposition. You must set out to prove or disprove something. We have agreed that Mma Badule sounds bored, but do you think that there is more to it than that?"

Mma Makutsi frowned. "I think that there is something going on. She is getting money from somewhere, which means she is getting it from a man. She is paying the school fees herself with the money she has saved up."

Mma Ramotswe agreed. "So all you have to do is to follow her one day and see where she goes. She should lead you straight to this other man. Then you see how long she stays there, and you speak to the housemaid. Give her one hundred pula, and she will tell you the full story. Maids like to speak about the things that go on in their employers' houses. The employers often think that maids cannot hear, or see, even. They ignore them. And then, one day, they realise that the maid has been hearing and seeing all their secrets and is bursting to talk to the first person who asks her. That maid will tell you everything. You just see. Then you tell Mr Badule."

"That is the bit that I will not like," said Mma Makutsi. "All the rest I don't mind, but telling this poor man about this bad wife of his will not be easy."

Mma Ramotswe was reassuring. "Don't worry. Almost every time we detectives have to tell something like that to a client, the client already knows. We just provide the proof they are looking for. They know everything. We never tell them anything new."

"Even so," said Mma Makutsi. "Poor man. Poor man."

"Maybe," Mma Ramotswe added. "But remember, that for every cheating wife in Botswana, there are five hundred and fifty cheating husbands."

Mma Makutsi whistled. "That is an amazing figure," she said. "Where did you read that?"

"Nowhere," chuckled Mma Ramotswe. "I made it up. But that doesn't stop it from being true."

IT WAS a wonderful moment for Mma Makutsi when she set forth on her first case. She did not have a driving licence, and so she had to ask her uncle, who used to drive a Government truck and who was now retired, to drive her on the assignment in the old Austin which he hired out, together with his services as driver, for weddings and funerals. The uncle was thrilled to be included on such a mission, and donned a pair of darkened glasses for the occasion.

They drove out early to the house beside the butchery, where Mr Badule and his wife lived. It was a slightly down-at-heel bungalow, surrounded by pawpaw trees, and with a silver-painted tin roof that needed attention. The yard was virtually empty, apart from the pawpaws and a wilting row of cannas along the front of the house. At the rear of the house, backed

up against a wire fence that marked the end of the property, were the servant quarters and a lean-to garage.

It was hard to find a suitable place to wait, but eventually Mma Makutsi concluded that if they parked just round the corner, they would be half-concealed by the small take-out stall that sold roast mealies, strips of fly-blown dried meat and, for those who wanted a real treat, delicious pokes of mopani worms. There was no reason why a car should not park there; it would be a good place for lovers to meet, or for somebody to wait for the arrival of a rural relative off one of the rickety buses that careered in from the Francistown Road. The uncle was excited, and lit a cigarette. "I have seen many films like this," he said. "I never dreamed that I would be doing this work, right here in Gaborone."

"Being a private detective is not all glamorous work," said his niece. "We have to be patient. Much of our work is just sitting and waiting."

"I know," said the uncle. "I have seen that on films too. I have seen these detective people sit in their cars and eat sandwiches while they wait. Then somebody starts shooting."

Mma Makutsi raised an eyebrow. "There is no shooting in Botswana," she said. "We are a civilized country."

They lapsed into a companionable silence, watching people set about their morning business. At seven o'clock the door of the Badule house opened and a boy came out, dressed in the characteristic uniform of Thornhill School. He stood for a moment in front of the house, adjusting the strap of his school satchel, and then walked up the path that led to the front gate. Then he turned smartly to the left and strode down the road. "That is the son," said Mma Makutsi, lowering her voice, although nobody could possibly hear them. "He has a scholar­ship to Thornhill School. He is a bright boy, with very good handwriting." The uncle looked interested. "Should I write this down?" he asked. "I could keep a record of what happens."

Mma Makutsi was about to explain that this would not be necessary, but she changed her mind. It would give him something to do, and there was no harm in it. So the uncle wrote on a scrap of paper that he had extracted from his pocket: "Badule boy leaves house at 7 A.M. and proceeds to school on foot." He showed her his note, and she nodded. "You would make a very good detective, Uncle," she said, adding: "It is a pity you are too old."

Twenty minutes later, Mr Badule emerged from the house and walked over to the butchery. He unlocked the door and admitted his two assistants, who had been waiting for him under a tree. A few minutes later, one of the assistants, now wearing a heavily bloodstained apron, came out carrying a large stainless steel tray, which he washed under a standpipe at the side of the building. Then two customers arrived, one having walked up the street, another getting off a minibus which stopped just beyond the take-out stall.

"Customers enter shop," wrote the uncle. "Then leave, carrying parcels. Probably meat."

Again he showed the note to his niece, who nodded approvingly.

"Very good. Very useful. But it is the lady we are interested in," she said. "Soon it will be time for her to do something."

They waited a further four hours. Then, shortly before twelve, when the car had become stiflingly hot under the sun, and just at the point when Mma Makutsi was becoming irri­tated by her uncle's constant note-taking, they saw Mma Badule emerge from behind the house and walk over to the garage. There she got into the battered Mercedes-Benz and reversed out of the front drive. This was the signal for the uncle to start his car and, at a respectful distance, follow the Mercedes as it made its way into town.

Mma Badule drove fast, and it was difficult for the uncle to keep up with her in his old Austin, but they still had her in sight by the time that she drew into the driveway of a large house on Nyerere Drive. They drove past slowly, and caught a glimpse of her getting out of the car and striding towards the shady verandah. Then the luxuriant garden growth, so much richer than the miserable pawpaw trees at the butchery house, obscured their view.

But it was enough. They drove slowly round the corner and parked under a jacaranda tree at the side of the road.

"What now?" asked the uncle. "Do we wait here until she leaves?"

Mma Makutsi was uncertain. "There is not much point in sitting here," she said. "We are really interested in what is going on in that house."

She remembered Mma Ramotswe's advice. The best source of information was undoubtedly the maids, if they could be persuaded to talk. It was now lunchtime, and the maids would be busy in the kitchen. But in an hour or so, they would have their own lunch break, and would come back to the servants' quarters. And those could be reached quite easily, along the narrow sanitary lane that ran along the back of the properties. That would be the time to speak to them and to offer the crisp new fifty pula notes which Mma Ramotswe had issued her the previous evening.

The uncle wanted to accompany her, and Mma Makutsi had difficulty persuading him that she could go alone.

"It could be dangerous," he said. "You might need protection."

She brushed aside his objections. "Dangerous, Uncle? Since when has it been dangerous to talk to a couple of maids in the middle of Gaborone, in the middle of the day?"

He had had no answer to that, but he nonetheless looked anxious when she left him in the car and made her way along the lane to the back gate. He watched her hesitate behind the small, whitewashed building which formed the servants' quarters, before making her way round to the door, and then he lost sight of her. He took out his pencil, glanced at the time, and made a note: Mma Makutsi enters servants' quarters at 2:10 P.M.

THERE WERE two of them, just as she had anticipated. One of them was older than the other, and had crow's-feet wrinkles at the side of her eyes. She was a comfortable, large-chested woman, dressed in a green maid's dress and a pair of scuffed white shoes of the sort which nurses wear. The younger woman, who looked as if she was in her mid-twenties, Mma Makutsi's own age, was wearing a red housecoat and had a sultry, spoiled face. In other clothes, and made-up, she would not have looked out of place as a bar girl. Perhaps she is one, thought Mma Makutsi.

The two women stared at her, the younger one quite rudely.

"Ko ko," said Mma Makutsi, politely, using the greeting that could substitute for a knock when there was no door to be knocked upon. This was necessary, as although the women were not inside their house they were not quite outside either,

being seated on two stools in the cramped open porch at the front of the building.

The older woman studied their visitor, raising her hand to shade her eyes against the harsh light of the early afternoon. "Dumela, Mma. Are you well?"

The formal greetings were exchanged, and then there was silence. The younger woman poked at their small, blackened kettle with a stick.

"I wanted to talk to you, my sisters," said Mma Makutsi. "I want to find out about that woman who has come to visit this house, the one who drives that Mercedes-Benz. You know that one?"

The younger maid dropped the stick. The older one nodded. "Yes, we know that woman." "Who is she?"

The younger retrieved her stick and looked up at Mma Makutsi. "She is a very important lady, that one! She comes to the house and sits in the chairs and drinks tea. That is who she is."

The other one chuckled. "But she is also a very tired lady," she said. "Poor lady, she works so hard that she has to go and lie down in the bedroom a lot, to regain her strength."

The younger one burst into a peal of laughter. "Oh yes," she said. "There is much resting done in that bedroom. He helps her to rest her poor legs. Poor lady."

Mma Makutsi joined in their laughter. She knew immediately that this was going to be much easier than she had imagined it would be. Mma Ramotswe was right, as usual; people liked to talk, and, in particular, they liked to talk about people who annoyed them in some way. All one had to do was to discover the grudge and the grudge itself would do all the work.

She felt in her pocket for the two fifty pula notes; it might not even be necessary to use them after all. If this were the case, she might ask Mma Ramotswe to authorise their payment to her uncle.

"Who is the man who lives in this house?" she said. "Has he no wife of his own?"

This was the signal for them both to giggle. "He has a wife all right," said the older one. "She lives out at their village, up near Mahalaype. He goes there at weekends. This lady here is his town wife."

"And does the country wife know about this town wife?"

"No," said the older woman. "She would not like it. She is a Catholic woman, and she is very rich. Her father had four shops up there and bought a big farm. Then they came and dug a big mine on that farm and so they had to pay that woman a lot of money. That is how she bought this big house for her husband. But she does not like Gaborone."

"She is one of those people who never likes to leave the village," the younger maid interjected. "There are some people like that. She lets her husband live here to run some sort of business that she owns down here. But he has to go back every Friday, like a schoolboy going home for the weekend."

Mma Makutsi looked at the kettle. It was a very hot day, and she wondered if they would offer her tea. Fortunately the older maid noticed her glance and made the offer.

"And I'll tell you another thing," said the younger maid as she lit the paraffin stove underneath the kettle. "I would write a letter to the wife and tell her about that other woman, if I were not afraid that I would lose my job."

"He told us," said the other. "He said that if we told his wife, then we would lose our jobs immediately. He pays us well, this

man. He pays more than any other employer on this whole street. So we cannot lose this job. We just keep our mouths shut..."

She stopped, and at that moment both maids looked at one another in dismay.

"Aiee!" wailed the younger one. "What have we been doing? Why have we spoken like this to you? Are you from Mahalaype? Have you been sent by the wife? We are finished! We are very stupid women. Aiee!"

"No," said Mma Makutsi quickly. "I do not know the wife. I have not even heard of her. I have been asked to find out by that other woman's husband what she is doing. That is all."

The two maids became calmer, but the old one still looked worried. "But if you tell him what is happening, then he will come and chase this man away from his own wife and he might tell the real wife that her husband has another woman. That way we are finished too. It makes no difference."

"No," said Mma Makutsi. "I don't have to tell him what is going on. I might just say that she is seeing some man but I don't know who it is. What difference does it make to him? All he needs to know is that she is seeing a man. It does not matter which man it is."

The younger maid whispered something to the other, who frowned.

"What was that, Mma?" asked Mma Makutsi. The older one looked up at her. "My sister was just wondering about the boy. You see, there is a boy, who belongs to that smart woman. We do not like that woman, but we do like the boy. And that boy, you see, is the son of this man, not of the other man. They both have very big noses. There is no doubt about it. You take a look at them and you will see it for yourself.

This one is the father of that boy, even if the boy lives with the other one. He comes here every afternoon after school. The mother has told the boy that he must never speak to his other father about coming here, and so the boy keeps this thing secret from him. That is bad. Boys should not be taught to lie like that. What will become of Botswana, Mma, if we teach boys to behave like that? Where will Botswana be if we have so many dishonest boys? God will punish us, I am sure of it. Aren't you?"

MMA MAKUTSI looked thoughtful when she returned to the Austin in its shady parking place. The uncle had dropped off to sleep, and was dribbling slightly at the side of his mouth. She touched him gently on the sleeve and he awoke with a start.

"Ah! You are safe! I am glad that you are back."

"We can go now," said Mma Makutsi. "I have found out everything I needed to know."They drove directly back to the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Mma Ramotswe was out, and so Mma Makutsi paid her uncle with one of the fifty pula notes and sat down at her desk to type her report.

"The client's fears are confirmed," she wrote. "His wife has been seeing the same man for many years. He is the husband of a rich woman, who is also a Catholic. The rich woman does not know about this. The boy is the son of this man, and not the son of the client. I am not sure what to do, but I think that we have the following choices:

(a) We tell the client everything that we have found out.

That is what he has asked us to do. If we do not tell him this, then perhaps we would he misleading him. By taking on this case, have we not promised to tell him everything? If that is so, then we must do so, because we must keep our promises. If we do not keep our promises, then there will be no difference between Botswana and a certain other country in Africa which I do not want to name here but which I know you know.

(b) We tell the client that there is another man, but we do not know who it is. This is strictly true, because I did not find out the name of the man, although I know which house he lives in. I do not like to lie, as I am a lady who believes in God. But God sometimes expects us to think about what the results will be of telling somebody something. If we tell the client that that boy is not his son, he will be very sad. It will be like losing a son. Will that make him happier? Would God want him to be unhappy? And if we tell the client this, and there is a big row, then the father may not be able to pay the school fees, as he is doing at present. The rich woman may stop him from doing that and then the boy will suffer. He will have to leave that school.

For these reasons, I do not know what to do." She signed the report and put it on Mma Ramotswe's desk. Then she stood up and looked out of the window, over the acacia trees and up into the broad, heat-drained sky. It was all very well being a product of the Botswana Secretarial College, and it was all very well having graduated with 97 percent. But they did not teach moral philosophy there, and she had no idea how to resolve the dilemma with which her successful investigation had presented her. She would leave that to Mma Ramotswe.

She was a wise woman, with far more experience of life than herself, and she would know what to do.

Mma Makutsi made herself a cup of bush tea and stretched out in her chair. She looked at her shoes, with their three twinkling buttons. Did they know the answer? Perhaps they did.