Free The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

show surprise when the one they abused hit back. She had seen this time and time again, and she had even thought of writing to Clovis Andersen and proposing a new rule for inclusion in a future edition of
The Principles of Private Detection.
This rule would state, quite simply:
If you are looking for somebody who hates your client, then first of all look under the client’s own roof.
And now, getting out of the van and looking over towards the house, she studied the red iron roof under which, perhaps, resentments were burning. The roof looked back at her, impassive and tight-lipped under her suspicion, and she remembered a proposition that was already included in Clovis Andersen’s great work which was just as pertinent to this situation as was any suggestion of hers:
Don’t think you know all the answers,
Mr. Andersen had written, and had gone on, with admirable economy, to explain why this should be so:
because you don’t.
    A figure appeared on the verandah. Smoothing out the creases in her dress, Mma Ramotswe walked towards the house. The figure now revealed itself as a woman, clad in a dull shift dress over which an old blue gingham apron had been donned.
    Mma Ramotswe called out the universal greeting of the Tswana world—“
Dumela,
Mma”—and the woman responded appropriately, though in a rather strange, high-pitched voice.
    “I have come to see Mr. Moeti. Is he in the house?”
    The woman nodded. “He is sleeping.”
    Mma Ramotswe looked at her watch. “He said I should come.”
    The woman looked at her blankly. “But he is sleeping, Mma. He cannot talk if he is sleeping.”
    Mma Ramotswe smiled. “No, nobody can do that. But perhaps he would like you to wake him up.”
    The woman shook her head. “Men do not like to be woken up, Mma. Sorry.”
    Mma Ramotswe frowned. There was something strange about this woman, a deliberate obduracy that went beyond the reluctance of a servant to disturb an employer. She wondered:
Is this her? Is this the one?
That might seem impossibly simple, but Mma Ramotswe had often found a culprit on very first enquiry. People gave themselves away, she thought; they so often did. Guilt shone out of their eyes like the beam of a hunter’s lamp in the darkness. What, she wondered, would happen if she were to come right out and ask this woman:
Why did you do what you did to the cattle?
    “His cattle,” said Mma Ramotswe. She had not planned to say it, but the thought had somehow nudged the word out into the open, as a chance remark will sometimes be made against our better judgement. It was true that words slipped out; they did; they jumped out of our mouths and said,
Look, you’ve let us loose!
    The woman froze. “His cattle, Mma? What of them?”
    Mma Ramotswe watched her eyes carefully. The woman’s gaze slid away, off to the unruly thorn tree. Guilt. Unambiguous guilt.
    “He has had some trouble with his cattle, Mma. I have come to sort it out. To get to the bottom of it.”
    The woman’s eyes moved. She was looking at Mma Ramotswe again, and the fright that had greeted her initial remark had been replaced by a look of blankness. “I can wake him up if you like, Mma.”
    “A good idea,” said Mma Ramotswe.

    SHE WAS READY to detect in Mr. Moeti’s expression the fear that she had seen before, but it was not there, at least to begin with. She met him on the verandah, where he shook hands with her and invited her to sit down on a traditional Tswana chair. The supports of the chair were made of panga panga wood; leather thongs, threaded carefully in a criss-cross pattern, formed the seat and back.
    “A good chair, Rra,” she said. “A village chair.”
    He smiled at the compliment. “I have always had chairs like that,” he said. “They belonged to my father, who was a village headman, and they came to me when he became late. Now there is only one—the other one was sat in by a very heavy person, one of the fattest men in the country, I think, and it