Free Ladies' Detective Agency 01 - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

badly? Lady preacher lured him
away?
    “Who were these people?” she said. “Maybe they
know something about him?”
    Mma Malatsi shrugged. “I’m
not sure,” she said, slightly irritably. “In fact, I don’t
know. He asked me to come with him once or twice, but I refused. So he just
used to go off by himself on Sundays. In fact, he disappeared on a Sunday. I
thought he’d gone off to his Church.”
    Mma Ramotswe looked
at the ceiling. This was not going to be as hard as some of these cases. Peter
Malatsi had gone off with one of the Christians; that was pretty clear. All she
had to do now was find which group it was and she would be on his trail. It was
the old predictable story; it would be a younger Christian, she was sure of
that.
     
    BY THE end of the following day, Mma
Ramotswe had compiled a list of five Christian groups which could fit the
description. Over the next two days she tracked down the leaders of three of
them, and was satisfied that nothing was known of Peter Malatsi. Two of the
three tried to convert her; the third merely asked her for money and received a
five-pula note.
    When she located the leader of the fourth group, the
Reverend Shadreck Mapeli, she knew that the search was over. When she mentioned
the Malatsi name, the Reverend gave a shudder and glanced over his shoulder
surreptitiously.
    “Are you from the police?” he asked.
“Are you a policeman?”
    “Policewoman,” she
said.
    “Ah!” he said mournfully. “Aee!”
    “I mean, I’m not a policewoman,” she said quickly.
“I’m a private detective.”
    The Reverend appeared to
calm down slightly.
    “Who sent you?”
    “Mma
Malatsi.”
    “Ooh,” said the Reverend. “He told us
that he had no wife.”
    “Well, he did,” said Mma
Ramotswe. “And she’s been wondering where he is.”
    “He’s dead,” said the Reverend. “He’s gone to
the Lord.”
    Mma Ramotswe sensed that he was telling the truth, and
that the enquiry was effectively at an end. Now all that remained to be done
was to find out how he had died.
    “You must tell me,” she
said. “I won’t reveal your name to anybody if you don’t want
me to. Just tell me how it happened.”
    They drove to the river in
Mma Ramotswe’s small white van. It was the rainy season, and there had
been several storms, which made the track almost impassable. But at last they
reached the river’s edge and parked the van under a tree.
    “This is where we have our baptisms,” said the Reverend,
pointing to a pool in the swollen waters of the river. “This is where I
stood, here, and this is where the sinners entered the water.”
    “How many sinners did you have?” asked Mma Ramotswe.
    “Six sinners altogether, including Peter. They all went in together,
while I prepared to follow them with my staff.”
    “Yes?” said Mma Ramotswe. “Then what
happened?”
    “The sinners were standing in the water up to
about here.” The Reverend indicated his upper chest. “I turned
round to tell the flock to start singing, and then when I turned back I noticed
that there was something wrong. There were only five sinners in the
water.”
    “One had disappeared?”
    “Yes,” said the Reverend, shaking slightly as he spoke.
“God had taken one of them to His bosom.”
    Mma Ramotswe
looked at the water. It was not a big river, and for much of the year it was
reduced to a few stagnant pools. But in a good rainy season, such as that
year’s, it could be quite a torrent. A nonswimmer could easily be swept
away, she reflected, and yet, if somebody were to be swept away the body would
surely be found downstream. There were plenty of people who went down to the
river for one purpose or another and who would be bound to notice a body. The
police would have been called. There would have been something in the newspaper
about an unidentified body being found in the Notwane River; the paper was
always looking for stories like that. They wouldn’t have let the
opportunity go by.
    She