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

seeking them
out. That did not take a great deal of doing. Provided that one was methodical,
there was hardly any way in which one could go wrong.
    Then she had
had a hunch about the crocodile and had followed it up. Again, the manual
endorsed this as perfectly acceptable practice. “Don’t disregard a
hunch,” it advised. “Hunches are another form of knowledge.”
Mma Ramotswe had liked that phrase and had mentioned it to Mma Makutsi. Her
secretary had listened carefully, and then typed the sentence out on her
typewriter and handed it to Mma Ramotswe.
    Mma Makutsi was pleasant
company and could type quite well. She had typed out a report which Mma
Ramotswe had dictated on the Malatsi case and had typed out the bill for
sending to Mma Malatsi. But apart from that she had not really been called on
to do anything else and Mma Ramotswe wondered whether the business could really
justify employing a secretary.
    And yet one had to. What sort of private
detective agency had no secretary? She would be a laughingstock without one,
and clients—if there were really going to be any more, which was
doubtful—could well be frightened away.
    Mma Makutsi had the mail
to open, of course. There was no mail for the first three days. On the fourth
day, a catalogue was received, and a property tax demand, and on the fifth day
a letter which was intended for the previous owner.
    Then, at the
beginning of the second week, she opened a white envelope dirty with finger
marks and read the letter out to Mma Ramotswe.
    Dear Mma
Ramotswe,
    I read about you in the newspaper and about how you
have opened this big new agency down there in town. I am very proud for
Botswana that we now have a person like you in this country.
    I am the
teacher at the small school at Katsana Village, thirty miles from Gaborone,
which is near the place where I was born. I went to Teachers’ College
many years ago and I passed with a double distinction. My wife and I have two
daughters and we have a son of eleven. This boy to which I am referring has
recently vanished and has not been seen for two months.
    We went to
the police. They made a big search and asked questions everywhere. Nobody knew
anything about our son. I took time off from the school and searched the land
around our village. We have some
kopjes
not too far away and there are
boulders and caves over there. I went into each one of those caves and looked
into every crevice. But there was no sign of my son.
    He was a boy who
liked to wander, because he had a strong interest in nature. He was always
collecting rocks and things like that. He knew a lot about the bush and he
would never get into danger from stupidity. There are no leopards in these
parts anymore and we are too far away from the Kalahari for lions to
come.
    I went everywhere, calling, calling, but my son never answered
me. I looked in every well of every farmer and village nearby and asked them to
check the water. But there was no sign of him.
    How can a boy vanish
off the face of the Earth like this? If I were not a Christian, I would say
that some evil spirit had lifted him up and carried him off. But I know that
things like that do not really happen.
    I am not a wealthy man. I
cannot afford the services of a private detective, but I ask you, Mma, in the
name of Jesus Christ, to help me in one small way. Please, when you are making
your enquiries about other things, and talking to people who might know what
goes on, please ask them if they have heard anything about a boy called
Thobiso, aged eleven years and four months, who is the son of the teacher at
Katsana Village. Please just ask them, and if you hear anything at all, please
address a note to the undersigned, myself, the teacher.
    In
God’
s name, Ernest Molai Pakotati, Dip.Ed.
    Mma
Makutsi stopped reading and looked across the room at Mma Ramotswe. For a
moment, neither spoke. Then Mma Ramotswe broke the silence.
    “Do
you know anything about this?” she asked. “Have you heard