The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine by Alexander McCall Smith

Author:Alexander McCall Smith [Smith, Alexander McCall]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery & Detective, General Fiction
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2015-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

TALKING ABOUT FURNITURE

THE NEXT DAY was a Saturday, when businesses other than shops would be closed. That applied, at one end of the spectrum, to Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors and to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and at the other to Debswana Diamonds, the Standard Bank, and the Office of the President of Botswana. For the Double Comfort Furniture Store, of which Mma Makutsi’s husband, Phuti Radiphuti, was the owner and managing director, Saturday was an extremely important trading day, as it was then that young couples setting up home together, older couples thinking of home improvements, and even those who simply had nothing better to do would flock to the furniture showroom to view the displays of tables, chairs, sofas, cupboards, and beds.

Mma Ramotswe knew that Mma Makutsi often spent a large part of Saturday in the store, helping her husband with paperwork, or sometimes paging through catalogues and offering her advice on new lines they might order. She took with her the nursemaid she had employed to help with their baby, and this young woman would push Itumelang round the store in a small pram, encouraging and accepting admiring comments from shoppers.

“She is very happy for people to think he is her baby,” Mma Makutsi had confided in Mma Ramotswe. “But I don’t mind, Mma. It gives her pleasure and she has no children of her own. I can share.”

Mma Ramotswe thought it would be easier to speak to Mma Makutsi about Mr. Polopetsi on the neutral ground of the Double Comfort Furniture Store. She could have waited until Monday, of course, and called in at the office of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, but this could have been far more likely to result in an accusation of interference. To raise the issue on a casual visit to the store would be a different matter altogether.

It was almost midday when she arrived at the store. The car park to the front of the large yellow building was already almost full and such shady parking places as there were had long been filled. A vacant spot appeared near the door, and she took that, leaving her window open to prevent heat building up in the cab. There was nothing of any value inside and no thief with any ambition would think of stealing the van itself. Indeed, when she had last filled in the insurance form, she had been asked to declare the van’s value, and had simply written “Sentimental value” in the relevant box. And that was true, she thought; she loved that van, but she knew nobody else would—to others it was just a rather tired, now dented, piece of increasingly ancient machinery, capable of getting from A to B, but not much further, and not with any dispatch. But to her it was a friend, her faithful companion on more adventures than she could readily remember, the mute witness to hours spent watching some place of interest, to long conversations between herself and Mma Makutsi, to periods of quiet reflection on long drives through the country.

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