No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - 12 - The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party by Alexander McCall Smith

Author:Alexander McCall Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780307378392
Publisher: Pantheon
Published: 2011-03-21T04:00:00+00:00

MMA RAMOTSWE liked to leave the concerns of the office where they belonged—in the office. But that evening, as she drove home from work, following the tree-lined route that she liked to take through the older area of town known simply as the Village, she found herself thinking of the Moeti case. She had done nothing about it that day—there had been other things to claim her attention—but now she found herself considering possibilities. As often happened, the words of Clovis Andersen came to mind. His general advice, applicable to almost all cases, was to talk to as many people as possible, or rather to get them to talk to you. The more you listen, the more you learn, he wrote in The Principles of Private Detection, and Mma Ramotswe had been particularly struck by the wisdom of these words, even on one occasion drawing them to the attention of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. He had frowned, inclined his head, and said, “Well, Mma, I think that is certainly true. You cannot learn anything if you close your ears. I think that is undoubtedly true.”

She had gone so far as to work these words into a small needlework sampler that she had embarked upon, the words forming the centre part of the piece, with detailed pictures of Kalahari flowers around the edge, all executed in colourful thread. She had been pleased with the result, and had donated it to the sale of work in aid of the Anglican Hospice. It had sold well, she was told, to the wife of a hotel manager, a woman widely known to be something of a gossip. The humour of this had not escaped the ladies running the sale of work, who had all agreed that the woman in question was contemplating the listening being done by others rather than by herself.

Mma Ramotswe was certainly prepared to listen to anybody who had any light to shed on the unfortunate fate of Mr. Moeti’s cattle, but she realised that it was going to be difficult to find that person or persons. It would be different if the case were in some suburb of Gaborone, or even in a village; one could always find somebody in the street with views to express—one of the neighbours usually. But this was in the country, where one’s only company as often as not were the birds, or the small creatures that scurried through the bush. There was that boy, she recalled, and the woman who worked in the house. Mpho seemed to know something, but he was clearly frightened of Mr. Moeti—for whatever reason—and she doubted whether she would get anything out of him. Unless, of course, she were able to speak to the boy in private, if she could somehow get him on his own somewhere. Boys could be good informants, as she had discovered on a number of earlier occasions; boys saw things, and remembered them.

As she paused at a crossroads to allow a couple of trucks to lumber past, she considered the chances of a private conversation with Mpho.

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