The House of Unexpected Sisters by Smith Alexander McCall

Author:Smith, Alexander McCall [Smith, Alexander McCall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Adult, Crime, Humour
Goodreads: 34371605
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 2017-11-07T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

ONE OF THOSE WHO DID NOT HAVE THE LOOK

WHILE MR. POLOPETSI and Mma Makutsi were conducting their individual conversations in The Office Place, Mma Ramotswe was driving down the road that led from Gaborone to the southern town of Lobatse. It was a road that she knew well, and it occurred to her that her van knew it well too. Of course cars had no memory—one should not attribute human qualities to them—but even so…if cars were to know anything, then her van would know this road, and if we were talking about such a world, it would be quite capable of finding its own way down this particular highway. The landmarks were familiar: there was Kgale Hill, on the right shortly after they left the confines of the town, a great sentinel of granite pushed up by some ancient geological hiccup. That had happened when all Botswana was still a vast inland sea, and the hill would have been an island then, surrounded by the waters of that now vanished lake, a refuge from the strange aquatic creatures that must have ruled the roost in those days: crocodiles far larger and more frightening than any of the denizens of the modern Limpopo; creatures for which there would simply be no name, so terrible and so hungry as to intimidate even the crocodiles…She stopped herself. She did not like to think of such times; the world was problematic enough as it was, without dwelling on what things were like before Botswana existed.

She glanced at Kgale Hill. It was benign enough in the middle of the day, even if you could make out places where there were caves and fissures in the rock that one would have to be careful about; at night, though, it would not be a place to linger. She shivered. A long time ago, when she had first come to Gaborone, she had gone on a church picnic at the foot of the hill. It had been the afternoon, and there had been some thirty people at the event, including children from the Sunday school. The Ladies’ Guild had been responsible for the catering and had prepared baskets of sandwiches and cakes; the men had undertaken the making of a fire for the braai, and there had been chains of sizzling sausage, the boerewors, as it was called because it had been so popular with the Boers over the border in the old days; they liked their meat, those people, almost as much as the Batswana did. In fact, thought Mma Ramotswe, everyone in these parts liked their meat, and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was a good example of that. Stew was his favourite, but he was very happy with chicken, ostrich, and steak of any description; bacon was another weakness of his—served with sausages, if available, and fried tomatoes. In fact, Mma Ramotswe reflected, she herself liked all of the above, as well as fat cakes, another Botswana delicacy, and pastries of every description.

At that picnic,

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