“But this letter,” Mma Ramotswe said. “This letter is—”
Once again she got no further. “I’m going to make some tea,” said Mma Makutsi. “And while I’m making tea, I shall tell you what happened.”
Mma Ramotswe made a gesture of resignation. When Mma Makutsi had the bit between her teeth, as she did now, there was no point in trying to deflect her to another agenda. “All right, Mma,” she said. “I am listening.”
“Well,” began Mma Makutsi, “I went to the house of the mathematics teacher—”
Charlie corrected her. “We went, Mma. I was there too. It was a joint investigation.”
“Very well, Charlie, we went to this house and we knocked on the door.”
Mma Ramotswe waited politely. These preliminaries were not really necessary, but Mma Makutsi always insisted on them, quoting Clovis Andersen as the authority for the need to make a report as full as possible. It’s the small details, he wrote. At the time they may not seem important, but later on you may regret not writing them down. You never know what will be relevant at a later stage. Therefore, list everything—all steps taken, all people interviewed—even the weather may be worth saying something about.
Remembering that now, Mma Makutsi added, “I knocked three times.”
“And she was not in?” asked Mma Ramotswe.
“I knocked once as well,” Charlie chipped in. “That made a total of four, Mma. Three knocks from Mma Makutsi, and one from me.”
“Very interesting,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And then?”
“Then I told Charlie to go and take a look round the back,” said Mma Makutsi.
“You didn’t tell me,” said Charlie. “I said: I’ll go around the back. I said that, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe suggested that it did not matter. The important thing was that Charlie went around the back. “And what did you find, Charlie?”
“Nothing,” said Charlie.
Mma Ramotswe raised an eyebrow. She was unsure what the denouement of this account would be, but it was obviously something sufficiently dramatic to have produced Mma Makutsi’s state of heightened excitement. “Then?” she prompted.
“Then I went to the gate,” said Mma Makutsi. “I went to the gate and found a note, Mma. It was an envelope that said SEE INSIDE.”
Charlie traced the words in the air with his index finger. “Those were the exact words, Mma Ramotswe: SEE INSIDE.”
Mma Makutsi resumed the narrative. “I have the letter right here, Mma. It is a threat. It is a very serious threat to that lady from some unnamed party.” She stressed the last two words to give them an almost melodramatic effect. Charlie was impressed; the phrase unnamed party would be noted down and would recur.
She had put the letter in the small bag in which she carried her spare glasses and keys. Now she took it out, unfolded it, and handed it to Mma Ramotswe. “Read that, Mma,” she said. “Just read that.”
“ ‘I can add just as well as anybody,’ ” read Mma Ramotswe. “ ‘So I know that two plus two makes four, you bad rubbish woman!’ ”
She looked up, and saw Mma Makutsi and Charlie watching her expectantly. Then Charlie said, “You will see that it is not signed, Mma. It is an anonymous letter.”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. “That is not all that unusual. Most threats are anonymous.”
“I have a very low opinion of people who write anonymous letters,” said Mma Makutsi disapprovingly. “Only a coward threatens another person without coming into the open.”
Mma Ramotswe said that she thought it wrong to threaten people in any circumstances. Threats were no more than the verbal expression of the violence that she had always disliked so much. As was swearing, which was another form of violence, even when it was directed against the world in general rather than an individual target. She did not like that, and yet it seemed to her that people now resorted to it so casually, as if it was nothing exceptional. What were they like inside, she asked herself, these people who used such language all the time; what were they like inside?
“You should talk to people rather than threaten them,” she said.
“Talk first, then threaten,” said Charlie.
Mma Ramotswe exchanged a glance with Mma Makutsi. “No, Charlie,” she began, but then thought that this was not the time to correct Charlie once again. It sometimes seemed to her that if they kept a list of the occasions each day on which they upbraided Charlie for one thing or another, it would be a lengthy one. It was so easy to fall into a critical way of addressing somebody like Charlie, who appeared to require constant rebuke. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had noticed this when Charlie and Fanwell had been apprentices—“I am like a tape or a record stuck in one place,” he said. “Don’t do this, don’t do that; use that wrench, not this one; don’t tighten that too much, and so on and so on…”
The kettle had now boiled and Mma Makutsi made the tea.
“Red bush for you, Mma,” she said, handing a mug to Mma Ramotswe.
“Not for me,” said Charlie. “I don’t drink that stuff.”
“That stuff is very good for you, Charlie,” said Mma Ramotswe, nursing the mug in her hands, blowing across the top to cool the steaming liquid. “You should pay more attention to what you put down your throat…” She stopped herself. There she went again: more advice, more criticism. The young man needed to be left alone.
But Mma Makutsi was not thinking along those lines. “Mma Ramotswe is right, Charlie,” she scolded. “You eat such rubbish. All the time. I’ve seen you. Chips, chips, chips. What is in that stuff? Do you even know?”
“Potatoes,” said Charlie. “Chips are potatoes and they are good for you. They make you strong.”
He flexed the muscles of his arms. “See? Big, strong. Powerful.” He paused. “Not weak and flabby like those people who eat lettuce all the time. A big storm comes up and what happens to them, Mma Makutsi? I’ll tell you—they are blown away. Woosh! Goodbye, lettuce-people!”
Mma Makutsi bristled. “You are very stupid, Charlie. Your head is full of chips, maybe. You eat too much potato and your brain begins to look like a potato, you know.”
Mma Ramotswe intervened. “Please! Please! We do not need to talk about lettuce and potatoes and such things. We need to talk about this letter you have found.”
“Yes,” said Mma Makutsi, giving Charlie a look that suggested it was his fault that these topics had been broached. “This letter, Mma—who does it come from? Who is this unnamed party, do you think?”