The letter took a long time to write, and was still unfinished by the time Mma Makutsi arrived in the office.
“Well, Mma Ramotswe,” said Mma Makutsi. “I didn’t expect to find you hard at work so early.”
It was an innocent remark, but Mma Ramotswe felt slightly annoyed at the inference that she was not the type to arrive early. Did Mma Makutsi think that she just sat around in the mornings?
“I am often up very early, Mma Makutsi,” she said. “You should try it, perhaps.”
The retort came quickly. “But I am also up early, Mma. Every day. When you have a baby, as I do, then you cannot lie about in bed. You are up early because the baby wants his breakfast. You are also up early because you have a husband to get going. There are many things for women to do in the morning.”
Mma Makutsi peered at Mma Ramotswe’s desk. “You’re writing a letter, Mma?”
Mma Ramotswe sat back in her chair. “It’s not an easy letter, this one. You remember that woman who came to see us about her husband?”
Mma Makutsi frowned. There were so many women who came to see them about their husbands—husbands, it seemed, were the main reason why women went to private detectives.
“The one we had followed by Charlie,” Mma Ramotswe prompted.
Mma Makutsi smiled. “Of course. And Charlie saw him going to the house of that teacher. That one?”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. “I have to tell her that her husband is not seeing another woman,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But I think that she will not like to hear that news, Mma. When she spoke to me about it at the beginning, she said she was looking forward to divorcing him. I think she has her own lover, you see.”
“Ha!” said Mma Makutsi. “She will be very disappointed then. But tell me, Mma, how can you be sure about that—about her having a lover?”
“Because I saw her,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I saw her in the supermarket with another man. They were buying food together.”
Mma Makutsi looked thoughtful. “But he could have been a relative, Mma. A brother, perhaps. Or a cousin. You know how many cousins there are about the place. The whole city is full of cousins. Everywhere there are cousins.” She paused. “I think there are far more cousins than lovers, Mma.”
“That’s true enough,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But I saw him pinch her, Mma. That lady is very large from the back view, Mma. And that man pinched her there. I saw it.”
Mma Makutsi absorbed this information. “That is not the sort of thing a cousin does,” she said at last. “Nor a brother.”
“Definitely not.”
“Except when you are very cross with somebody,” Mma Makutsi went on. “If you are very cross, you may pinch somebody. But you do not pinch them there. That is not the place for such a pinch.”
“No, I wouldn’t have thought it was.”
“The place to pinch another person when you are cross with them is on the arm,” pronounced Mma Makutsi. She tapped her upper arm. “There, Mma. That is where you pinch people.”
Mma Ramotswe went on to tell Mma Makutsi how the woman had seen her and had pretended not to have anything to do with the man. “She walked away, leaving him there,” she said. “He looked very puzzled. That made it even clearer to me that he was her boyfriend. That—and the pinch. These were two pieces of evidence.”
“Well,” said Mma Makutsi. “She will not be able to claim that she’s the wronged party.” She leaned further over Mma Ramotswe’s desk. “May I see the letter, Mma?”
Mma Ramotswe handed it over.
“Dear Mma Mogorosi,” Mma Makutsi began. “In the matter of your husband, I am pleased to inform you that we have now completed our investigations and have come to a preliminary conclusion.”
Mma Makutsi looked over her spectacles at Mma Ramotswe. “I wouldn’t write pleased, Mma. You are not pleased about this, and nor will be, if what you say is correct. And as for calling the conclusion preliminary, that suggests that you might change your mind. But I do not think you will. You have decided, and so you should call it a firm conclusion.” She paused, fixing Mma Ramotswe with a slightly reproachful stare. The inference, thought Mma Ramotswe, was that if she, like Mma Makutsi, had been to the Botswana Secretarial College then she would have understood these things and not misused the word preliminary and been altogether more decisive and concise.
Mma Ramotswe said nothing. Mma Makutsi had firm views on the wording of letters.
“I would say something like this,” Mma Makutsi continued. “I would say: I am sorry to say that we have come to a firm conclusion about your husband.”
“But I am not sorry, Mma Makutsi.”
“Yet you haven’t found out what the client wants you to find out,” countered Mma Makutsi. “So she will hope that you are feeling sorry.”
“Just continue,” said Mma Ramotswe. “These small things about which word to use are not always that important.”
“We have had one of our detectives observe your husband over time…”
Mma Makutsi stared again at Mma Ramotswe. “Detective?” she said. “Charlie is not a qualified detective, Mma. It is wrong to mislead the client like that.”
“Oh, really, Mma Makutsi. Does it matter what we call Charlie?”
“It does matter, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi, her voice now full of reproach. “All over the place, people are falsely claiming to be something they aren’t. All over the place there are people telling lies about this, that and the next thing. It is very important to be accurate.”
This was not a battle that Mma Ramotswe chose to fight. “Very well, Mma. Change that. Say assistant, if you think that better.”
“It’s more accurate,” said Mma Makutsi.
Mma Ramotswe waited while Mma Makutsi scribbled her correction on the page, uttering the words as she wrote. “This assistant has now filed his report.”
Mma Makutsi stopped again. “I do not wish to be obstructive, Mma.”
“No, of course not, Mma Makutsi.”
“It’s just that I do the filing. All the filing—that’s me, not this…this mysterious assistant we mention.” Mma Ramotswe sighed. “Filing a report just means putting a report in. It doesn’t mean actually filing it in the filing cabinet.”
“Submitting would be better, Mma.”
There were some battles simply not worth fighting, thought Mma Ramotswe. And then there were battles that should not be battles anyway; this, she thought, was one of those.