Ladies' Detective Agency 01 - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith Page A

anyway. So she backed away, slowly, inch by inch, towards the kitchen
door. Once inside, she slammed the door shut behind her and reached for the
lock. As she turned the key the electricity came on and the kitchen was flooded
with light. The fridge started to purr; a light from the cooker winked on and
off at her: 3:04; 3:04

    CHAPTER
NINE
    THE BOYFRIEND
    T HERE WERE three quite
exceptional houses in the country, and Mma Ramotswe felt some satisfaction that
she had been invited to two of them. The best-known of these was Mokolodi, a
rambling chateau-like building placed in the middle of the bush to the south of
Gaborone. This house, which had a gatehouse with gates on which hornbills had
been worked in iron, was probably the grandest establishment in the country,
and was certainly rather more impressive than Phakadi House, to the north,
which was rather too close to the sewage ponds for Mma Ramotswe’s taste.
This had its compensations, though, as the sewage ponds attracted a great
variety of bird life, and from the verandah of Phakadi one could watch flights
of flamingos landing on the murky green water. But you could not do this if the
wind was in the wrong direction, which it often was.
    The third house
could only be suspected of being a house of distinction, as very few people
were invited to enter it, and Gaborone as a whole had to rely on what could be
seen of the house from the outside—which was not much, as it was
surrounded by a high white wall—or on reports from those who were
summoned into the house for some special purpose. These reports were unanimous
in their praise for the sheer opulence of the interior.
    “Like
Buckingham Palace,” said one woman who had been called to arrange flowers
for some family occasion. “Only rather better. I think that the Queen
lives a bit more simply than those people in there.”
    The people
in question were the family of Mr Paliwalar Sundigar Patel, the owner of eight
stores—five in Gaborone and three in Francistown—a hotel in Orapa,
and a large outfitters in Lobatse. He was undoubtedly one of the wealthiest men
in the country, if not the wealthiest, but amongst the Batswana this counted
for little, as none of the money had gone into cattle, and money which was not
invested in cattle, as everybody knew, was but dust in the mouth.
    Mr
Paliwalar Patel had come to Botswana in 1967, at the age of twenty-five. He had
not had a great deal in his pocket then, but his father, a trader in a remote
part of Zululand, had advanced him the money to buy his first shop in the
African Mall. This had been a great success; Mr Patel bought goods for
virtually nothing from traders in distress and then sold them on at minimal
profit. Trade blossomed and shop was added to shop, all of them run on the same
commercial philosophy. By his fiftieth birthday, he stopped expanding his
empire, and concentrated on the improvement and education of his family.
    There were four children—a son, Wallace, twin daughters, Sandri and
Pali, and the youngest, a daughter called Nandira. Wallace had been sent to an
expensive boarding school in Zimbabwe, in order to satisfy Mr Patel’s
ambition that he become a gentleman. There he had learned to play cricket, and
to be cruel. He had been admitted to dental school, after a large donation by
Mr Patel, and had then returned to Durban, where he set up a practice in
cosmetic dentistry. At some point he had shortened his name—”for
convenience’s sake”—and had become Mr Wallace Pate BDS
(Natal).
    Mr Patel had protested at the change. “Why are you now
this Mr Wallace Pate BDS (Natal) may I ask? Why? You ashamed, or something? You
think I’m just a Mr Paliwalar Patel BA (Failed) or something?”
    The son had tried to placate his father.
    “Short names are
easier, father. Pate, Patel—it’s the same thing. So why have an
extra letter at the end? The modern idea is to be brief. We must be modern
these days. Everything is modern, even names.”
    There had