The Great Cake Mystery by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

been able to get to know the brightest and nicest girl in all Botswana,” said her father.
    Precious thought for a moment. “So it would have been a bad thing for both of us.”
    â€œYes,” said Obed. “And maybe a bad thing for the lion too.”
    â€œOh, why was that?”
    â€œBecause I might have given him indigestion,” said Obed. “It’s well known that if a lion eats a person who’s feeling cross at the time, he gets indigestion.”
    Precious was not sure whether this was true, or whether he was just making it up to amuse her. She decided that it was not true and told him so.
    He smiled and looked at her in a curious way. “You can tell when people are making things up, can’t you?”

    Precious nodded. She thought that was probably right—she
could
tell.
    â€œPerhaps you will become a detective one day,” he said.

hen her father said to her that one day she might become a detective, she at first thought,
What a strange idea
, but then she asked herself,
Why not?
“Yes, I could be a detective,” Precious said. “But surely it will be years and years before I get a case.”
    She was wrong about that. A case came up sooner than she thought it would. Detectives say their first case is always the hardest. Well, Precious was not sure if that was true for her, but her first case was certainly not easy. This is what happened.
    The school Precious went to was on a hill. This meant that the children had a longclimb in the mornings, but it was a wonderful place for their lessons. Looking out of the windows, they could gaze out to where other little hills popped up like rocks in a stream. And you could hear sounds from far away too—the tinkling of cattle bells, the rumbling of thunder far off in the distance, the cry of a hawk soaring in the wind.

    It was, as you can imagine, a very happy school. The teachers were happy to be working in such a nice town, the children were happy to have kind teachers who did not shout at them, and even the schoolcat, who had a comfortable den outside, was happy with the mice that could be chased. But then something happened.

    What happened was that there was a thief. Now, most people don’t steal things. Most people know you should not take things that belong to others. For many of us, that is Rule Number One.

    So, a thief … and a thief at school too!
    The first person to notice what was going on was Tapiwa (TAP-EE-WAH) a girl in the same class as Precious.

    â€œDo you know what?” she whispered to Precious as they walked home after school one afternoon.
    â€œNo,” said Precious. “What?”
    â€œThere must be a thief at school,” Tapiwa said, looking over her shoulder in case anybody heard what she had to say. “I brought a piece of cake to school with me this morning. I left it in my bag in the hallway outside the classroom.” She paused. “I was really looking forward to eating it at break-time.”
    â€œI love cake,” Precious said. She closed her eyes and thought of some of the cakes she enjoyed. Cakes with thick icing. Cakeswith jam on top of them. Cakes sprinkled with sugar and then dipped in little colored sugarballs. There were so many cakes … and all of them were so delicious.

    â€œSomebody took my cake,” Tapiwa complained. “I had wrapped it in a small piece of paper. Well, it was gone, and I found the paper lying on the floor.”
    Precious frowned. “Gone?”
    â€œEaten up,” said Tapiwa. “There were crumbs on the floor and little bits of icing. I picked them up and tasted them. I could tell that they came from my cake.”
    â€œDid you tell the teacher?” asked Precious.
    Her friend sighed. “Yes,” she said. “But I don’t think that she believed me. She said, ‘Are you sure you didn’t forget that you ate it?’ She said that this sometimes happened. People