Ladies' Detective Agency 01 - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Read Free

hospital. Even now they are
performing a big operation on her.”
    The Daddy let out a wail.
“Aiee! My daughter! My little baby Happy!”
    A good actor,
thought Mma Ramotswe, unless … No, she preferred to trust Happy
Bapetsi’s instinct. A girl should know her own Daddy even if she had not
seen him since she was a baby.
    “Yes,” she went on.
“It is very sad. She is very sick, very sick. And they need lots of blood
to make up for all the blood she’s lost.”
    The Daddy
frowned. “They must give her that blood. Lots of blood. I can
pay.”
    “It’s not the money,” said Mma Ramotswe.
“Blood is free. We don’t have the right sort. We will have to get
some from her family, and you are the only one she has. We must ask you for
some blood.”
    The Daddy sat down heavily.
    “I am an
old man,” he said.
    Mma Ramotswe sensed that it would work. Yes,
this man was an impostor.
    “That is why we are asking you,”
she said. “Because she needs so much blood, they will have to take about
half your blood. And that is very dangerous for you. In fact, you might
die.”
    The Daddy’s mouth fell open.
    “Die?”
    “Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But
then you are her father and we know that you would do this thing for your
daughter. Now could you come quickly, or it will be too late. Doctor Moghile is
waiting.”
    The Daddy opened his mouth, and then closed it.
    “Come on,” said Mma Ramotswe, reaching down and taking his
wrist. “I’ll help you to the van.”
    The Daddy rose to
his feet, and then tried to sit down again. Mma Ramotswe gave him a tug,
    “No,” he said. “I don’t want to.”
    “You must,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Now come on.”
    The Daddy shook his head. “No,” he said faintly. “I
won’t. You see, I’m not really her Daddy. There has been a
mistake.”
    Mma Ramotswe let go of his wrist. Then, her arms
folded, she stood before him and addressed him directly.
    “So you
are not the Daddy! I see! I see! Then what are you doing sitting in that chair
and eating her food? Have you heard of the Botswana Penal Code and what it says
about people like you? Have you?”
    The Daddy looked down at the
ground and shook his head.
    “Well,” said Mma Ramotswe.
“You go inside that house and get your things. You have five minutes.
Then I am going to take you to the bus station and you are going to get on a
bus. Where do you really live?”
    “Lobatse,” said the
Daddy. “But I don’t like it down there.”
    “Well,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Maybe if you started doing
something instead of just sitting in a chair you might like it a bit more.
There are lots of melons to grow down there. How about that, for a
start?”
    The Daddy looked miserable.
    “Inside!”
she ordered. “Four minutes left now!”
     
    WHEN HAPPY Bapetsi returned home she found the
Daddy gone and his room cleared out. There was a note from Mma Ramotswe on the
kitchen table, which she read, and as she did so, her smile returned.
     
    THAT WAS not your Daddy after all. I found out
the best way. I got him to tell me himself. Maybe you will find the real Daddy
one day. Maybe not. But in the meantime, you can be happy again.

    CHAPTER TWO
    ALL
THOSE YEARS AGO
    W E DON’T forget, thought Mma Ramotswe. Our
heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as the sky may sometimes
be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, of smells, of
places, of little things that happened to us and which come back, unexpectedly,
to remind us who we are. And who am I? I am Precious Ramotswe, citizen of
Botswana, daughter of Obed Ramotswe who died because he had been a miner and
could no longer breathe. His life was unrecorded; who is there to write down
the lives of ordinary people?
     
    I AM Obed
Ramotswe, and I was born near Mahalapye in 1930. Mahalapye is halfway between
Gaborone and Francistown, on that road that seems to go on and on forever. It
was a dirt road in those days, of course, and the railway line was much