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Review
“The Miss Marple of Botswana.” –The New York Times Book Review

“I was enchanted by the character of Precious Ramotswe and the sly humor of Alexander McCall Smith’s writing, his deft evocation of a culture.” –Anthony Minghella

“Thoroughly engaging and entertaining.” –Los Angeles Times

内容简介

In Morality for Beautiful Girls, Precious Ramotswe, founder and owner of the only detective agency for the concerns of both ladies and others, investigates the alleged poisoning of the brother of an important " Government Man, " and the moral character of the four finalists of the Miss Beauty and Integrity Contest, the winner of which will almost certainly be a contestant for the title of Miss Botswana. Yet her business is having money problems, and when other difficulties arise at her fianc?' s Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, she discovers the reliable Mr J.L.B. Matekoni is more complicated then he seems.

作者简介

Alexander McCall Smith is a professor of medical law at Edinburgh University. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe and taught law at the University of Botswana. He is the author of over fifty books on a wide range of subjects, including specialist titles such as Forensic Aspects of Sleep and The Criminal Law of Botswana, children's books such as The Perfect Hamburger, and a collection of stories called Portuguese Irregular Verbs.

在线试读部分章节

CHAPTER ONE

The World as Seen by

Another Person

Mma Ramotswe, the daughter of the late Obed Ramotswe of Mochudi,near Gaborone, Botswana, Africa, was the announced fiancée of MrJ.L.B. Matekoni, son of the late Pumphamilitse Matekoni, ofTlokweng, peasant farmer and latterly chief caretaker of theRailway Head Office. It was a fine match, everybody thought; she,the founder and owner of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency,Botswana's only detective agency for the concerns of both ladiesand others; he, the proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, andby general repute one of the finest mechanics in Botswana. It wasalways a good thing, people said, to have independent interests ina marriage. Traditional marriages, in which the man made all thedecisions and controlled most of the household assets, were allvery well for women who wanted to spend their time cooking andlooking after children, but times had changed, and for educatedwomen who wanted to make something of their lives, it wasundoubtedly better for both spouses to have something to do.

CHAPTER ONE 
 
The World as Seen by 
 
Another Person 
 
Mma Ramotswe, the daughter of the late Obed Ramotswe of Mochudi,
near Gaborone, Botswana, Africa, was the announced fiancée of Mr
J.L.B. Matekoni, son of the late Pumphamilitse Matekoni, of
Tlokweng, peasant farmer and latterly chief caretaker of the
Railway Head Office. It was a fine match, everybody thought; she,
the founder and owner of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency,
Botswana's only detective agency for the concerns of both ladies
and others; he, the proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, and
by general repute one of the finest mechanics in Botswana. It was
always a good thing, people said, to have independent interests in
a marriage. Traditional marriages, in which the man made all the
decisions and controlled most of the household assets, were all
very well for women who wanted to spend their time cooking and
looking after children, but times had changed, and for educated
women who wanted to make something of their lives, it was
undoubtedly better for both spouses to have something to do. 
 
There were many examples of such marriages. There was that of Mma
Maketetse, for example, who had set up a small factory specialising
in the making of khaki shorts for schoolboys. She had started with
a cramped and ill-ventilated sewing room at the back of her house,
but by employing her cousins to cut and sew for her she had built
up one of Botswana's best businesses, exporting khaki shorts to
Namibia in the face of stiff competition from large clothing
factories in the Cape. She had married Mr Cedric Maketetse, who ran
two bottle stores in Gaborone, the capital, and had recently opened
a third in Francistown. There had been a faintly embarrassing
article about them in the local paper, with the catchy headline:
Shorts manufacturing lady buttons it up with drink merchant. They
were both members of the Chamber of Commerce, and it was clear to
all that Mr Maketetse was immensely proud of his wife's business
success. 
 
Of course, a woman with a successful business had to be careful
that a man who came courting her was not merely looking for a way
of spending the rest of his days in comfort. There had been plenty
of cases of that happening, and Mma Ramotswe had noticed that the
consequences of such unions were almost inevitably dire. The man
would either drink or gamble away the profits of his wife's
enterprise, or he would try to run the business and destroy it in
the process. Men were good at business, thought Mma Ramotswe, but
women were just as good. Women were thriftier by nature; they had
to be, trying to run households on a tight budget and feed the
ever-open mouths of children. Children ate so much, it seemed, and
one could never cook enough pumpkin or porridge to fill their
hungry bellies. And as for men, they never seemed happier than when
eating large quantities of expensive meat. It was all rather
discouraging. 
 
"That will be a good marriage," people said, when they heard of her
engagement to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "He is a reliable man, and she is
a very good woman. They will be very happy running their businesses
and drinking tea together." 
 
Mma Ramotswe was aware of this popular verdict on her engagement
and shared the sentiment. After her disastrous marriage to Note
Mokoti, the jazz trumpeter and incorrigible ladies' man, she had
decided that she would never remarry, in spite of frequent offers.
Indeed, she had initially turned down Mr J.L.B. Matekoni when he
had first proposed, only to accept him some six months later. She
had realised that the best test of a prospective husband involves
no more than the asking of a very simple question, which every
woman--or at least every woman who has had a good father--can pose
and to which she will know the answer in her bones. She had asked
herself this question in respect of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, and the
answer had been unambiguous. 
 
"And what would my late Daddy have thought of him?" she said to
herself. She posed the question after she had accepted Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni, as one might ask oneself whether one had taken the right
turning at a road junction. She remembered where she had been when
she asked it. She was taking an evening walk near the dam, along
one of those paths that led this way and that through the thorn
bushes. She had suddenly stopped, and looked up at the sky, into
that faint, washed out blue that would suddenly, at the approach of
sunset, become streaked with copper-red. It was a quiet time of the
day, and she was utterly alone. And so she spoke the question out
loud, as if there were somebody there to hear it. 
 
She looked up at the sky, half-expecting the answer to be there.
But of course it was not, and she knew it anyway, without the need
to look. There was no doubt in her mind that Obed Ramotswe, who had
seen every sort of man during the time he had worked in those
distant mines, and who knew the foibles of all of them, would have
approved of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. And if that were the case, then she
should have no fears about her future husband. He would be kind to
her. 
 
Now, sitting in the office of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
with her assistant, Mma Makutsi, the most distinguished graduate of
her year at the Botswana Secretarial College, she reflected on the
decisions which her impending marriage to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni would
oblige her to take. The most immediate issue, of course, had been
where they might live. That had been decided rather quickly; Mr
J.L.B. Matekoni's house near the old Botswana Defence Club,
attractive though it undoubtedly was, with its old colonial
verandah and its shiny tin roof, was not as suitable as her own
house in Zebra Drive. His garden was sparse; little more than a
swept yard, in fact; whereas she had a good collection of paw-paw
trees, some very shady acacias, and a well-established melon patch.
Moreover, when it came to the interiors, there was little to
recommend Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's spartan corridors and unlived-in
rooms, especially when compared with the layout of her own house.
It would be a great wrench, she felt, to abandon her living room,
with its comfortable rug on the red-polished concrete floor, her
mantelpiece with her commemorative plate of Sir Sereste Khama,
Paramount Chief, Statesman, and first President of Botswana, and,
in the corner, her treadle sewing machine that still worked so
well, even in a power cut when more modern sewing machines would
fall silent. 
 
She had not had to say very much about it. In fact, the decision in
favour of Zebra Drive did not even have to be spelled out. After Mr
J.L.B. Matekoni had been persuaded by Mma Potokwane, the matron at
the orphan farm, to act as foster father to an orphaned boy and his
crippled sister, the children had moved into her house and
immediately settled in. After that, it was accepted that the whole
family would, in due course, live in Zebra Drive. For the time
being, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni would continue to live in his own house,
but would take his evening meal at Zebra Drive. 
 
That was the easy part of the arrangement. Now there remained the
issue of the business. As Mma Ramotswe sat at her desk, watching
Mma Makutsi shuffling papers in the filing cabinet of their small
office, her thoughts were taken up with the difficult task that lay
ahead of her. It had not been an easy decision to make, but she had
now made it and she would have to steel herself and put it into
effect. That was what business was all about. 
 
One of the most elementary rules of running a business was that
facilities should not be needlessly duplicated. After she and Mr
J.L.B. Matekoni married, they would have two businesses with two
offices. They were very different concerns, of course, but Tlokweng
Road Speedy Motors had a large amount of office space and it would
make a great deal of sense for Mma Ramotswe to run her agency from
there. She had made a close inspection of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's
building and had even obtained advice from a local builder. 
 
"There will be no difficulty," he had said after inspecting the
garage and its office. "I can put in a new door on that side over
there. Then the clients for your business can come in and not have
anything to do with all those greasy goings-on in the
workshop." 
 
Combining the two offices would enable Mma Ramotswe to let out her
own office and the income derived from that would make all the
difference. At present, the uncomfortable truth about the No. 1
Ladies' Detective Agency was that it was simply not making enough
money. It was not that there were no clients--there had been a
ready supply of those--it was just that detective work was
immensely time-consuming and people were simply unable to pay for
her services if she charged at a realistic hourly rate. A couple of
hundred pula for the resolution of uncertainty or for the finding
of a missing person was affordable, and usually well worth it, but
several thousand pula for the same job was another matter
altogether. Doubt could be preferable to sure knowledge if the
difference between the two was a large sum of money. 
 
The business might have broken even if it were not for the wages
which Mma Ramotswe had to pay Mma Makutsi. She had originally
employed her as a secretary, on the grounds that every business
which wished to be taken seriously had to have a secretary, but had
soon realised the talents that lay behind those large spectacles.
Mma Makutsi had been promoted to assistant detective, a position
that gave her the status she so craved. But Mma Ramotswe had felt
obliged to raise her pay at the same time, thus plunging the
agency's current account further into the red. 
 
She had discussed the matter with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who had
agreed with her that she had very little choice. 
 
"If you continue like this," he said gravely, "you'll end up
bankrupt. I've seen that happen to businesses. They appoint
somebody called a judicial manager. He is like a vulture, circling,
circling. It is a very bad thing to happen to a business." 
 
Mma Ramotswe clicked her tongue. "I do not want that," she said.
"It would be a very sad end to the business." 
 
They had looked at one another glumly. Then Mr J.L.B. Matekoni
spoke. "You'll have to sack her," he said. "I've had to sack
mechanics in the past. It is not easy, but that is what business is
about." 
 
"She was so happy when I promoted her," said Mma Ramotswe quietly.
"I can't suddenly tell her that she is no longer a detective. She
has no people here in Gaborone. Her people are up in Bobonong. They
are very poor, I think." 
 
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni shook his head. "There are many poor people," he
said. "Many of these people are suffering badly. But you cannot
keep a business going on air. That is well-known. You have to add
what you get in and then take away what you spend. The difference
is your profit. In your case, there is a minus sign in front of
that figure. You cannot . . ." 
 
"I cannot," broke in Mma Ramotswe. "I cannot sack her now. I am
like her mother. She wants so much to be a detective and she is
hardworking." 
 
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked down at his feet. He suspected that Mma
Ramotswe was expecting him to propose something, but he was not
quite sure what it was. Did she expect him to give her money? Did
she want him to meet the bills of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective
Agency, even though she had made it so clear that she expected him
to keep to his garage business while she attended to her clients
and their unsettling problems? 
 
"I do not want you to pay," said Mma Ramotswe, looking at him with
a firmness that made him both fear and admire her. 
 
"Of course not," he said hurriedly. "I was not thinking that at
all." 
 
"On the other hand," went on Mma Ramotswe, "you do need a secretary
at the garage. Your bills are always in a mess, are they not? You
never keep a note of what you pay those useless apprentices of
yours. I should imagine that you make loans to them, too. Do you
keep a record?" 
 
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked shifty. How had she found out that the
apprentices each owed him over six hundred pula and had shown no
signs of being able to repay it? 
 
"Do you want her to come and work for me?" he asked, surprised at
the suggestion. "What about her detective position?" 
 
Mma Ramotswe did not answer for a moment. She had not worked
anything out, but a plan was now beginning to take shape. If they
moved her office to the garage, then Mma Makutsi could keep her job
as assistant detective while at the same time she could do the
secretarial work that the garage needed. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni could
pay her a wage for that, which would mean that the agency's
accounts would be relieved of a large part of that burden. This,
coupled with the rent which she would receive for the existing
offices, would make the financial position look considerably
healthier. 
 
She explained her proposal to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. Although he had
always expressed doubts as to Mma Makutsi's usefulness, he could
see the attractions of Mma Ramotswe's scheme, not the least of
which was that it would keep her happy. And that, he knew, was what
he wanted above all else. 
 
Mma Ramotswe cleared her throat. 
 
"Mma Makutsi," she began. "I have been thinking about the
future." 
 
Mma Makutsi, who had finished her rearranging of the filing
cabinet, had made them both a cup of bush tea and was settling down
to the half-hour break that she usually took at eleven in the
morning. She had started to read a magazine--an old copy of the
National Geographic--which her cousin, a teacher, had lent
her. 
 
"The future? Yes, that is always interesting. But not as
interesting as the past, I think. There is a very good article in
this magazine, Mma Ramotswe," she said. "I will lend it to you
after I have finished reading it. It is all about our ancestors up
in East Africa. There is a Dr Leakey there. He is a very famous
doctor of bones."

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