The Great Cake Mystery (3 page)

“It was a very great sneeze,” Obed said. “It was a sneeze that was heard from miles away, and it was certainly heard by everybody in the village. In every hut, people awoke, rubbed their eyes, and rose from their sleeping mats. ‘A great lion has sneezed,' they said. ‘We must all hit our pots and pans as hard as we can. That will frighten him away.'

“And that is what happened. As the
people began to strike their pots and pans with spoons and forks, the lion tucked his tail between his legs and ran off into the bush. He was not frightened of eating one unlucky young man, but even he could not stand up to a whole village of people all pounding on pots. Lions do not like that sort of noise.”

“I am glad that you were not eaten by that lion,” Precious said.

“And so am I,” Obed said.

“Because if the lion had eaten you, I would never have been born,” Precious said.

“And if you had never been born, then I would never have 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.”

“Yes,” said Obed. “And maybe a bad thing for the lion too.”

“Oh, why was that?”

“Because 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.

“Perhaps 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 long
climb 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 school
cat, 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.