Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith

fix something? To you. You have a very good garage and I am honoured that I am going to marry you. That is all there is to it.”
    Her remarks were greeted with silence. Then: “But you do not know how bad I am. I have never told you of these wicked things.”
    “Then tell me. Tell me now. I am strong.”
    “Oh I cannot do that, Mma. You would be shocked.”
    Mma Ramotswe realised that the conversation was getting nowhere, and so she changed her tack.
    “And speaking of your garage,” she said. “You were not there yesterday, or the day before. Mma Makutsi is running it for you. But that cannot go on forever.”
    “I am pleased that she is running it,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni flatly. “I am not feeling very strong at the moment. I think that I should stay here in my house. She will look after everything. Please thank her for me.”
    Mma Ramotswe took a deep breath. “You are not well, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. I think that I can arrange for you to see a doctor. I have spoken to Dr Moffat. He says that he will see you. He thinks it is a good idea.”
    “I am not broken,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “I do not need to see Dr Moffat. What can he do for me? Nothing.”
     
    IT HAD not been a reassuring call, and Mma Ramotswe spent an anxious few minutes pacing about her kitchen after she had rung off. It was clear to her that Dr Moffat had been right; that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was suffering from an illness—depression, he had called it—but now she was more worried about the terrible thing that he said he had done. There was no less likely murderer than Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, but what if it transpired that this was what he was? Would it change her feelings for him if she discovered that he had killed somebody, or would she tell herself that it was not really his fault, that he was defending himself when he hit his victim over the head with a spanner? This is what the wives and girlfriends of murderers inevitably did. They never accepted that their man could be capable of being a murderer. Mothers were like that, too. The mothers of murderers always insisted that their sons were not as bad as people said. Of course, for a mother, the man remained a small boy, no matter how old he became, and small boys can never be guilty of murder.
    Of course, Note Mokoti could have been a murderer. He was quite capable of killing a man in cold blood, because he had no feelings. It was easy to imagine Note stabbing somebody and walking away as casually as if he had done no more than shake his victim’s hand. When he had beaten her, as he had on so many occasions before he left, he had shown no emotion. Once, when he had split the skin above her eyebrow with a particularly savage blow, he had stopped to examine his handiwork as if he were a doctor examining a wound.
    “You will need to take that to the hospital,” he had said, his voice quite even. “That is a bad cut. You must be more careful.”
    The one thing that she was grateful for in the whole Note episode was that her Daddy was still alive when she left him. At least he had the pleasure of knowing that his daughter was no longer with that man, even if he had had almost two years of suffering while she was with him. When she had gone to him and told him that Note had left, he had said nothing about her foolishness in marrying him, even if he might have thought about it. He simply said that she must come back to his house, that he would always look after her, and that he hoped that her life would be better now. He had shown such dignity, as he always did. And she had wept, and gone to him and he had told her that she was safe with him and that she need not fear that man again.
    But Note Mokoti and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni were totally different men. Note was the one who had committed the crimes, not Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. And yet, why did he insist that he had done something terrible if he had not? Mma Ramotswe found this puzzling, and, as ever when puzzled, she decided to turn to that first