Boitelo smiled. “Because the patient was the first one whose blood pressure I had taken in the waiting room while the doctor was busy. It was the same person. And I had written down my reading on a scrap of paper which I had put away in my drawer. I remember comparing those figures with the ones which the doctor put on the card that day. They were the same. But now, that very same figure had been changed. A high reading had been changed to a low one.”

Boitelo sat back in her chair and looked at Mma Ramotswe. “I think, Mma,” she said, “I think that this doctor is doing something very wrong. I went to see somebody in the Ministry of Health and I told him about it. But he said that I had no proof. And I don’t think that he believed me anyway. He said that from time to time they had complaints from nurses who did not like the doctor they worked for. He said that they had to be very careful, and until I could come up with something more concrete I should be careful what I said.”

She looked at Mma Ramotswe defensively, as if she, too, would pour scorn on her story. But Mma Ramotswe did not do this. She was noting something down on a piece of paper, and she did not react in any way when Boitelo went on to explain that she had brought this matter to the attention of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency out of a sense of public duty and she hoped that in the circumstances there would be no fee, which she would be unable to pay anyway.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

BLUE SHOES