Kwei Quartey - Wife of the Gods

“All you’re saying may be true, Darko, my love, but-”

“It was very threatening, Auntie. I know that, and I understand it. Gladys was so lovely, and although she was no lovelier than you, she was young, she was educated, and she was going to be a doctor. To see her with your Isaac, the Isaac who has done so much for you and whom you love more than any other man in the world-maybe the only one you love.” Dawson shook his head. “Too frightening for Gladys to get so close. Who knows what they were doing together in Isaac’s compound? Hours spent side by side. I would have gone mad myself thinking about it.”

Osewa looked away.

“And that evening you were collecting firewood and you saw Isaac and Gladys standing together talking,” Dawson continued, “they stood closer together than was comfortable for you. You couldn’t bear it. Too much pain, too much.”

The other two men were watching, transfixed.

“Once Isaac had left,” Dawson continued, “you caught up with Gladys on her way back to Ketanu and lured her to the plantain grove in the forest.”

“Darko,” Osewa said softly “You are wrong. I already told you. I last saw Gladys with Samuel. She went into the forest with him , not me.”

“You saw them from the firewood spot, not so?”

“Yes, that’s what I said. I don’t know what’s going on, Darko. Is something the matter?”

“Auntie, what I’m getting at is how you knew Gladys’s skirt and blouse had Adinkra symbols on it?”

Osewa shrugged. “Because I saw it. What do you mean, How did I know?”

“You could see the pattern on her outfit from where you were at the firewood spot. That’s what you’re saying?”

“Yes.” But he could see she was suddenly wary.

“Auntie, it’s not possible. From that distance, you couldn’t see the Adinkra symbols.”

A wave of puzzlement and uncertainty passed across her face like a shadow. “What do you mean?”

“The symbols are too small to be seen from where you were. We’ve tried it ourselves, Chikata and I.”

“What?” she said.

“It’s true,” Chikata said quietly. “It’s impossible even for me, and my vision is better than normal.”

“Then how did I know Gladys’s dress had Adinkra on it?” Osewa challenged.

“You saw it only after you got close enough to see the pattern, but your mind played a trick on you and made you think you had also seen it from far off. You wanted to be sure we believed your story, so you gave us that detail and it was one too many.”

Osewa swallowed. She stared at Dawson without blinking, and he stared back. “And you led Gladys to the plantain grove. Maybe you told her you had some special herbs to show her. How long did you wait before you killed her, Auntie?”

Osewa recoiled.

“She didn’t do it,” Isaac said suddenly.

Dawson’s head turned. “What did you say?”

“Osewa didn’t kill Gladys,” he said. “I did.”

“Isaac Kutu, are you confessing to the murder of Gladys Mensah?”

“You’re right that Osewa lied about Samuel and Gladys going into the forest, but it wasn’t herself she was trying to protect, it was me.”

“How did she know you were the murderer?”

“She didn’t know it for sure. She suspected it because she knew I was angry with Gladys for trying to steal from me, and then she got worried when she learned how you were after my skin. And as for the Adinkra symbols, that was easy. She simply asked me what Gladys had been wearing.”

Osewa put her face in her hands and shook her head in disbelief.

Chikata stepped forward, cuffs in hand. “Isaac Kutu,” he said, “I am Detective Sergeant Chikata. I am arresting you for the murder of Gladys Mensah. Please turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

Osewa stood dumbfounded as the handcuffs clicked shut with staccato precision. Isaac bowed his head.

“Auntie Osewa,” Dawson said, “are you really going to let Isaac be taken away to prison like that? Do you really love him if you can stand there and do nothing? After all he’s done for you? Alifoe is your son with Isaac. He’s the father of your child . You’re going to let him go like this?”

Osewa’s eyes had gone wide. “Who told you Isaac is Alifoe’s father?”

“No one. Come on now. Kweku the father of a boy as beautiful as Alifoe? I don’t think so. Kweku is, and always has been, as infertile as the Sahara desert. You know that, and so do I.”

Osewa was looking from Isaac to Dawson and back again. She was torn.

“He loves you, Auntie,” Dawson pressed. “But do you really love him if you can let him take the blame for what you did?”

“Don’t judge me,” she said coldly. “You have no right to judge me.”

Dawson said nothing and waited. Chikata turned Isaac to face Osewa, and their eyes locked.

“Let him go,” she said resolutely. For the first time, she shed tears. “He didn’t kill Gladys. I did.”

Chikata, confused, looked to Dawson for guidance. Dawson nodded his permission to unlock the cuffs.

“You’ve done the right thing, Auntie,” he said. “Now tell me everything. I’m ready to listen to you.”

Osewa turned to one side, arms folded across her chest. Dawson watched her in profile as she stared at an unidentified point somewhere in the distance. She was silent for a long time, and the calls of forest birds filled the void until she began to speak.

“I was collecting firewood when I saw Gladys and Samuel talking to each other at the edge of the forest,” she began. “Then I heard Isaac calling out and saw him walk up to them and begin to argue with Samuel. I heard their voices, but from where I was standing, I couldn’t hear much of what they were saying. Still, I guessed he was telling Samuel to go away and leave Gladys alone.”

Osewa turned back to face Isaac, and now she addressed him directly.

“I didn’t know why you told Samuel to go away, Isaac. Maybe you thought he was dangerous or troubling Gladys. But I was worried, because Samuel was not really a bad person, and so I was thinking to myself, Why has Isaac told the boy to go away? Is it because he likes Gladys and doesn’t want another man near her?

“So I just watched you and Gladys talking and talking, and I was wondering what you could be conversing about for so long. And sometimes you were smiling, Isaac, as though you were enjoying her company so very much. I saw how close to you she was standing. One time she touched your arm, and another time I saw her laugh and I knew it was a laugh of desire for you, because I too am a woman.

“Then you left her and went back to your compound, and she went on her way back toward Ketanu and I was still wondering, wondering, because you always told me you were only working with Gladys on your medicines, so why did it seem that the two of you were so attracted to each other? When you had returned to your compound, I went after Gladys. I had to run because by now she was far ahead on the footpath to Ketanu.

“When I caught up with her, I greeted her and she was nice to me. And while we were talking, I kept thinking how beautiful she was. And I asked her how everything was going in her study of natural medicines. She told me everything was fine. And then she told me something I didn’t like at all. She said she was trying to convince you, Isaac, to go to Accra with her to work with those doctors there. But really, I knew what she was trying to do. She was trying to take you away for herself and keep you in Accra.”

“Osewa, no,” Isaac said sadly. “She wasn’t trying to do that.”

“Maybe you didn’t know that, my love. But that was what she was trying to do and I had to stop her. While I was talking with her, I was thinking to poison her. Maybe just to make her sick enough to want to leave Ketanu and never come back. I told her I could show her a place in the forest with some medicinal herbs, and I’m sorry, Isaac, I lied and said I knew which one you used to cure the AIDS. She was very eager to see it, and I took her to the plantain grove.