She looked at the text opposite the picture. Is something troubling you? it read. Is your husband coming home late and smelling of ladies’ perfume? Is one of your employees stealing your business secrets? Don’t take any chances! Entrust your enquiries to a MAN!

The effect of this on Mma Ramotswe was similar to the effect which the earlier remark about the Botswana Secretarial College had produced on Mma Makutsi. Silently she passed the brochure to her assistant, who adjusted her glasses to read it.

“It has been very good to meet you, Rra,” said Mma Ramotswe, struggling with the words. Insincerity had never come easily to her, but good manners required it on occasion, even if a superhuman effort was needed. “We must meet again soon so that we can discuss our cases together.”

Mr. Buthelezi beamed with pleasure. “That would be very good, Mma,” he said. “You and me talking about professional matters…”

“And Mma Makutsi,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“Of course,” said Mr. Buthelezi, glancing quickly, and dismissively, at his other visitor.

Mma Makutsi had handed the brochure back to Mr. Buthelezi, who insisted that they keep it. Then the two women stood up, took their leave politely, if rather coldly, and left the shop, closing the door perhaps rather too firmly behind them. Once outside, they crossed the road in complete silence, and it was not until Mma Ramotswe had turned the tiny white van round and started to head for home that anything was said.

“So!” said Mma Ramotswe.

Mma Makutsi searched for something to say but could think of nothing that fitted the occasion; nothing that summed up her outrage at the way in which the Botswana Secretarial College had been referred to as that place. So she said, “So,” too, and left it at that.

CHAPTER FIVE

THEY RETURNED to the office in silence. Mma Makutsi wanted to talk, but one look at Mma Ramotswe, sitting behind the wheel of the tiny white van, her face set in an uncharacteristic scowl, persuaded her that if there was to be any discussion of their encounter with Mr. Buthelezi, then this would have to come later. There could be no doubt, of course, of what Mma Ramotswe thought about their new colleague-if one could call him that. How dare he sit there and speak to Mma Ramotswe, the doyenne of the profession of private enquiry agent in Botswana, in that condescending fashion, as if he had all the experience and she were the newcomer. And then there was the boastful brochure, which Mma Makutsi now clutched in her hands, resisting all temptation to crunch it into a ball and throw it out of the window of the tiny white van. It was reasonable enough, of course, for people to wish to speak to a man, if that is what they wanted, but that did not mean that a man would be better. Trust your enquiries to a man indeed! The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, as they had made abundantly clear from the very beginning, was not merely a service provided for ladies by ladies; it was a service for everybody, men and women equally. And the title made no claim to the special talents of ladies in private detection (although one could make that case if one sat down to it); all it implied was that this was a detective agency that happened to be run by ladies.

Mma Ramotswe parked the tiny white van directly behind the garage, outside the back door of the building that they shared with Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was busy in the inspection pit, peering up at the chassis of a battered blue minibus and showing something to one of the apprentices beside him. He waved cheerfully, and Mma Ramotswe acknowledged his greeting, but she did not walk over to chat with him, as she normally would have done. Instead, both she and Mma Makutsi went directly into the agency and sat down at their desks in indignant silence.

Mma Makutsi had garage bills to attend to, and she busied herself with these. Mma Ramotswe, who sat on the committee of the Anglican Cathedral Women’s League for Better Housing, had the minutes of a meeting to read through and a draft to prepare of a letter to the Ministry of Housing. She immersed herself in these tasks, but she found it difficult to concentrate, and after twenty minutes or so of saying the wrong thing to the deputy minister, and being unable to find the right words, she rose to her feet and went outside.

It was a comfortable time of year, immediately after the worst of the heat and before the winter set in. Not that the country had much of a winter. The nights could get chilly, of course, with that dry cold that could penetrate to the very bones, but the winter days were usually sunny and clear, with air that one could almost drink, so pure and fresh it was; air with a hint of wood smoke; air that filled one with gratitude that one was here, in this place, and nowhere else. This time of year, when the grass was already turning brown but there were still patches of green, was perfect, in Mma Ramotswe’s view. Now she stood outside, under one of the acacia trees, looking towards Tlokweng, watching a small group of donkeys cropping the grass beside the road. Her anger had largely passed, and watching the patient, unassuming donkeys helped restore her sense of perspective. The children’s difficulties were not really serious; small boys could behave in peculiar ways (just like men), and as for Motholeli, bullying was an inevitable, universal problem. She would discuss this with Mma Potokwani, who would tell her exactly what to do.

Mr. Buthelezi was a rather more serious matter, but then again, was he really that much of a threat? He was bombastic and pleased with himself, but that did not mean he would take business away from her. People did not want bluster when they were worried about something; they wanted good sense and caution. Those ridiculous photographs of him would surely put people off. People could tell the difference, could they not, between fantasy and reality? As Clovis Andersen pointed out in The Principles of Private Detection, anybody who went into the profession thinking that it was glamorous because they had read books or seen films about it was fundamentally misguided. Of course Mr. Buthelezi would never have read Clovis Andersen (I should have asked him directly, thought Mma Ramotswe; that would have put him in place).

She turned away from the road and looked away, down to the stand of eucalyptus trees that had been planted years ago, when Gaborone was still called Chief Gaborone’s Place, and which had established itself as a forest. She was fearful of this forest, for some reason, and never walked there alone. It was a sad place, she thought, with its tall red-brown termite mounds and its paths that went to nobody’s house but merely petered out in bark-littered clearings. Cattle moved through the trees, and she could hear their bells now but turned away with a shiver. That was not a good place.

The donkeys had wandered onto the road and were standing still, wondering whether to cross or not. A boy shouted at them and threw a stone to move them on, calling out their names: Broken Ear, Broken Ear! Thin One, Thin One! Come on, come on, move!

Which was Broken Ear, she wondered, as they all seemed to have fine ears, and none, now that one came to think of it, looked particularly thin. She was thinking of this, of the names which people give their animals, when a car turned off the road, circled Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors twice, and then drew up next to the tiny white van. Mma Ramotswe watched as the driver, a tall, well-built man in his early forties, got out.

“Dumela, Mma,” he said as he walked over towards her. “Can you help me? I am looking for the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.”

Mma Ramotswe realised that she must seem somewhat dreamy to him, standing there, staring at the donkeys; a woman who was perhaps not all there in the head. “That is me, Rra. I am sorry, I was thinking of something else.” She pointed to the donkeys. “I was listening to the herd boy calling out the names of those donkeys. I was not paying attention.”