Mr J.L.B. Matekoni hesitated. He longed for a comfortable chair. His life had been full of axles and engine parts and grease. It had been a battle, all of it; a battle to keep engines going in spite of the dust and the bumps in the road that were such enemies of machinery; a battle to keep the apprentices from ruining any engine they touched. It had all been a struggle. At the end of the day a chair like this could make up for a lot. It was irresistible.

He looked at Phuti Radiphuti. “Can you deliver it to Zebra Drive?”

“Of course,” said Phuti Radiphuti. He reached out and patted the back of the chair. “You will be very happy in that chair, Rra. Very happy.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER TWELVE

BLOOD PRESSURE

IF ONE PRESSED Mma Ramotswe on the point, really pressed, she would admit that very little happened in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Very little in general, that was; certainly there were spikes of activity, in which suddenly there would be several problems to be looked into at once. These, though, were the exception; normally the issues with which the agency was required to deal were very small ones, which were readily solved by Mma Ramotswe’s simple expedient of asking somebody a direct question and getting a direct answer. It was all very well for Clovis Andersen to go on about the complexity of many investigations, and indeed the danger in at least some of them, but that was not really what life in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency was like.

But there were times, thought Mma Ramotswe, when even Clovis Andersen would be impressed by the number of major issues with which she and Mma Makutsi had to deal, and over the days that followed the trip out to Mokolodi, it seemed to her that this was rapidly becoming one such period.

On the morning after she and Mr Polopetsi had paid their visit, one of those glorious mornings in which the sun is not too fierce, when the air is clear, and when even the doves in their leafy kingdoms seem to be more alert and alive than usual; on that morning Mma Makutsi announced that she could see a woman standing outside the door of the agency, hesitant about knocking.

“There is a lady wanting to come in,” she said to Mma Ramotswe. “I think that she is one of the ones who are embarrassed to come to us.”

Mma Ramotswe craned her neck to see. “Go and invite her in,” she said. “Poor woman.”

Mma Makutsi rose from her desk. Adjusting her glasses, those big, round glasses that she wore, she made her way to where she had seen the woman standing.

She greeted their caller politely. Then she asked, “Are you wanting to come in, Mma? Or are you just standing?”

“I’m looking for Mma Ramotswe,” said the young woman. “Are you that lady?”