Mr Polopetsi raised another finger in the air. “I’ve done it already,” he said brightly. “I’ve solved the problem.”

Mma Makutsi, who had been listening with increasing interest, now broke into the conversation. “What is all this about a bird?” she asked. “How can a bird cause all this trouble?”

Mr Polopetsi turned in his chair to face Mma Makutsi. “It’s not just any ordinary bird,” he explained. “It’s a hornbill—a ground hornbill.”

Mma Makutsi gave an involuntary shudder. There were ground hornbills up in the north, where she came from. She knew that they were bad luck. People avoided the ground hornbill if they could. And they were wise to do so, in her view. One only had to look at those birds, which were as big as turkeys and had those great beaks and those old-looking eyes.

“Yes,” went on Mr Polopetsi. “This bird had been brought to the Mokolodi animal sanctuary. Somebody had found it lying on the road up north and brought it down. It had a broken wing and a broken leg, and they bound these up and kept it there to recover. And everybody was very frightened because they knew that this bird would bring death. It would just bring death.”

“So why did they not say something?” asked Mma Makutsi.

“Because they were embarrassed,” said Mr Polopetsi. “Nobody wanted to be the one to go and tell Neil that the people did not want that bird about the place. Nobody wanted to be thought to be superstitious and not modern. That was it, wasn’t it, Mma Ramotswe?”

Mma Ramotswe nodded, somewhat reluctantly. Mr Polopetsi had reached exactly the same conclusion as she had. But what had he done about it? She had considered the issue to be of such delicacy that she would have to think very carefully about what to do. Mr Polopetsi, it would seem, had blundered right in.

“You said that you had solved the problem,” she said. “And how did you do that, Rra? Did you tell the bird to fly away?”

Mr Polopetsi shook his head. “No, not that, Mma. I took the bird. I took it away at night-time.”

Mma Ramotswe gasped. “But you can’t do that …”

“Why not, Mma?” asked Mr Polopetsi. “It’s a wild creature. Nobody owns wild birds. They had no right to keep it there.”

“They would release it once it was healed,” said Mma Ramotswe, a note of anger showing in her voice.

“Yes, but before that, what would happen?” Mr Polopetsi challenged. “Somebody could kill the bird. Or some awful thing might happen out there and everybody would then blame Neil for allowing the bird to come. It could have been a terrible mess.”