MMA RAMOTSWE returned from the lunch break to find Mma Makutsi waiting for her at the office door. The younger woman seemed agitated.

“There’s a woman waiting inside.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “Has she said what she wants, Mma?” she asked.

Mma Makutsi looked rather annoyed. “She is insisting on talking to you, Mma. I offered to listen to her, but she said that she wanted the senior lady. That is what she said. The senior lady. That’s you.”

Noticing Mma Makutsi’s look of disapproval, Mma Ramotswe suppressed a smile. Her assistant was always irritated when this sort of thing happened. People would phone and ask to be put through to the boss, provoking from Mma Makutsi an indignant request for an explanation of what the query was about.

“I do not see why they cannot talk to me first,” she said peevishly. “Then I can put them through to you after I have told you who they are and what it’s about.”

“But that means they might have to repeat themselves,” Mma Ramotswe pointed out. “They might think it better to wait until …” She broke off. Mma Makutsi was unlikely to be convinced by this argument.

And this woman waiting for her in the office was another of these people who had been unwilling to tell Mma Makutsi what her business was. Well, one had to be understanding; it was often a big step to go and see a private detective about some private trouble, and one had to be gentle with people. She was not sure whether she herself would have the courage to consult a perfect stranger about something intimate. If Mr J.L.B. Matekoni were to begin misbehaving, for example—and it was inconceivable that he should—would she be able to go and talk to somebody about it, or would she suffer in silence? She rather thought that she might suffer in silence; that was her reaction, but others were different, of course. Some people were only too happy to pour out their most private problems into the ear of anybody who would listen. Mma Ramotswe had once sat next to such a woman on a bus; and this woman had told her, in the time that it takes to travel down the road from Gaborone to Lobatse, all about her feelings towards her mother-in-law, her concerns for her son, who was doing very well at school but who had met a girl who had turned his head and taken his mind quite off his schoolwork, and about her prying neighbour whom she had seen on several occasions looking into her bedroom through a pair of binoculars. Perhaps such people felt better if they talked, but it could be trying for those chosen to be their audience.

The woman sitting in the office looked up as Mma Ramotswe came into the room. They exchanged polite greetings—in the prescribed form—while Mma Ramotswe settled herself behind her desk.

“You are Mma Ramotswe?” asked the woman.

Mma Ramotswe inclined her head, taking in the little details that would allow her to place this woman. She was thirty-five, perhaps; of traditional build, like Mma Ramotswe herself (perhaps even more traditional); and, judging from the ring on her finger, married to a man who was able to afford a generously sized gold band. Clothing, said Clovis Andersen in The Principles of Private Detection, provides more clues than virtually anything else (other than a pocket book or wallet!). Look at the clothing. It talks.