“We could make sure that the chef—that other woman—is the one to lose her job,” said Mma Makutsi. “She’s the one who should be fired.”

Phuti looked doubtful. “Maybe. But I don’t see how you could make that happen. Anyway, where would you start with a case like this? What can you do?”

Mma Makutsi helped him to another portion of mashed potato. “We could find out who is blackmailing Mma Tsau. Then we could tell Mma Tsau that it is not Poppy.”

Phuti thought that this was a perfectly sound suggestion, but then a better idea occurred, and he outlined this to Mma Makutsi as he began to eat his mashed potato. “Of course it would be easier, wouldn’t it, to tell Mma Tsau that if she fires Poppy, then we shall tell the college that she has been stealing. Surely that would be simpler.”

Mma Makutsi stared at him. “But that in itself is blackmail,” she pointed out. “You can’t go round threatening people like that.”

“I don’t see what’s wrong with it,” said Phuti, wiping a small speck of mashed potato from his chin. “We’re not getting anything from her. It can’t be blackmail if you’re not getting anything yourself.”

Mma Makutsi pondered this. Perhaps Phuti had a point, and yet Mma Ramotswe had always stressed to her that the end did not justify the means, and that one should not commit a wrong to set right another. And yet, Mma Ramotswe herself had been known to tell the occasional lie while trying to get at the truth. She had obtained information from a government clerk by quoting a non-existent regulation; she had pretended to be somebody she was not when looking into a family dispute for a former minister; the list was really quite long when one came to think of it. In every case, she had done this in her attempts to help somebody who needed help, and it was also true that they were not large lies, but they were lies nonetheless, and so she wondered whether Mma Ramotswe was entirely consistent on this point. She would have to ask her about it, but for the moment it was perhaps better to move on to another topic. So she looked up from her plate and asked Phuti Radiphuti what had happened at the furniture store that day.

He was pleased to leave the philosophical complexities of blackmail, and launched with alacrity into an account of a difficulty they had encountered with the delivery of a table that had only three legs. The factory was adamant that it had left their premises with four, but his warehouse man was equally firm in his view that it had only three on arrival.

“Perhaps that is another one for Mma Ramotswe,” said Mma Makutsi. “She is very good at finding out things like that.”

Phuti smiled at the suggestion. “There are bigger things for Mma Ramotswe to do,” he said. “She has big crimes to solve.”

Mma Makutsi had heard of this popular misconception. It flattered her to think that the reputation of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency had been so inflated, but she could not allow Phuti, her own fiancé, to remain in ignorance about what they actually did.