She looked towards the kitchen building. There was an open door at one end and a large window, through which she could just make out the shape of a cupboard and an overhead fan turning slowly. There were people in it too; a head moved, a hand appeared at the window, briefly, and was withdrawn. That was the office, she thought, and she could always just go up to it, knock on the door, and ask for Mma Tsau. Mma Ramotswe had always believed in the direct approach, no matter what advice Clovis Andersen gave in The Principles of Private Detection. Clovis Andersen seemed to endorse circumspection and the finding out of information by indirect means. But in Mma Ramotswe’s view, the best way of getting an answer to any question was to ask somebody face-to-face. Experience had shown her that if one suspected that there was a secret, the best thing to do was to find out who knew the secret and then ask that person to tell it to you. It nearly always worked. The whole point about secrets was that they demanded to be told, they were insistent, they burned a hole in your tongue if you kept them for too long. That was the way it worked for most people.

For her part, Mma Ramotswe knew how to keep a secret, if the secret was one which needed to be kept. She did not divulge her clients’ affairs, even if she felt that she was bursting to tell somebody, and even Mr J.L.B. Matekoni would not be told of something if it really had to be kept confidential. Only very occasionally, when she felt that the burden of some bit of knowledge was too great for one person to shoulder, would she share with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni some hidden fact which she had uncovered or which had been imparted to her. This had happened when she had heard from one client that he was planning to defraud the Botswana Eagle Insurance Company by making a false claim. He had told her this in a matter-of-fact way, as if she should not be surprised; after all, was this not the way in which practically everybody treated insurance companies? She had gone to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni to discuss this with him, and he had advised her to bring her professional relationship with that client to an end, which she did, and was crudely threatened for her pains. That had resulted in a trip to the Botswana Eagle Insurance Company, which had been most grateful for the information Mma Ramotswe had provided, and had taken steps to protect its interests.

But the direct approach would not work now. If she went to the office, there was every chance that she would see Poppy, and that would lead to difficulties. She had not warned Poppy that she was coming to speak to Mma Tsau, and she would not want the cook to suspect that Poppy had consulted her. No, she would have to make sure that she spoke to Mma Tsau by herself.