Her pen stopped in mid-sentence. Who was she to criticise when it would be possible for virtually anybody to walk into the office of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency at an unguarded moment and rifle through the secrets of their clients? Are you interested in who is suspected by his wife of adultery? Please, help yourself: there are plenty of reports about that in an old filing cabinet on the Tlokweng Road—just help yourself! And why was that man dismissed from that hotel last month, with no reason given? Well, the report on that—freely available from the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and signed by Mma Grace Makutsi, Dip. Sec. (Botswana Secretarial College) (97%)—may be obtained by the simple expedient of looking in the top drawer of the second desk of an unlocked office beside Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.

Mma Ramotswe rose to her feet and made her way over to the filing cabinet nearest her. Bending forward, she peered at the lock which was built into the top of the cabinet. It was a small, oval silver-coloured plate with an incised key-hole. At the top of the plate the maker’s sign, a small rampant lion, was stamped into the metal. The lion looked back at Mma Ramotswe, and she shook her head. There was rust in the key-hole, and the edges of the hole were dented. Even if they could locate the key, it would be impossible to insert it. She looked at the lion, a symbol of the pride which somebody must once have felt, somewhere, in the construction of the cabinet. And perhaps this pride was not entirely misplaced—the cabinet must have been made decades ago, perhaps even forty or fifty years previously, and it still worked. How many modern cabinets, with their plastic trimmings and their bright colours, would still be holding files in fifty years’ time? And it was the same with people, she thought. Bright, modern people were all very well, but did they last the course? Traditionally minded (and traditionally built) people might not seem so fashionable, but they would always be there, doing what they always did. A traditional mechanic, for example—somebody like Mr J.L.B. Matekoni—would be able to keep your car going when a modern mechanic—somebody like Charlie—would shrug his shoulders and say that everything needed to be renewed.

She reached out and gave the filing cabinet an affectionate pat. Then, on impulse, she bent down and kissed its scratched and dented metal surface. The metal felt cool to her lips and smelled acrid, as metal can—a smell of rust and sharpness.

“Dumela, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi from the doorway.

Mma Ramotswe straightened up.

“Don’t worry about me,” said Mma Makutsi. “Just carry on doing whatever it was that you were doing …” She glanced at the filing cabinet and then at her employer.