She made her tea and poured herself a large cup. Then, cup in hand, she returned to her bedroom. It would be a pleasant way of spending what remained of the afternoon, resting on her bed, and falling asleep if she wished. She had a few magazines on her bedside table, and a copy of the Botswana Daily News. She would read these until her eyes began to shut and the magazine fell out of her hands. It was a very agreeable way of drifting off to sleep.

She opened wide the window to allow a cooling breeze to circulate. Then, having placed her tea cup on the bedside table, she lowered herself onto the bed, sinking down into the mattress that had served her so well for many years and which was holding up very well with the additional weight of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. She had bought the bed and its mattress at the same time that she had moved into the house on Zebra Drive, and had resisted the temptation to buy cheaply. In her view a well-made bed was the one thing on which it was worthwhile spending as much money as one could possibly afford. A good bed produced happiness, she was sure of that; a bad, uncomfortable bed produced grumpiness and niggling pains.

She started to read the Botswana Daily News. There was a story of a politician who had made a speech urging people to take more care of their cattle. He said that it was a shocking thing to the conscience of a cattle-owning country that there should be cases of mistreated cattle. People who allowed their cattle to go thirsty while they were driving them to the railway siding should be ashamed of themselves, he said. It was well-known, he went on, that the quality of meat was affected by the experience of the cattle in their last days. An animal that had been stressed would always produce beef that tasted less than perfect, and perfection was what Botswana wanted for its meat. After all, Botswana beef was fine, grass-fed beef, and tasted so much better than the meat of those poor cattle which were kept cooped up or which were fed food that cattle should not eat.

Mma Ramotswe found herself agreeing with all of this. Her father had been a great judge of cattle and had always told her that cattle should be treated as members of the family. He knew the names of all his cattle, which was a considerable feat for one who had built up so large a herd, and he would never have tolerated their suffering in any way. It was just as well, she thought, that he was no longer able to hear this news of thirsty cattle, nor to see the sort of things that she had seen that very day while having her tea at the shopping centre.

She finished the article on cattle and had embarked on another one when she heard a sound. It was a rather peculiar sound, rather like moaning. She lowered the newspaper and stared up at the ceiling. It was very strange. The sound was apparently coming from fairly nearby—from just outside her window, it seemed. She listened very hard and there it was again, once more emanating from somewhere not far away.