She decided to voice her concerns to Mma Ramotswe. “What about Mr J.L.B. Matekoni?” she asked. “Will he drink …”

“Bush tea,” said Mma Ramotswe quickly. “That is the best tea for a man. It is well-known. He will drink bush tea.”

“And the apprentices?”

Mma Ramotswe rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. “Perhaps they should have bush tea too,” she said. “Although, heaven knows, it’s not doing them much good.”

With those decisions made, Mma Makutsi put on the kettle and, watched by Mma Ramotswe, she ladled into the new tea-pot a quantity of her tea, her ordinary tea. Then she fetched Mma Ramotswe’s tea-pot, which looked distinctly battered beside the fine new china tea-pot, and into this she put the correct quantity of bush tea. They waited for the kettle to boil, each of them silent, each of them alone with her thoughts. Mma Makutsi was thinking with relief of the generous response that Mma Ramo-tswe had shown to her confession, which seemed so like an act of disloyalty, of treachery even. Her employer had made it so easy that she felt a flood of gratitude for her. Mma Ramotswe was undoubtedly one of the finest women in all Botswana. Mma Makutsi had always known this, but here was another instance which spoke to those qualities of understanding and sympathy. And for her part, Mma Ramotswe thought of what a loyal, fine woman was Mma Makutsi. Other employees would have complained, or moaned about drinking tea they did not like, but she had said nothing. And more than that, she had given the impression that she was enjoying what was given to her, as a polite guest will eat or drink what is laid upon the host’s table. This was further evidence of those very qualities which obviously had been revealed at the Botswana Secretarial College and which had resulted in her astonishingly high marks. Mma Makutsi was surely a gem.

CHAPTER FIVE

AN ENCOUNTER WITH A BICYCLE

FOR THE REST of that day, with the issue of tea tactfully settled, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi continued with their attempts to find out about the missing Zambian. This was the office stage of the project; they knew that in a day or so they would have to go out and seek people who might give them information, unless, of course, one of the letters which Mma Makutsi wrote or the telephone conversations which Mma Ramotswe conducted yielded results. At a quarter to five, when the afternoon heat had abated and the sky was beginning to redden over the Kalahari, Mma Ramotswe announced that although the working day still technically had fifteen minutes to run, they had achieved so much that they might in good conscience stop.

“I’ve made so many phone calls,” she said. “I cannot speak any more.”

“And are we any closer to finding him?” asked Mma Makutsi doubtfully.

Mma Ramotswe was not one to be defeatist. “Yes, we are,” she said. “Even if we have not discovered anything concrete, every step along the path is one step closer to the solution. Mr Andersen says, doesn’t he, that if there are one hundred questions to be asked in an investigation, you have to go through every one of them, and so you achieve something even if you get no answer. That is what he wrote.”