Mma Ramotswe thought about this. Mma Makutsi was right—up to a point—but you could be right but still be unreasonable. It was feasible, but then all sorts of alternative—and unlikely—explanations of anything were perfectly feasible, and you could not go through life suspecting that other people were impostors. Holding such a default position would make life impossible. You would think of everybody whom you met: You might not be who you claim to be. It would be impossible. You would have to ask everybody for identification the moment you met them.

“I think we’re going to have to trust her, Mma Makutsi. She spoke about a dog’s grave in the garden, and it’s there, you know…”

“There are dogs’ graves all over the place,” said Mma Makutsi. She spoke with determination in her voice that Mma Ramotswe realised was not going to be shifted easily.

“Dogs’ graves all over the place? But there aren’t, Mma. They are very unusual. We do not give dogs graves—we bury them and then just leave them covered with bare earth. They may be our friends, but we do not mark their passing very much.”

“That is because they do not have souls, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi. “Dogs do not have a soul inside them. They are just meat.”

Mma Ramotswe looked at the window. It needed cleaning, as the dust had built up. But there was the branch of the acacia tree outside—the branch upon which those two doves so often sat. Did they not have souls? Those loyal spouses? Did they not mourn when one of them died, and how could you mourn if you had no soul? And if birds had souls, then how much more likely was it that dogs did too—dogs who, if they could talk, would have so much to say to us about the world and its smells.

“I do not think that a dog is just meat,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“Well, I’m sorry to say it, Mma, but you’re wrong.”

It rarely came to that. They rarely ended up in such an impasse, and Mma Ramotswe did not want to remain there. “Perhaps we are both wrong, Mma,” she said mildly. “Perhaps you are a bit right and I am a bit right. But perhaps we are both mostly wrong, and the answer lies elsewhere.”

Mma Makutsi appeared to consider this. “Possibly,” she said. “But unlikely. I think I am right about that woman, Mma, but I am not going to insist. You can treat her as genuine and then you will get a nasty surprise, I think. But I will not say, ‘I told you so,’ Mma. I will not say that.”

Mma Ramotswe closed her eyes. It helped, she found, to close her eyes. In any situation where you encountered something you did not like, or something you could not deal with, you had only to close your eyes. It always worked.