This led to another quick attempt to suppress the broadcast; again too late.

Mma Ramotswe laughed airily. “They’re very fashionable, Mma,” she said. “I’d like a pair like that myself, but I don’t think I could carry them off.”

She brought the conversation to an end before further damage could be done. Looking across the office, she saw Mma Makutsi glaring at her.

“I don’t think she meant to be rude, Mma Makutsi.”

Mma Makutsi looked down at her desk. “I shall forget what I heard, Mma,” she said. “It is sometimes better to do that.”

“That’s very good of you, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That is a good policy.”

“Except sometimes,” added Mma Makutsi. “Sometimes it’s better to remember.”

Mma Ramotswe did not pursue the matter. The arrangement had been made, and now, in the two hours before they were due to go to the President Hotel for what she feared would be a difficult meeting, she thought of what she would have to say. It was tricky. If she had been sure that she was right about Susan, then it would have been easier. But any certainty she had felt on Friday had now been replaced by doubts. That, she thought, was the problem with doubts: if you admitted the slightest niggle of uncertainty, even hardly enough to disturb a settled view, it could rapidly become so weighty as to undermine an entire outlook.

On the way to the President Hotel, they did not discuss the case until they were almost at their destination. Then Mma Makutsi faced Mma Ramotswe as she was turning into the road leading to the hotel’s parking place and voiced her doubts. “I’m not sure about all this, Mma,” she said. “I can’t see why somebody would go to all this trouble just to have a row with somebody over something that was long, long ago. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Mma Ramotswe sighed. “Nor to me, Mma. And yet…”

“And yet we both feel there’s something not quite right here.”

In Mma Ramotswe’s view that was a perfect assessment of the situation. Something was not quite right—but what exactly was it that was not quite right? “We shall have to feel our way through this,” she said, as she approached a parking place between two other vehicles—a delivery van and an old green saloon car.

She nosed the van into the space. It was a tight fit and Mma Makutsi, looking out of the window on her side, pointed out that she would be unable to open her door. Mma Ramotswe engaged reverse gear and repositioned the van, this time allowing more room on Mma Makutsi’s side.

“That’s better,” said Mma Makutsi, opening her door before the engine was switched off.

But then Mma Ramotswe saw that she was hemmed in on her own side. “I can’t get out,” she said.