The photograph was mute. He would have loved to have met the children, she thought. He would have been a good grandfather, who would have shown them the old Botswana morality and brought them to an understanding of what it is to live an honourable life. She would have to do that now; she and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. One day soon she would drive out to the orphan farm and thank Mma Silvia Potokwane for giving them the children. She would also thank her for everything that she did for all those other orphans, because, she suspected, nobody ever thanked her for that. Bossy as Mma Potokwane might be, she was a matron, and it was a matron’s job to be like that, just as detectives should be nosy, and mechanics … Well, what should mechanics be? Greasy? No, greasy was not quite right. She would have to think further about that.

“I WILL be ready,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, his voice lowered, although there was no need. “You will know that I am here. Right here, outside the house. If you shout out, I will hear you.”

They studied the house, in the dim light of the streetlamp, an undistinguished building with a standard red-tiled roof and unkempt garden.

“He obviously does not employ a gardener,” observed Mma Ramotswe. “Look at the mess.”

It was inconsiderate not to have a gardener if, like Dr Ranta, you were in a well-paid white-collar job. It was a social duty to employ domestic staff, who were readily available and desperate for work. Wages were low—unconscionably so, thought Mma Ramotswe—but at least the system created jobs. If everybody with a job had a maid, then that was food going into the mouths of the maids and their children. If everybody did their own housework and tended their own gardens, then what were the people who were maids and gardeners to do?

By not cultivating his garden, Dr Ranta showed himself to be selfish, which did not surprise Mma Ramotswe at all.

“Too selfish,” remarked Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” said Mma Ramotswe.