Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, unusually for him, was drinking a beer. He drank very little, and Mma Ramotswe hardly at all, but on the occasional evening he would unwind with a glass of Lion lager, savouring the feel of the damp, cold glass against his hand almost as much as the freshening sharpness of the beer. Mma Ramotswe would sometimes accompany him, as she did now, taking a teaspoon of beer—a single teaspoon—and putting it into a glass of water with a slice of lemon. The resulting concoction she would sip at, convinced that even this quite homeopathic dilution would go to her head if consumed too quickly.

They had raised their glasses to one another in salute, and then he had asked his question about the letter. Charlie had mentioned it that morning as they were attending to a recalcitrant gearbox, but he had not known what the letter contained. “Big news, I think, Boss,” he had said. “A letter from America means a big case.”

And now Mma Ramotswe said, “Yes, I had a letter.”

He waited for her to reveal more. He would not pry; they might share the same roof, and the same bed, but they both understood the idea of professional confidence, at least in relation to the real secrets that were bared to Mma Ramotswe in the course of her work—the admissions and accusations of adultery, the doubts about others, the frank tragedies of betrayal. But this letter, it transpired, contained nothing like that.

“It was from a man in America,” Mma Ramotswe said, lifting her glass to sip at her drink.

“Oh yes?”

“Yes. From a lawyer, Rra.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni frowned. Letters from lawyers were not always welcomed, especially when received by mechanics. It was very strange, he thought: a lawyer’s letter was capable of striking fear into the strongest of hearts, yet who worried about a letter from a mechanic … They should, of course: mechanics’ letters could be devastating—I have examined your car, and I regret to inform you that … Mechanics could be the conveyors of the most serious news, but they normally chose to give such news face-to-face. And on such occasions a suitably grave expression was required; one should not give bad mechanical news lightly, as Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had felt obliged to warn his apprentices. He had overheard Charlie telling a woman that her car was finished, and on another occasion the young man had told a client that his brakes were the worst brakes in Botswana, adding, And I’ve seen some pretty bad brakes in my time! No, that was not the professional way, not that those young men understood what professionalism was all about.