THE TEA REGIME at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency was, by any standard, a liberal one. There was no official slot for the first cup of tea, but it was nonetheless almost always brewed at the same time, which suggested that it had a de jure slot in the day. This was at eight o’clock, when work had already been going on for half an hour or so—in theory at least—although Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi often only arrived a few minutes before eight. The turning on of the kettle had become part of the ritual of opening the office for the day, alongside the moving of the client’s chair away from the corner where it was placed at night and its positioning back into the middle of the floor, where it faced Mma Ramotswe’s desk, ready for use. Then the window was opened the correct amount, and the doorstop put in such a position that it would allow for some circulation of air without admitting too much noise from the garage, a finely judged calculation which Mma Ramotswe herself undertook. After this there was a brief period for the exchange of information between Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi—what Phuti Radiphuti had eaten for dinner the previous night, what Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had said about the bed he had dug for his beans, what Radio Botswana had announced on its early morning broadcasts, and so on. Once these snippets had been shared, the electric kettle would be boiling and the first, unofficial cup of tea would be served.

Official tea came two hours later, at ten o’clock. It was Mma Makutsi’s responsibility to fill the kettle with water, which she did from the tap just outside the door that led to the garage. The sight of her holding the kettle under the tap was a signal to Mr. Polopetsi that tea was about five minutes away, and he would then walk over to the sink on the other side of the workshop and begin to wash his hands free of grease. This, in turn, would be a signal to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to reach a decision on whether he would carry on with whatever he was doing, and have tea later, or whether he was at a point in the mechanical operation to set his tools to one side and take a break.