Mma Ramotswe felt helpless in the face of medical uncertainty. It was not for her to make a pronouncement about why somebody died, and if that was the case, as it undoubtedly was, then she felt that all that she could do here was to exclude, if possible, some non-medical factor, something unusual that had resulted in three people all becoming late at the same time of the week and in the same bed. It was for this reason that she decided that the only thing to do—indeed the final thing that she intended to do in this particular investigation—would be to go to the hospital on a Friday at ten o’clock, which was one hour before the incidents had taken place, and to find out if there was anything to be noticed. One would have thought that the hospital authorities, and in particular Tati Monyena, would have thought of doing something like this, but then it had often struck Mma Ramotswe that people who were in the middle of things just did not pick up what might be glaringly obvious to those outside. She often saw things which other people missed—a fact which rather bemused her; that is why I have found my calling, she said to herself; I am called to help other people because I am lucky enough to be able to notice things. Of course, she knew where that particular ability came from—its roots were back in those early years under the tutelage of her cousin, who trained her to keep her eyes open, to notice all the little things that were happening when one did something as simple as go for a walk in the bush. Here, along the path, would be the tracks of the animals that had passed that way; there were the tiny prints of a duiker, the skittish miniature buck with its delicate miniature hooves; there were the signs of the labours of the dung beetle, pushing its trophy, so much bigger than itself, leaving those marks in the sand. And there, look, somebody had come this way while he was eating and had thrown the maize cob down on the ground, not all that long ago because the ants had not yet come to take possession of it. The cousin had an eye for these things, and the habit had been engrained in Mma Ramotswe’s mind. At the age of ten, she had known by heart the number plate of virtually every car in Mochudi and had been able to say who had driven in the direction of Gaborone on any morning. “You have eyes like mine,” said the cousin. “And that is a good thing.”