For a few moments, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni sat quite still. He had no way of telling which of the two men was Mma Botumile’s husband, which meant that either he would have to give up and go home, or he would have to make a very quick decision and follow one of them. It would be easy enough to drive off and abandon the enquiry, but that would involve going back to Mma Ramotswe and telling her that he had failed at his attempt at doing what he understood to be the simplest and most basic of the procedures of her profession. He had not read Clovis Andersen’s The Principles of Private Detection, of course, and he wondered whether Mma Ramotswe’s trusted vade mecum would give any instruction on what to do in circumstances like this. Presumably he would point out that you must at least have a description of the person you are interested in at the outset, which of course he had not obtained.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni made a snap decision. He would follow the first car as it came out. There were no grounds for thinking that this was Mr. Botumile, but he had to choose, and he might as well…Or should he go for the second? There was something about the second which looked suspicious. The driver of the first car was obviously acting confidently and decisively in leaving first. That showed a clear conscience, whereas the second driver, contemplating the dissemblance and the tryst that lay ahead, showed the hesitation of one with a guilty conscience. It was a slender straw of surmise, but one which Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni grasped at in the absence of anything better. That would impress Clovis Andersen—and Mma Ramotswe—he thought: a decision based on a sound understanding of human psychology—and from a garage mechanic too!