“That is true,” said Teenie. She frowned before continuing. “But then if they are so happy, why do I have somebody who is stealing from me? That is what I cannot understand—I really can’t. They are stealing supplies. Paper. Inks. The supply cupboards are always half-empty.”

From the moment that Teenie mentioned staff, Mma Makutsi had anticipated this. It was one of the commonest complaints that clients brought to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, although not quite as common as the errant husband complaint. Botswana was not a dishonest country—quite the contrary, really—but it was inevitable that there would be some who would cheat and steal and do all the unhelpful and unpleasant things that humanity was heir to. That had started a long time back, at the point at which some Eden somewhere had gone wrong, and somebody had picked up a stone and hurled it at another. It was in us, thought Mma Makutsi; it was in all of us, somewhere deep down in our very nature. When we were children we had to be taught to hold it in check, to banish it; we had to be taught to be concerned with the feelings of others. And that, she thought, was where things went wrong. Some children were just not taught, or would not learn, or were governed by some impulse within them that stopped them from feeling and understanding. Later on, there was very little one could do about these people, other than to thwart them. Mma Ramotswe, of course, said that you could be kind to them, to show them the way, but Mma Makutsi had her doubts about that; one could be too kind, she thought.

“People steal,” said Mma Makutsi. “No matter how kind you are to them, there are some people who will steal. Even from their own family, in their own house. That happens, you know.”

Teenie fixed her pleading eyes on Mma Makutsi. It occurred to Mma Makutsi that the woman in front of her wanted her to say that people did not steal, that the world was not a place where this sort of thing happened. She could not give her that reassurance, because, well, because it would be absurd. One could not say the world was other than it was.

“I’m sorry about that,” Mma Makutsi went on. “It obviously makes you unhappy, Mma.”

Teenie was quick to agree. “It’s like being hurt somewhere here,” she said, moving her hand to her chest and placing it above the sternum. “It’s a horrible feeling. This thief is not a person who comes at night and takes from you—it’s somebody you see every day, who smiles at you, who asks how you have slept; all of that. It is one of your brothers or sisters.”