Then had come the section on reading upside down. “Now there can be no doubt,” he wrote—and how she loved that phrase, there can be no doubt; how assured it was, how definitive—“Now there can be no doubt but that being able to read upside down is extremely useful and is, in fact, a skill well worth mastering. It enables you to read a document that lies before the person on the other side of the desk from you. They may think that you cannot read it; they may think that they can tell you what is in the document without your being able to verify their version. But they reckon without your ability to read upside down!”

Indeed they do, thought Mma Ramotswe.

“And it also enables you,” Clovis Andersen continued, “to read papers lying about on a suspect’s desk. These are usually facing the wrong way, and you cannot necessarily turn them round. Nor will it do to turn your head.”

Mma Ramotswe had imagined the contortions such a manoeuvre would entail and had decided that it was impossible to angle one’s head and neck in such a way as to be able to read satisfactorily. It could not be done, she decided, unless one were somehow to upend oneself—to do a handstand, so to speak—which would be difficult and self-defeating, as one’s dress would drop down over one’s head and eyes and effectively prevent one from seeing anything, let alone reading. And it would be difficult to explain what was happening if the suspect returned to his office and found a visitor with her legs pointing up to the ceiling. Anything you might say in such circumstances would surely sound somewhat weak. “I was practising my handstands—I hope you don’t mind.” Nobody would believe that, not even the normally gullible. They would suspect that something untoward was happening—and they would be right about that.