Such advice would not be well received, and could well be misinterpreted. The client might take it as a disparaging reference to a wife or husband, for example, and it could be awkward explaining that the solution lay in the mattress rather than in any person upon the mattress. Mind you, that was often the case too, she suspected, but she could not say that either.

Mma Ramotswe sighed and took a sip from her cup of bush tea. She had been obliged to make the tea herself, in the absence of Mma Makutsi, and this brought home to her the implications of Mma Makutsi’s marriage, if it ever took place. Her assistant had spontaneously assured her that becoming Mrs. Phuti Radiphuti would make no difference to her career, and that she had every intention of continuing to work as an associate detective, but Mma Ramotswe wondered about this. She did not doubt the sincerity of Mma Makutsi’s assurance—Mma Makutsi would never lie to her—but she wondered whether the distractions involved in being married to a man with a large furniture store would simply prove too much for her assistant. And if that were to be the case, then who would make the tea in the agency? And who would collect the mail, and do the filing, and answer the telephone? And who would go out to buy doughnuts from the Lucky Chance Tuck Shop round the corner on Friday mornings, when they treated themselves?

There were so many respects in which Mma Makutsi would be missed—not only in those practical ways, but in ways connected with the moral support she gave Mma Ramotswe and in the inspiration which so often flowed from their casual discussion of a troubling case. Mma Makutsi tackled problems from a slightly different angle than did Mma Ramotswe, and asked slightly different questions. That perspective often led to a solution, and cut short the time which Mma Ramotswe would otherwise have spent on a case. It would be sorely missed, as would the tea and the doughnuts, and all the rest.

Now, for instance, in the absence of Mma Makutsi, Mma Ramotswe was having to work out for herself how she might approach the case of Mma Sebina, with her hidden past and her unknown relatives. If Mma Makutsi had been there, she might well have said something which would trigger a productive line of inquiry. But she was not, and there was no point in speculating what she might have said. Or was there?

Mma Ramotswe closed her eyes for a moment and imagined her assistant at her desk.

“Now then, Mma Makutsi,” she muttered. “What do we have here? We have Mma Sebina, who now knows that her mother was not her mother and her father was not her father. So that means that—”