Mr. Polopetsi glanced through the door into the garage workshop beyond. “There is not much going on through there,” he said. “If you give me just an hour or so, I shall finish doing one or two things through there. Then I shall be ready.”

Mma Ramotswe agreed. He could have the hour in the garage, and then they would go off to the small village south of Gaborone where Mma Sebina had started her life’s journey, or where she might have started it. While Mr. Polopetsi busied himself with his remaining garage chores, Mma Ramotswe tackled the morning’s filing, a task normally performed by Mma Makutsi. She could have left it, of course, for Mma Makutsi to do when she came in later, but she had nothing else to do and it would be interesting, she decided, to see whether she would be able to adapt herself to the system which Mma Makutsi used; she would have to do this if the new Mrs. Phuti Radiphuti ended up working in the Double Comfort Furniture Shop rather than in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, as was perfectly possible.