“I needed to get into the filing cabinet,” explained Mma Ramotswe. “And you are the one who locks that. Maybe we should keep the key in some place where I can find it if I need it and you are not here.”

Mma Makutsi shook her head. “I never lock the cabinet, Mma. I used to, but I don’t any more. The key was bent and didn’t fit very well, and so I do not lock the drawers.”

Mma Ramotswe moved over and gave the top drawer of the filing cabinet a tug. It did not budge. “I think it is locked, Mma,” she said. “Perhaps it has locked itself.”

And that was when Mma Ramotswe’s earlier embarrassment over the photograph was compounded, as Mma Makutsi reached for the top drawer of the cabinet and gave it a sharp tug, at the same time pressing at the second drawer with her right knee.

“There, Mma, you see. You see—it opens.”

“So there is just a knack?”

“There is a just a knack.”

It was clear to Mma Ramotswe that even a cup of tea and a doughnut would not lift Mma Makutsi’s mood, and so it was with some relief that she greeted Mr. Polopetsi’s popping his head round the door to inform her that he had finished his tasks in the garage and was free to accompany her on her mission. She explained to Mma Makutsi what she was going off to do, but Mma Makutsi still seemed sunk in her bad mood and so she eventually tiptoed out of the office as one would when somebody had a throbbing headache and found noise painful. It is my own office, she said to herself; and Mr. Polopetsi, as he watched her leave, thought very much the same thing. She should tell that woman where the limits are, he thought; it is her own office and she is the one who pays her. I feel sorry for that poor man Phuti Radiphuti. Imagine being married to Mma Makutsi and having to look into those large glasses all the time. Poor man—it is the end for you, Phuti Radiphuti, it really is. The end.

MMA SEBINA had been brought up in Otse, a village only twenty minutes or so out of Gaborone to the south. It was much smaller than Mochudi, the village where Mma Ramotswe had grown up, and even more intimate as a result. As Mma Ramotswe turned her van off the Lobatse Road, Mr. Polopetsi asked how they would go about finding a friend of Mma Sebina’s late mother.

Mma Ramotswe steered the van past a particularly large hole in the road. “Well, Rra,” she said, “I have always followed a very simple rule in these matters. When I want to find something out, I usually ask somebody directly. That is the best way to get information: you ask for it and it is given to you.”