THAT MONDAY, Mma Ramotswe had an appointment. Most of her clients did not bother to arrange a time to see her, preferring to drop in unannounced and-in some cases-without disclosing their identity. Mma Ramotswe understood why people should wish to do this. It was not easy to consult a detective agency, especially if one had a problem of a particularly private nature, and many people had to pluck up considerable courage before they knocked on her door. She understood that doctors sometimes encountered similar behaviour; that patients would talk about everything except the real problem and then, at the last moment, mention what was really troubling them. She had read somewhere-in one of the old magazines that Mma Makutsi liked to page through-of a doctor who had been consulted by a man wearing a paper bag over his head. Poor man, thought Mma Ramotswe. It must be terrible to feel so embarrassed about something that one would have to wear a paper bag over one’s head! What was wrong with that man? she wondered. Things did go wrong with men sometimes that they were ashamed to talk about, but there was really no need to feel that way.

Mma Ramotswe had never encountered embarrassment of such a degree, but she had certainly had to draw stories out of people. This happened most commonly with women who had been let down by their husbands, or who suspected that their husbands were having an affair.