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night, out at my place, where the only light at night is the light of the moon and stars? And they can’t help you, Mma. The moon and stars are no help.”
    She made a conciliatory gesture. “No, you’re right, Rra. I can see why you are frightened.” She paused. Why had he come to her, rather than to the authorities? “You have been to the police?”
    He shook his head. “What can they do? They will say to me: somebody has killed your cattle, and then they will go away. How can they do anything more than that?”
    It was a common view, even if a misguided one. The Botswana Police did act, and the courts did work, even if in other, less fortunate countries one might not be able to say the same thing with great conviction. “They might be able to—if you gave them some idea of who was doing it.”
    His response came quickly. “I can’t. I have no idea.”
    “You have enemies, Rra? Enemies from the past? Mining enemies?”
    He appeared not to have expected this suggestion, and he frowned. “Why would I have enemies from mining? I was just the man who did the recruiting. I had nothing to do with what happened in the mines.”
    “No, I suppose you didn’t. I just think that it’s important to consider who may have a reason to do this to you. Is there anybody like that?”
    It is hard, she thought; it is hard for us to think of people who dislike us because none of us, in our heart, believes that we deserve the hate of others.
    He shook his head. “I have no idea, Mma. And that is why Ihave come to you. You are the one to find out these things and save my cattle. I am asking you to do that, Mma Ramotswe, because everybody says that you are the lady to help people.”
    YOU ARE THE LADY
to help people.
The words came back to her as she made her way home that evening. It was pleasing to know that people thought that of you, but worrying too. You could not help everybody—nobody could—because the world was too full of need and troubles, a wide ocean of them, and one person could not begin to deal with all that. And yet, even if you were just one person, and even if you could never solve everybody’s problems, when somebody came to you and looked frightened, you could not say,
Go away, I cannot do anything for you.
You say, instead,
Yes, I will do what I can.
And then, when you go home from work at the end of the day, you sit on your small verandah watching the day turn to dusk, nursing a cup of red bush tea in your hands, and wonder what on earth you can possibly do to help.

  CHAPTER FOUR
 

 RICH PEOPLE HAVE MANY CATTLE
    T HAT EVENING was one of the nights in the week that Phuti Radiphuti, proprietor of the Double Comfort Furniture Store, came to eat dinner at the modest rented house of his officially betrothed fiancée, Grace Makutsi, associate detective at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Their dinner arrangements had changed since the accident in which Phuti had lost his right foot and a small portion of his leg. Rescued from the clutches of his jealous aunt, during the rest of his recuperation he had been looked after by Mma Potokwane, who had found him a spare room in the back of her home at the orphan farm. At first Mma Makutsi had come to see him at the Potokwane house and had meals with him there, but this arrangement was never entirely satisfactory from her point of view.
    “It’s not that I don’t like Mma Potokwane,” she had said. “She is a very great lady—one of the greatest ladies in Botswana. But …”
    “You do not need to say it,” said Phuti. “She is also a very bossy lady. A good but bossy lady. I think there are many people like that.”
    Mma Makutsi smiled. “Yes. Have you noticed how she tells usto eat up after she has put the food on the table? It is as if she is talking to one of the children. ‘Eat up now—leave nothing on your plate.’ Have you noticed that?”
    Phuti had. “And she even told me the other day that I could have another piece of cake if I was