Mma Ramotswe had suspected it, but had put the thought to the back of her mind. Now, to her dismay, the possibility returned, and it chilled her. She could cope with anything. She understood very well what people were capable of, how cruel they could be, how perverse in their selfishness, how ruthless; she could cope with all that, and with all the general misfortunes of life. She was not afraid of human wickedness, which was usually tawdry and banal, something to be pitied, but there was one thing, one dark thing, which frightened her no matter how much she saw it for what it was. That thing, she now felt, might be present here, and it might explain why people were frightened.

She reached out and took her relative’s hand. And at that moment she knew that she had been right. His hand was shaking.

“You must tell me, Rra,” she whispered. “You must tell me what it is that is frightening you. Who has done it? Who has put a curse on this place?”

His eyes were wide. “There is no curse,” he said, his voice low. “There is no curse … yet.”

“Yet?”

“No. Not yet.”

Mma Ramotswe digested this information in silence. She was convinced that behind this there would be some scruffy witch doctor somewhere, a traditional healer, perhaps, who had found the profits of healing too small and had taken to the selling of charms and potions. It was a bit like a lion turning man-eater: an old lion, or an injured one, would discover that he could no longer run down his usual prey and turned to those slower two-legged creatures for easier pickings. It was easy for a healer to be tempted. Here’s something to make you strong; here’s something to deal with your enemies.

Of course, there was much less of that sort of thing than there used to be, but it still existed, and its effects could be potent. If you heard that somebody had put a curse on you, then however much you might claim not to believe in all that mumbo-jumbo, you would still feel uneasy. This was because there was always a part of the human mind that was prepared to entertain such notions, particularly at night, in the world of shadows, when there were sounds that one could not understand and when each one of us was in some sense alone. Some people found this intolerable, and succumbed, as if life itself simply gave out in the face of such evil; and when this happened, it served only to strengthen the belief of some that such things worked.

She looked at the relative, and saw his terror. She put her arms around him and whispered something. He looked at her, hesitated, and then whispered something in return.