Mma Ramotswe smiled. “This city is a village still, Mma. You knew who I was.”

“Everybody knows who you are,” said Mma Bothoko. “They see your sign when they drive down the Tlokweng Road. It is a very unusual business. A ladies’ detective agency—there are not many of those, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe noticed that as she raised the glass to her lips, Mma Bothoko’s hand shook. That could be nervousness, or it could be the onset of an illness. Clovis Andersen said watch the body language, but he very specifically warned against judging people’s nervousness. Innocent people can be very nervous, he wrote. A shaking hand may mean nothing. Once again, the rule is: don’t jump to conclusions!

There was a polite silence. Then Mma Ramotswe said, “You’ll be wondering why I’m here, Mma.”

Mma Bothoko put down her glass. As she looked at Mma Ramotswe, her lower lip trembled.

“You want to speak to me, I suppose,” she said.

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “Yes, I want to speak to you about a long time ago.”

Mma Bothoko said nothing. She reached for her glass. Her hand shook more noticeably as she took another sip of water. Charlie saw it now and threw Mma Ramotswe a glance.

“Have you lived here for a long time, Mma?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

The question seemed to distract Mma Bothoko, who asked Mma Ramotswe to repeat it before she answered.

“We have been here for a very long time, Mma. This house belonged to my father-in-law before my husband took it over. He—my husband’s father—had it from the time it was built in 1968.”

“So nobody else has lived here?”

“No. Just us.”

Mma Ramotswe put down her glass. “Then in that case…”

She had intended to say that they would not keep her, but before she could do so Mma Bothoko had begun to wail.

“Oh, Mma, it was a long time ago. It was very long. And nobody knew the pressure he had been under. Nobody knew what it was like for him in those days.”

Mma Ramotswe held up her hands. “Mma, I didn’t—”

But Mma Bothoko was not for stopping. “Things were different then, Mma. It was not easy to tell what was what—maybe you’re too young, Mma, maybe you don’t know about how it was—but speak to anybody my age, Mma, and they’ll tell you. Thomas was no different from anybody else. If anything, he was better than the rest of them.”

Mma Ramotswe tried again. “I didn’t come here,” she began, “to talk about—”

Once more she was interrupted—this time by a further wail, an incoherent jumble of words and half-words, intermixed with sobs. Charlie, astonished and embarrassed, looked to Mma Ramotswe for guidance, but she was at a loss.