“I wanted to talk to you, my sisters,” said Mma Makutsi. “I want to find out about that woman who has come to visit this house, the one who drives that Mercedes-Benz. You know that one?”

The younger maid dropped the stick. The older one nodded. “Yes, we know that woman.”

“Who is she?”

The younger retrieved her stick and looked up at Mma Makutsi. “She is a very important lady, that one! She comes to the house and sits in the chairs and drinks tea. That is who she is.”

The other one chuckled. “But she is also a very tired lady,” she said. “Poor lady, she works so hard that she has to go and lie down in the bedroom a lot, to regain her strength.”

The younger one burst into a peal of laughter. “Oh yes,” she said. “There is much resting done in that bedroom. He helps her to rest her poor legs. Poor lady.”

Mma Makutsi joined in their laughter. She knew immediately that this was going to be much easier than she had imagined it would be. Mma Ramotswe was right, as usual; people liked to talk, and, in particular, they liked to talk about people who annoyed them in some way. All one had to do was to discover the grudge and the grudge itself would do all the work. She felt in her pocket for the two fifty pula notes; it might not even be necessary to use them after all. If this were the case, she might ask Mma Ramotswe to authorise their payment to her uncle.

“Who is the man who lives in this house?” she said. “Has he no wife of his own?”

This was the signal for them both to giggle. “He has a wife all right,” said the older one. “She lives out at their village, up near Mahalaype. He goes there at weekends. This lady here is his town wife.”

“And does the country wife know about this town wife?”

“No,” said the older woman. “She would not like it. She is a Catholic woman, and she is very rich. Her father had four shops up there and bought a big farm. Then they came and dug a big mine on that farm and so they had to pay that woman a lot of money. That is how she bought this big house for her husband. But she does not like Gaborone.”

“She is one of those people who never likes to leave the village,” the younger maid interjected. “There are some people like that. She lets her husband live here to run some sort of business that she owns down here. But he has to go back every Friday, like a schoolboy going home for the weekend.”

Mma Makutsi looked at the kettle. It was a very hot day, and she wondered if they would offer her tea. Fortunately the older maid noticed her glance and made the offer.