This, thought Mma Ramotswe, was a good cue, and she took it. She remembered Rose’s warning, and she could see the afternoon, her precious Sunday afternoon, disappearing before her. “Well, I could always come back to visit you, Mma …”

“No,” said Mma Seeonyana quickly. “You must stay, Mma. I will make you some tea and then I can tell you about something that has been happening around here that is very strange.”

“You are very kind, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe sat down on the battered chair which Mma Seeonyana had pulled out of the doorway. This was duty, she supposed, and there were more uncomfortable ways of earning a living than listening to ladies like Mma Seeonyana gossiping about neighbourhood affairs. And one never knew what one might learn from such conversations. It was her duty to keep herself informed, as one could not tell when some snippet of information gathered in such a way would prove useful; just as the information about Mr Bobologo and the bar girls might prove useful, or might not. It was difficult to tell.

MMA MAKUTSI was also busy that Sunday, not on the affairs of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, but on the move to her new house. The simplest way of doing this would have been to ask Mma Ramotswe to bring her tiny white van to carry over her possessions, but she was unwilling to impose in this way. Mma Ramotswe was generous with her time, and would have readily agreed to help her, but Mma Makutsi was independent and decided to hire a truck and a driver for the hour or so it would take to move her effects to their new home. There was not much to move, after all: her bed, with its thin coir mattress which she would soon replace, her single chair, her black tin trunk with her clothes folded within it, and a box containing her shoes, her pot, pan, and small primus stove. These were the worldly goods of Mma Makutsi which were quickly piled up in the back of the truck by the muscular young man who drove up the bumpy track that morning.

“You have packed this well,” he said, making conversation as they drove the short distance to her new house. “I move things for people all the time. But they often have many boxes and plastic bags full of things. Sometimes they also have a grandmother to be moved, and I have to put the old lady in the back of the truck with all the other things.”

“That is no way to treat a grandmother,” said Mma Makutsi. “The grandmother should ride in the front.”

“I agree, Mma,” said the young man. “Those people who put their grandmother in the back of the truck, they will feel sorry when the grandmother is late. They will remember that they put her in the back of the truck, and it will be too late to do anything about it.”