‘I heard the story from the woman who sells vegetables over on the other side of the road,’ Mma Soleti went on to explain. ‘She said that she heard it from two different people. They both said, “Don’t ever go to that place – there is a woman now who has no face left because of her.” That is what she said, Mma. She said that she was only telling me about it because she thought I should know what people were saying.’

Mma Ramotswe shook her head in disbelief. ‘People can be very foolish,’ she said. ‘They believe everything they hear; they don’t ask themselves whether it can be true.’

‘And then I have a daughter, Mma, as you might know,’ continued Mma Soleti. ‘She came home from school crying. She said that there were girls whispering the same story to each other, looking at her and sniggering. The children said that somebody had found this woman’s face in a bucket. She was very upset.’

‘This is very bad, Mma,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘But I don’t think you should leap to any conclusions.’

‘I have not leapt to any conclusions,’ retorted Mma Soleti. ‘All that I am saying is that it is the same person – it is the same person who sent me the feather. That is the person who has started this wicked rumour about my salon.’ She looked at Mma Ramotswe defiantly. ‘There can be no doubt about that, Mma.’

‘That is a conclusion, Mma,’ ventured Mma Ramotswe, thinking of what Clovis Andersen said in the very first chapter of The Principles of Private Detection. He wrote: You wouldn’t leap on to the first bus or train that came along without knowing its destination, would you? Find out the evidence first, examine the possibilities, and then see if you have grounds to draw a conclusion. It was sound advice – like all the advice that Clovis Andersen offered in his book. What a nice man he was, too, thought Mma Ramotswe nostalgically. And to think that she and Mma Makutsi had actually met him, had sat with him drinking tea – a man who had written a book had sat talking to them and had been so courteous in his manner. That was what Americans were really like, she reflected. Not some of the Americans you saw on the cinema screens who were always shouting at people and chasing one another in cars – not those Americans, but the Americans like Clovis Andersen who listened politely and spoke without shouting.

Sensing that her version of events was doubted, Mma Soleti issued a challenge. ‘Well, who else could it be, Mma?’