She could not contain herself. Now that her vague suspicions about Mma Sheba had turned into actual knowledge – the proven fact that the lawyer stood to benefit from the Molapo estate – everything was changed. She wanted – she needed – to talk to somebody about this and, as she drove back to the office, she realised that the only person with whom she could discuss the afternoon’s discovery, the only person who would truly understand the implications, was Mma Makutsi. She could talk to Mr J. L. B. Matekoni about it, of course, and he would listen courteously, as he always did; but for all his attentiveness, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni looked at situations as a man, and men, for all their merits, thought about things differently from the way women thought about them. And without wishing to belittle men whatsoever, Mma Ramotswe felt that on balance, just on balance, women often saw things that men might miss. So a man, considering this matter, might say, ‘That Mma Sheba is simply accepting a gift from an old friend’; while a woman was far more likely to say, ‘Well, well, she may be a lawyer but she’s clearly used her female wiles to get that poor late man to leave her this so-called residue’. And what a residue it was: not merely a few scraps of otherwise unwanted property, bits and pieces left over when relatives had taken their pickings – as the term residue might imply – but the most valuable asset that Rra Edgar had possessed: his farm.

Halfway back to the office, while driving through a pool of storm water that had suddenly appeared at the edge of the road, she decided that she would not go back to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency after all and would go instead to the Radiphuti house. Mma Makutsi would be bound to be in and would surely welcome a visit. She had confessed to Mma Ramotswe that staying at home with nobody to talk to could be tedious, and so the chance to discuss the Molapo case would be a welcome break. There was no doubt that motherhood was a great privilege, Mma Makutsi had said, but it could bring loneliness too.