When Loveness had said she clearly remembered that S’jumba had brought Daisy to the village five years earlier, about a year after the constable himself had paid them his unforgettable visit, some disagreed with her and said they clearly remembered Daisy arriving when Loveness’s father was still alive. Others said they clearly remembered Daisy arriving when the British had just finished fighting their second war with the Germans; and still others said they clearly remembered Daisy arriving during the Great Rains, and that she had not been pregnant when she arrived.

When Loveness said that Daisy was probably from Bechuanaland, some disagreed and said they had heard her once say something about Nyasaland that made them think she came from there; others said she spoke their language so fluently that they had always felt she was a member of their tribe; and others still said she had not spoken their language fluently at all and that they had always been convinced she was from another country, a country much further afield than Bechuanaland or Nyasaland … Tanganyika, perhaps. And so, instead of clearing things up for the constable, the villagers kept muddying the waters further and further.

In the end, all that could be agreed upon was that on the last night anyone had seen Daisy, it had rained, and some villagers had heard the engine of a motor car start and the car drive off. Since the only person who had a motor car in the village was Jasper Mlangeni, the Idlazonke General Goods and Bottle Store shopkeeper, and since Jasper Mlangeni was actually in the City of Kings on the night in question, what the villagers actually agreed upon was of absolutely no use to Constable Spokes Moloi.

Had the villagers done this a few years earlier, Loveness would have thought that they were making things difficult for the constable because they remembered how his inability to keep the things he knew to himself had cost them their headman. But they had, for some years now, grown accustomed to the leadership of Zwakele Mkhize’s son; Loveness had to accept that they all said something that was really nothing to the constable because they were in complete awe of a Spokes Moloi in uniform.