Kate Kingsbury - An Unmentional Murder

Polly felt a pang at the mention of Sam’s name. “I still miss him sometimes,” she said wistfully. “I know one thing: I’ll never get that silly over another Yank. I don’t even want to go out with another Yank. I’ll be sticking to the English from now on.”

“Like the boy you’re writing to in Italy?” Sadie grinned. “When’s he coming home, then?”

“I dunno. He’d be going home to Surrey, anyway. That’s where he lives.”

Sadie shook her head. “You do pick ’em. That’s miles away, near London. How’re you going to see him if he lives all that way away?”

That was something Polly didn’t want to think about right then. “It’s a lot closer than America,” she pointed out.

“Yes, but-”

Deciding she’d had enough of the subject, Polly interrupted her. “What if Ma sees all this washing on the line? She’ll wonder where it came from. What am I going to tell her? What’s going to happen when Lady Elizabeth goes looking for her clean knickers? What’s Violet going to say if she finds you missing all day?”

“Would you stop worrying!” Sadie stuck another peg on the knickers on the line. “In the first place, think about when our drawers got stolen-it was daytime, wasn’t it? He didn’t take them at night.”

“Yes, but-”

“If he doesn’t come by the time your mum wakes up, we’ll take them all off the line and I’ll take them back to the manor. Then we’ll try again tomorrow, all right?”

It sounded all right, Polly had to admit. Even so, she couldn’t help the niggling feeling deep in her stomach that they were asking for trouble. Somehow, whenever she did things like this with Sadie, something always went wrong. She just hoped that this time, something would go right.

“How long are we supposed to be out here anyway?” Clara whined, wrapping her cardigan closer around her thin body. “My boys will be wanting their dinner before too long.”

“It won’t hurt them to wait a bit.” Marge lifted the field glasses and peered through them. She could see nothing but a flat ocean and a sky studded with puffy clouds. No dark shadows beneath the surface that might suggest an enemy submarine. No pinpoints of light twinkling signals to someone onshore. It was all so bloody boring.

“I don’t know if they will wait,” Clara grumbled. She leaned back on the hard park bench and stretched out her legs in front of her. “They’re growing lads, you know.”

Marge lowered the field glasses. “They’re always eating, your boys. I don’t know how you manage it with everything on ration like it is.”

“I fill ’em up with bread and potatoes. At least we can get plenty of that.” Clara held out her hand. “Want me to look for a bit?”

“Nah. There’s nothing out there. I don’t know why Rita’s so blinking anxious to have us sit out here all morning. If anything’s coming in from the beach they’re not going to do it in daylight, now are they?”

Clara shrugged her shoulders. “Dunno. They might, if they want to get across the sand without stepping on a mine.”

“Well, all I can say is, if I were a German, I’d wait until it was dark and take my chances with the mines.”

“Seeing as how the rag and bone man got shot in the head by a German, I’d say they’re already here.”

Marge’s stomach did a somersault. “Gawd almighty, I never thought of that. All Rita said was that there might be a spy in the village.”

“There could be a whole lot of them. A whole bloody German battalion. How the ’eck would we know if they came in the middle of the night? There’s no one out here to watch for them at night. No one wants to leave their children alone at night to watch for Germans.”

Marge’s heart started banging away like a big bass drum as Clara began wailing in a high-pitched voice, “What’ll we do if they’re here already? We can’t fight them all by ourselves. They’ll take us away and put us in one of them terrible prison camps!”

Already Marge could envision them all starving and freezing to death, staring through the wire fences at the guards pointing guns at them. The picture made her feel faint. Determined not to let Clara know how frightened she was, she said stoutly, “Of course we can’t fight them on our own. That’s what the army’s for, silly. We’ll just ring the army base in Beerstowe from the post office and tell them where they are.”

“But we don’t know where they are!” Clara wailed even louder.

“Well, we’ll just have to find them then.”

“The American base is closer,” Clara said, visibly shivering now. “We could get the Yanks to come. They’ve got guns, too. They’d get here quicker.”

“We’ll ring them both,” Marge assured her. “And the constables. But first we have to find them.”

“Where could they be? Do you think they’re hiding in the woods?”

“They might be.” Marge frowned. The idea of traipsing through the woods looking for Germans who could jump out on them any moment or even shoot them was not her idea of a fun afternoon. A thought struck her and she brightened. “You know what? I think they’d hide in the old windmill. They could keep watch from the windows at the top and they’d have shelter at night if it rained.” The more she thought about it, the more feasible it seemed. “Yes, that’s where they’d be. I think we should look there first.”

Clara didn’t seem at all enthusiastic about the idea. “Why don’t we just tell the constables where we think they are? Then they can call in the army.”

“Don’t be daft.” Marge shook her head in disgust. “We’re going to look right ninnies, aren’t we, if we call in the army and there’s no one there. First we have to go up there and make sure they’re there, then we can go back to the village and raise merry hell.”

“I don’t think-,” Clara began, but Marge, who was impatient to get it over with and get back home where it was safe, wouldn’t let her finish.

“We’re going,” she said firmly. “It won’t take that long to walk out there and take a peek at the windmill.”

“It’s an awfully long way back,” Clara muttered. “ ’ Specially if we have to run all the way.”

Marge crossed her arms across her chest and glared at her friend. “Do you want to win this war or not? How are we going to save the village if we sit on our backsides and do nothing? That’s what we joined the Housewives League for, wasn’t it? To protect the village?”

“Actually I joined it for the knitting parties,” Clara mumbled.

Marge let out her breath in disgust. “Come on. Let’s get one over on Rita. She’ll never forgive us if we manage to get a whole battalion of Germans captured. We’ll probably be in all the newspapers and on the wireless news.”

Clara’s eyes widened. “You really think so? Rita will be so cross.”

“Green with bloody envy, that’s what she’ll be.” Marge grinned. “I can’t wait to see her face when she finds out.” She pushed herself to her feet. “Come on, let’s go and find those Nazis before someone else gets there first. This is one war effort we’re going to do all by ourselves.”

Having sent Polly out to collect the rents, Elizabeth had the office to herself that morning. She found it impossible to concentrate on anything, however. A considerable portion of her mind was engaged in the hope that Earl would call, even though he’d warned her that it could be some time before he could contact her again.

Rather than sit there in what she knew was hopeless futility, she decided to call on Bob Redding. In spite of the favorable opinions she’d heard about the man, she wanted to satisfy herself that he hadn’t taken a gun and ended the life of the man who had more or less killed his daughter.