Free An Unmentionable Murder by Kate Kingsbury Page A

to join Polly on the bed. “You really don’t think those nitwits down at the police station will find him, do you? They couldn’t find a raisin in a currant bun.”
    Polly felt a quiver of fear. “So what are you going to do?”
    Sadie grinned. “Not me. Us. You and me. We’re going to find out who’s stealing ladies’ drawers from the washing lines. If we don’t, we’ll never be able to hang our washing out again until he’s caught. Not that we’ve got much underwear left to hang out, anyway.”
    The fear turned to dread. “How the blazes are we supposed to do that?”
    Sadie pulled her feet up onto the bed and hugged her knees. “I got it all worked out. Your mum sleeps all morning, right?”
    â€œRight. She works until five in the morning then comes home and sleeps until the afternoon.”
    â€œWell, the knickers disappear off the line in the mornings. So what we do, we hang out a bunch of them at your house, then keep watch to see if someone steals them.”
    Polly stared at her. “I haven’t got a bunch of them. Most of them went off the line.”
    â€œBlast.” Sadie frowned. “Well, the only thing to do is collect as many pairs as we can from the manor.”
    â€œViolet won’t let us do that. She already said we weren’t to go after the thief.”
    Sadie dropped her chin to her knees. “Then we’ll just have to steal them from other people’s lines.”
    Polly squealed in horror. “We can’t do that. They’ll put us in prison.”
    â€œWe’ll give them all back later.” Sadie lifted her head, her eyes gleaming with excitement. “After all, if the thief gets them first, they wouldn’t get them back. We’d be doing everyone a favor. And if we take all the knickers off the lines and put them on yours, then the thief will have to steal them from your line and we’ll catch him in the act.” She patted her own shoulder. “Brilliant, Sadie. Bloody brilliant.”
    â€œViolet doesn’t like us saying that word,” Polly murmured.
    â€œPiss on Violet.” Having thoroughly shocked Polly, she laughed. “Come on, Pol, don’t you want to see this bugger put in a loony bin where he belongs?”
    â€œI s’pose so.” She really didn’t want anything to do with him, but she couldn’t tell Sadie that. Sadie was so daring and Polly dearly wanted to be like her, even if it did get them in trouble sometimes. “Maybe if we ask people they’ll give us their knickers to put on the line,” she suggested hopefully.
    â€œNah.” Sadie’s bunches of hair bounced as she shook her head. “They’d be too embarrassed. We’ll just have to borrow them and give them back later. They can’t call it stealing then. Besides, once we catch the real thief, everyone will be so grateful they’ll forgive us anything.”
    Though she was still nervous about the whole thing, Polly nodded her head. “All right, then. Let’s do it.” After all, she told herself, she couldn’t afford to lose any more underwear. “What will we do if we see him? What if he’s big and strong?” Remembering the terrible news about the rag and bone man, she added fearfully, “What if he has a gun and shoots us?”
    Sadie clicked her tongue. “Silly, we won’t try to grab him or anything. We’ll follow him and see where he goes and then we’ll tell George where he is.”
    â€œOh.” That helped her feel a little better. “All right, then. When?”
    â€œTomorrow. That’s when you’ll be collecting the rents, right?”
    Polly nodded.
    â€œAll right, then. Lady Elizabeth will think you’re in the village collecting rents, and Violet never bothers about where I am in the mornings so long as everything’s kept clean, so no one will miss us. We’ll go