Smile and be a Villain by Jeanne M. Dams

sleep.’
    â€˜Probably bats. Though I thought you did very well with them last night.’
    â€˜They’ll never be my favourite animals, but I admit my opinion of them went up when they kept the mosquitoes away. I was sorry about the hedgehogs, though.’
    â€˜Someone said the golf course is a good place to look for them. Perhaps tonight we’ll head that way and see if we can spot one.’
    â€˜If we can find the place in the dark. You know, I never realized how much light there was at night in Sherebury until we came here, with almost no lights at all away from the town.’
    â€˜And this is midsummer, with a fair amount of sky-light even in the middle of the night. Think what it must be like in the dead of winter.’
    I shivered. ‘With winds strong enough to destroy the breakwater. Thank you, but I’ll stay away in winter. Hand me that sweater, would you? It’s chilly this morning. And oh, Alan, look at the fog.’
    He had pulled the curtains open. ‘It’ll burn off. See, the sun is trying to break through. Did you have any particular plans for the day?’
    â€˜If the fog hangs around, I might just stay in and read. Some of those books we got are fascinating, and there are some good ones in the lounge, too.’
    â€˜You know, even if the fog does dissipate, and I’m reasonably sure it will, it might not be a bad idea to take it easy today. We’ve been keeping up a fairly brisk pace, and this is supposed to be a holiday. I hate to admit it, but I’m not as young as I was.’
    â€˜Whereas I, of course, get younger every day. It’s just my muscles and bones that don’t seem to know that. Let’s not make any plans, just go with the flow.’
    With the weekend approaching, some of the guests we’d begun to know a little were leaving and others coming in. I wondered, as I ate my simple breakfast of yogurt and fruit (chosen in guilty atonement for all the rich food I’d been eating), if it was possible that a murderer stood in the chatting group waiting for the taxi to the airport. We’d never actually talked to the other guests except to exchange greetings when we passed in the hall, small talk about the weather, that sort of thing. What if one of them …
    There were no Americans among them. I wasn’t sure what difference that might make.
    And it was not, I emphatically reminded myself, any business of mine anyway. Mr Abercrombie had not been murdered. He had met with an unfortunate accident. The fact that a number of people on the island had hated him was neither here nor there. Those innocent tourists could leave whenever they liked.
    I looked up and saw a half-smile on Alan’s face. ‘Oh, hush!’ I said crossly, and asked for another cup of coffee. He hadn’t said a word, but sometimes it can be very annoying to have one’s mind read so consistently.
    The fog had gone by the time we finished eating, and the sun was shining for all it was worth. We made a pot of tea and took it and our books out into the lovely little garden behind the B & B. The sun warmed the small walled space so much that I didn’t need my sweater, though we sat in the shade of a large fuchsia bush. This, I thought, was more like it. This was a holiday. Sitting in a garden, doing nothing, listening to the hum of bees and the liquid song of a blackbird, so unlike the harsh cries of blackbirds back in Indiana.
    That mellow mood lasted for about ten minutes. I picked up a book, read a few paragraphs, put it aside. Picked up another one. Didn’t get past the cover illustration.
    I stood up. ‘Alan, I can’t stand it.’
    â€˜I didn’t imagine you would,’ he said, never looking up from his book. ‘Did you bring a notebook?’
    â€˜No, I took everything out of my purse that I could, because of the weight restrictions.’
    â€˜You’d better go buy one. And a pen or two.’ He