Magic Outside the Box

by Honor Raconteur

  “I’ve got a containment bag for it.” As I turned to collect my bag from the vestibule, I called over my shoulder, “Don’t touch it with your bare hands or Jamie will skin you!”

  There was a weighty pause from behind me. “But we already did.”

  Sodding deities. We had, hadn’t we? I looked at the bullet in my hand and winced. Well, that was not going to go over well. I readied a mental apology as I placed the bullet into the bag and then locked it into my black bag. Nothing to be done for it now.

  Seaton and I divided up the study and searched every nook and cranny. We assumed that to be the most logical place to start. Burtchell had spent the most time in this room, according to his housekeeper. Two of his desk drawers were locked, and they proved difficult in the extreme, shut down as they were by locking spells. I went through my arsenal of anti-locking spells to absolutely no avail and ended up scowling at the stubborn lock.

  My colleague snickered at my struggles. “Some cat burglar you would make.”

  “Like any cat burglar would have the gonads to try and rob a royal mage, retired or not,” I sassed back. Gesturing toward the drawer, I challenged, “You try.”

  He sauntered over and hit it with a spell, only to have that frizzle to nothing with barely a spark to show the effort. “Well, well, well, I see why you’re struggling. He’s used an Octagon lock. Clever man, weren’t you, Burtchell? Hmm.”

  “Tell me we won’t be forced to break the desk apart to get in.”

  “No, I think I can do it. It will just take more than a second.”

  I gave him space to work in, resuming his search on the other side of the room. The curtains hid nothing, the two landscapes in the room hid nothing, and I was about to take the bookshelves apart when I noticed that the baseboard near the corner was ever so slightly detached from the wall. A wall safe? Or floor safe? Kneeling down, I poked and prodded at the area and finally saw the slightly indented space near the corner, perfectly sized for a man’s thumb. I pushed down on it firmly and the floorboard popped up with a mechanical snick. “Ha!”

  “Ooooh, floor safe?” Seaton’s head came up like a dog with a new scent. “Is it under magical protections?”

  “A few, two basic spells to be precise. I think he assumed the main protection was the wards of the house.” This lack of protection didn’t make sense otherwise. Unless, of course, the safe was empty.

  These basic protections I knew how to clear and did so without true effort or fanfare. The safe was built into the floor, not just settled into a cavity, and it was the perfect size for a stab-bound ledger and not much more. When I opened the door, I saw precisely one ledger, bound in grey, and carefully levered it out. There were no markings on the cover, nothing to give a hint of the inside.

  Flipping it open, I initially blinked down at it in confusion. I couldn’t for the life of me understand what I was looking at. And yet, something about it was familiar…

  “Seaton,” I asked with slow deliberation, “by any chance was Burtchell involved with the study of Belladonna’s work?”

  “Indeed he was. Why? Oh bollocks, is that what you have in your hand?”

  “I don’t know.” I levered up onto my feet, using the wall to assist me, so that he could take a look. “But these inserted pages are in her handwriting. I’ve looked at it too much to mistake it for anyone else’s.”

  Seaton stopped fiddling with the desk lock and reached out both hands. I put the ledger into them and watched as he flipped it about and stared at it hard. “You’re right. That’s Belladonna’s handwriting. He’s organized it and bound it together—we both know she wasn’t sane or organized enough to do this—but it’s her work. I’d consulted with him about it through correspondence. He was an expert in transportation magic. He was the perfect person to look this over.”

  We shared a speaking look. This information was definitely worth killing over. I wasn’t sure why the killer hadn’t searched for it—or maybe he had, and had done it so discreetly we saw no sign of it. Or perhaps he’d not had the chance. There was a lot of foot traffic in and out of the house that morning.

  “I don’t know what to do with this,” Seaton admitted frankly. “It seems dangerous to leave the ledger here.”

  “I absolutely do not want it lying about in a house with wards that have already been defeated once. We’ll abscond with it discreetly. Let’s clear all signs of our search and set a trap in place. If someone does poke their nose where they shouldn’t, we’ll know.”

  Seaton nodded in agreement. “I’ll get into these drawers, just in case he divided the information into different places.”

  “He likely did. The safe was barely large enough to hold this ledger.” I eyed the desk with narrowed focus. “How long do you expect that to take?”

  My friend let out a weary sigh that could have lasted him ten years. “That is the question, isn’t it?”

  Penny ticked things off on her fingers as we walked along the main road. “We need to sort out who all had keys to the house, figure out who his early morning visitor was, and his schedule from the day before. Cor, but those last two will be a doozy to figure out, won’t they?”

  I grimaced agreement. “Unfortunately. What I wouldn’t give for social media. But, the upside to this is that we’re in a relatively small town. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out. It’ll just take some legwork. Now, first question, who’s the locksmith in this joint?”

  Snapping her fingers, Penny agreed, “He’d know how many sets of keys are to that house. He would have made them. That’s a good question. The constable will know, wouldn’t he?”

  “I’d assume so, but let’s not walk all the way to the station just to ask a question.” The day was already hot, and if not for the cool breeze coming in from the ocean, I’d be sweltering in my clothes. I didn’t know why it was drummed into this society’s heads that one had to be wearing a jacket in order to be ‘properly’ attired for public, but when I figured out whose brainchild that was, I’d wring their neck for it. Normally I’d just ditch the coat, roll up my sleeves, and be done with it. But unfortunately, on a job, I had to adhere to dress codes.

  I could only imagine how Penny felt in her thick cotton uniform. It was a dark color, too, absorbing the heat. She wasn’t sweating—yet—but I made plans to find a shaded and cool place for lunch.

  At least trees lined the sidewalks and awnings framed the doors, giving us patches of shade to walk through. The area around here didn’t have much in the way of trees, and the ones here were obviously planted by the townspeople. I appreciated their efforts. People eyed us in curiosity as we passed them, the ladies all in their skirts and parasols, the gentlemen in their light linen suits. It looked and felt like I’d dropped into a Jane Austen novel. Even after being on this planet barely a year, the site was jarring to me at random moments.

  “It seems a nice enough place,” Penny remarked casually. Then she dropped her tone to complain, “Although I do wish they’d stop looking at us like we’ve sprouted a second head.”

  “Tell me about it. Two police officers, both females, always gets a double-take though. Not to mention Clint.” I glanced down at my purple familiar, who trotted faithfully at heel like any well-trained dog. He glanced up at me, all wide-eyed innocence. Not that I’d accused him of anything, but with that look, it made me think he’d done something. I just hadn’t asked him the right question yet. I did not trust that look.

  Penny didn’t notice our exchange, still complaining. “You’d think people would get used to it, what with the queen outright encouraging women to become officers.”

  “People don’t change that quickly.”

  “There’s truth.” She eyed me sideways. “Were you surprised when Queen Regina came to you?”

  I lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Yes and no. Initially, yes. I don’t really see her that often, and that she’d come in person down to the station alarmed me. That’s not a woman who moves about at whim. But after she told me what wa
s going on, I wasn’t surprised. The Kingsmen aren’t really experienced with murder. As crazy as this case is, it’s still a murder investigation. I applaud her for the logical thinking: when you want a job done right, go to the experts.”

  “Us, in this case. Must be flattering, to have that much trust from her.”

  “It really is. I mean, she doesn’t really know me that well, not as a detective.” My mind went back to those early days, when I’d been taken to the palace to meet the queen. She’d been warm and friendly, full of questions. It had helped, to sit there and talk with her. I’d gotten a better sense of what I’d stumbled into. And knowing who my new monarch was eased my concerns.

  “How’s she, um, taking our updates?”

  I recalled last night’s conversation and made a face. “Mixed. She’s happy we’re more aware of the situation now, the nuances of the case, but she’s not happy it’s going to be difficult to solve. She’s half-convinced it took a very powerful magician to murder a retired royal mage.”

  Penny obviously heard the doubt in my voice. “You don’t agree?”

  “No. I mean, think about it, if the wards had been tampered with, wouldn’t the boys have said so yesterday?”

  “But they’re checking them now.”

  “They’re checking them now because it’s driving them up the wall. They don’t know how the murderer got in or out, and they want an answer to that question. I mean, we do too. It’ll help us solve the case. But really, if there was something wrong with the wards, they’d have been all over that like a fly on jam yesterday. And if it was a powerful magician who did it, why use a bullet to kill him?” I amended that to, “If it was a bullet. Weber’s preliminary report didn’t seem to point that direction. That straight trajectory is weird for a bullet’s path. Still, if a magical spell had killed Burtchell, the boys would have seen that too. Makes me think the murderer used a more conventional weapon.”

  Penny let out a soft huh, a puff of air. “You’re right. That doesn’t seem to point to a magician. But then how did the person overpower Burtchell?”

  “And that’s the sticking point to my theory. How indeed.” It did puzzle me, more than a bit, but I really had no idea. I’d seen what both Henri and Sherard were capable of on multiple occasions. Burtchell had been just as powerful as Sherard, according to everyone who knew him. I couldn’t imagine someone overpowering Sherard. The only thing that made sense was that someone got the drop on him.

  I spied a newspaper boy sitting on a collapsible chair, a stool next to him loaded with papers. A sign at his feet claimed the price for the morning paper and the early edition. If anyone knew the town like the back of their hand, the delivery people did.

  I beelined toward him, pulling free a coin from my pocket. “Hey.”

  He looked up. The automatic smile on his face faltered as it landed on us. We did look an unlikely trio, I admit. His long nose twitched on his werefox face, and for some reason that made him even cuter. “Paper, miss?”

  “Detective,” I corrected him with a smile. What was he, eight? Ten? It was hard to judge ages with the weres, but his size and demeanor placed him young. “Detective Edwards. I wonder if you can help me with something? I’m looking for the locksmith in town.”

  Turning on his chair, he pointed further along the street. “Go down another block, take the first right, then go up three doors. Big sign near the door that reads McConnell’s. Can’t miss it.”

  I tossed him the coin, which he caught handily. “Thanks. Say, you wouldn’t happen to deliver the paper in town, would you?”

  “Sure do, miss. Uh, Detective.” He wet his lips, his bushy tail flicking like an excited metronome. “You here to investigate the Burtchell murder? Constables said another set of detectives came in for that.”

  “Yeah, that’s us,” I confirmed easily. The reporters hadn’t descended yet, likely because they didn’t know who to talk to. I gave that another couple of hours, tops. Telling the kid anything meant his bosses would figure it out faster, but that was inevitable. “You can tell your boss if he comes to the Brighton Hotel and asks very nicely, I’ll give him an interview. But if he shows up snapping pictures and being a nuisance, he won’t get a peep out of me.”

  The kid actually saluted me. Sloppily. “I’ll tell ’im, Detective.”

  “Good. I was going to ask, if you deliver, did you deliver the paper to RM Burtchell yesterday morning?”

  “Didn’t need to, miss. He caught me while I was doing my route, took the paper from me then.”

  Penny whipped out her small black book from a pocket. “What time was this?”

  The kid scratched at his ear, thinking hard. “I’d just started, was only three houses in. So about five.”

  Five in the morning? “And where was he coming from, do you know?”

  “Not sure, Detective. Somewhere further up in the hills. I was on Woodward Drive,” he added helpfully. “And he passed me coming down it, so further up the road.”

  I was not above knocking on every door until I found the right house, so made mental note of that. “And he didn’t mention why he’d been up all night?”

  “Said he’d been playing cards and lost the time. I think he was going straight home from there.”

  “How far was he from his own house?” Penny inquired, still diligently taking notes.

  “Mmm.” Thinking about it, the werefox offered, “Maybe fifteen minutes? It’d be ten for me, but he wasn’t so spry. I was surprised to see him walking, but he did walk the roads sometimes. Said it was good for his heart.”

  He’d retired after a mild heart attack. I wasn’t surprised to hear he’d taken to walking for exercise. I wished I could get Henri to do the same. His eating habits were beyond unhealthy, and the man treated ‘exercise’ as a dirty word. He would develop diabetes or heart problems at the rate he was going. I shook my head slightly and focused. “You didn’t see anyone else out, did you?”

  “No, ma’am. Not until a good hour later. Milkman and postman both passed me as I headed to the paper company.”

  Not surprising, not at that birds’ hour of the morning. “For the record, can I have your name? I might have further questions for you.”

  “Sure. I’m Best. Richie Best.”

  I winked at him and gave him another coin. Mostly because he was cute. “Thank you, Mr. Best. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “Anytime, Detective.”

  We walked on, following his directions.

  Penny cleared her throat and asked tentatively, “You and Ellie Warner are working on increasing the speed of cars, you said. Isn’t that dangerous?”

  So she hadn’t been completely comfortable on the ride here. I’d wondered, as she hadn’t said much. Sherard was daredevil enough to enjoy it, and Henri was fun to torment, so I wasn’t worried about them. “At the moment, your tires and suspension really aren’t up to the task of a more powerful engine. We’ll need to upgrade those things to make it feasible. But trust me, Penny, a car can safely go much faster. Cars on my world routinely go seventy miles an hour and sometimes above that without issue.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Seventy?! But a woman’s uterus falls out of her body if she goes over thirty!”

  I stopped dead in my tracks, neck creaking as my head slowly turned to look at her. She genuinely looked and sounded sincere, as if she weren’t trying to pull my leg. “Penny. My dear friend. Where in the wide green world did you hear that bit of stupidity?”

  Doubt clouded her expression, teeth digging into her bottom lip for a moment. “It doesn’t? Or are the people on your world stronger?”

  “Not noticeably, no,” I denied wryly. Belladonna’s changes on my body made me superhuman on this world. “Trust me, a woman’s body can go through the same stresses and speed a man’s can. We might not be as naturally strong as most men, but we’re not weak. Not breakable. The next person who says such a stupid thing to you, laugh in their face. You’ve already gone fifty miles an hour and nothing happened, r
ight?”

  Penny’s mouth opened, then slowly closed. “And we were at that speed for several minutes. True, I didn’t think of it that way. Actually, I’m not sure why I believed it to begin with. Dr. Sanderson said it.”

  “Really. Sanderson said it and you didn’t automatically doubt the source?”

  “He’d said it before I realized what a right twat he was,” she defended herself. Then she shrugged, blue eyes sparkling with humor. “But now I can tell him how wrong he was, since we both did it just fine. Ha! That’ll be good.”

  “Do me a favor, say it loudly and within my hearing. I want to watch the show.”

  She nodded immediately. “It’s a promise. Are you, um, driving on the way back? Whenever we do manage to leave for home.”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t miss tormenting Henri again for the world.”

  McConnell’s was exactly where Richie said it was. I did appreciate it when someone gave me good directions. Clint hopped off my shoulder to go chase a mouse he saw darting between the buildings and I left him to it. We stepped into the small shop, heard the chime of the bell over the door, and paused a few feet inside to get our bearings. The store wasn’t all that crowded. A long counter wrapped like an L around the square-shaped room, and all manner of locks hung from the pegged walls on display. I saw precisely three safes on display to the far right, but otherwise the floorspace was clear. It smelled of beeswax and lemon, too, indicating someone had cleaned recently. This was a shop run by someone organized.

  Which gave me hope that I’d get an answer. I called out in greeting, “Hello? Mr. McConnell?”

  The infamous McConnell stepped out. I expected an older gentleman but instead found a fresh-faced young woman with inky black hair and an upturned nose. She wore a sensible dress of grey with a worn apron tied around her waist that hung oddly from the weight of various tools. She greeted us with a smile. “Ms. McConnell, actually. Ladies, what can I do for you?”

  I pulled my suitcoat to the side to display the badge at my waist. “I’m Detective Jamie Edwards. This is Officer Penny McSparrin. We need to ask a few questions about one of your clients.”