Breaking and Entering 101 (The Case Files of Henri Davenforth Book 4)

by Honor Raconteur

  It was a noisy atmosphere, noxious with all the fumes from the engines, and if one wasn’t quick on their feet, they were liable to be run over. Gibson parked behind the train station, in an area more dirt than paved lot, but even here many people came and went. I stayed close to Jamie and Gibson’s sides as we made our way across the multitude of crisscrossing tracks in an effort not to be separated from them.

  Over the noise, Gibson explained in a loud voice, “They set the luggage car aside for us. It’s been untouched except by Kingsmen hands since the theft was discovered.”

  That was good news. The case might be coming to us rather cold, but if the car was untouched, we had a good chance of seeing something others had missed. Gibson had high hopes for that, I knew, otherwise he’d not have gone to the trouble to fetch us.

  Unlike passenger trains, with their many windows lining the car on both sides, baggage cars had nothing in the way of natural light. There were precisely four doors in—one on the front and back of the car, so people could go through, a wide cargo door on the side, and a smaller door on the other side to allow employees on and off. This one was even more secure than most baggage cars, as it only had the cargo and employee door. The doors on either end of the car were missing on this model. For security purposes, I assumed.

  It did have ventilation running along the top in a raised arch along the roof. Considering some of the chemicals that were shipped routinely along this route, the ventilation was likely another safety measure. The car was otherwise unadorned, its blank brown face deceptively unremarkable. One wouldn’t think by looking at it that one of the greatest train robberies in history had occurred inside.

  Three hundred thousand crowns. Good heavens, I was still mentally reeling from that.

  The cargo door was bolted but the employee door was not. At least, not with a physical lock. Gibson did away with the magical seal on it and opened the door, waving us through.

  Inside the narrow confines of the interior, we barely had room to maneuver around each other. The vaults—I assumed the two large metal blocks at the far end of the train were the vaults in question—dominated a good third of the car’s length and made for tight quarters. Just in front of them stood a padlocked crisscross wood pattern stretching from floor to ceiling that blocked anyone from casually brushing up against the vaults. The rest of the train car was lined with metal shelves bolted into floor and walls, respectively.

  Personal luggage had been claimed, as the shelves lining the car on either side were empty. I had enough room to walk down the middle of the car without my shoulders brushing up against the shelves, but not much more than that. It was stale in here. The car had not been visited recently, but it didn’t smell in any way odd.

  Jamie went right to the vaults, pulling on gloves as she moved. “Six days of people coming and going, likely not able to get any usable prints here. But still, I should dust for them anyway.” She bent a look at Gibson. “You did wear gloves, correct?”

  “Of course I did,” Gibson responded with a wounded hand over his heart. “You’d skewer me otherwise. Anyone investigating wore gloves.”

  “Good. Cuts down on the number of prints to parse through and throw out. I’ll start in on that after we’re done with the initial sweep.”

  Pulling free a wand from my bag, I lined up a catch-all sheet and row of small jars. “I’ll do a diagnostic of the area as well. Just in case there’s traces of saliva, hair, or some such we can use for evidence later.”

  Gibson leaned in a little to watch as I ran the diagnostic spell, collecting trace evidence. It was something I’d refined after partnering up with Jamie. It certainly was more comprehensive now than it had been before her influence. A little too much, truth be told. I stared at the list of things found, then at my samples lined up neatly along my feet, and groaned.

  Also leaning over my shoulder, Jamie took a look and snorted. “That’s too much evidence. It’ll take you forever to get through all that, and you’re not even sure what’s helpful at this stage. Any of that could belong to our thieves.”

  “Unfortunately correct. I’ll label and store this for now. It’ll be better to use it as corroborative evidence after the fact, I think.” Finishing the sweep, I ended the spell and then carefully stoppered up the bottles and hit the rest with a preservation spell. “Alright, free to move.”

  Jamie patted the feline perched on her shoulder. “Clint, get on top of the safes for me. See if there’s anything strange up there.”

  “Okay,” the feline said happily, immediately bouncing off her shoulder, using her as a springboard to get to the top in one elegant leap. It never ceased to amaze me the lengths he could jump.

  “Gibs, walk me through this,” Jamie requested.

  “Right, so this was how it was explained to me.” Gibson put his shoulders to one of the walls, getting comfortable and allowing us room to maneuver at the same time. “When gold is brought in for shipment, it’s brought in with a listed inventory of everything going. Then it’s packed into a wooden crate which is then bound with iron bands and wax seals impressed over the bands as an added measurement to prove the gold stays untouched during shipment. Probably to keep some guard from sneaking a few coins, tell you the truth.”

  I made more notes, flipping pages as I ran out of room. “The guards have keys, then?”

  “One set, yes. There’re two sets of keys in total. But I’ll get to that.” Waving a hand to the vault, Gibson continued. “Boxes are weighed, as I said before, and put into a safe; then they’re brought in here. See how there’re different compartments in each vault? Those each have separate locks. Because they have enough gold shipments coming through here from different people, they can’t put just one person’s gold in each safe. Not enough room for that nonsense.”

  “And then there’s this padlocked area here that locks to keep anyone from approaching the vaults. It looks kinda like a castle gate. You can get a hand through these—” Jamie stopped abruptly and squinted at it. “Henri, is there a spell on this thing?”

  “Yes, but it’s more of a deterrence spell,” I explained. A glance was enough to identify it. “An encouragement for people not to get too close. It will give you a mild jolt if you really do put your hand inside.”

  “Ah. There’s a warning written here, that’s what caught my attention.”

  With her immunity to spells, it didn’t surprise me the spell on the wood had no effect upon her.

  Undeterred, Jamie continued, “Okay, so Gibs, the guard has a key to this outer padlock?”

  “Correct. He’s the only one with a key.”

  “And was he in the car during the trip?”

  “No. When the train’s in motion, he’s anywhere inside. He seems to move throughout the train, multiple people spotted him, although no one could vouch for him for more than a few minutes at a time.”

  Jamie stared at the padlock a bit longer. “Priors?”

  “Not with him. Clean as a whistle. I interviewed him myself and he was highly distressed about the whole thing. Says he’s afraid he’ll lose his job over this. It could have been an act, but he says he didn’t see anything untoward.”

  I made a note of that. It wasn’t that we believed someone automatically innocent if they had no prior trouble with the law. But we did move them further down the suspect list, because it was far less likely they were involved.

  “I still want backgrounds on everyone working the train yard that day. And alibis. We’ll need them to parse through possible suspects. And there was absolutely nothing hinky about the bands?” Jamie still examined the doors carefully.

  “Actually, there was. The bands themselves looked fine, but the imprint of the wax seals was different. It didn’t quite match the emblem of the business.” Gibson splayed a hand. “No one noticed until they brought the boxes into the claiming area. But that doesn’t surprise me. They came in at almost seven o’clock, after all. The train yard’s too dim to be able to see much. Easy to overlook. But th
at’s the other reason why I doubt this was an inside job.”

  “They’d have been able to duplicate any seal used by the companies ahead of time and have them on hand,” I concurred aloud. It did make sense. Especially as there were only a few companies that dealt with gold and shipped it on a regular basis. Perhaps a dozen altogether. It would be easy enough to copy those seals and have them on hand.

  I looked around the car again, this time using my magical sight more. There was nothing here that looked odd to me, and yet…some sixth sense tingled. All was not right here.

  Perhaps something of this showed on my face. Jamie turned to me, head canted in question. “What, Henri?”

  “I see no signs of spells cast—” I paused and looked to Gibson for confirmation. Most of the Kingsmen were magicians themselves, so I had no doubt they’d checked for this. He gave me a nod in affirmation. “And yet there is magic here. We have a silencing charm pasted on this wall. Why?”

  “I asked the same question,” Gibson informed us, tone a touch wry. “I’m told silencing charms are common on trains. The rattle and creak of the rails gets monotonous after a while so they block it.”

  My doubt doubled hearing this. “But inside a baggage car?”

  “Guard claims when he does have to be in here—the company apparently sometimes does require it, depending on what’s being shipped—he puts up a silencing charm. Helps him.”

  That still didn’t quite sit right with me. As tiresome as the noise no doubt became, wouldn’t he need to hear it if something was awry outside the car?

  I put the question aside for now. “The other thing that bothers me is—Clint?”

  The Felix was on his back legs, one paw lightly balanced against the outside door of one of the vaults, his nose nearly buried in the lock. His whiskers twitched before he tilted his head toward me and reported, “Tickly grass.”

  Suspicions raised, I went straight for him, slipping sideways past Jamie to enter the area. Then I knelt, fetching my wand as I did so. I angled the notebook to be directly under the lock and used the tip of my wand to coax out the sprig of greenish-brown I could barely detect a peek of.

  “Duuuude,” Jamie drawled out, leaning over my back. “Good nose, Clint! I thought I smelled something magical, but I put it down to being the silencing charm thingy.”

  The feline sat back on his haunches, entirely pleased with himself.

  As he should be. It only took a glance of the withered herb on the white pages of my notebook for me to recognize it. “Raskovnik.”

  Jamie and Gibson hissed in recognition. The first case I’d worked with Jamie had involved the magical herb that could unlock anything once a sprig of it was applied. I say herb but it had the same thick vines as clover, and the richness of the green appeared blue at certain angles. Although this sample of the specimen curled brown around the edges.

  “Clint,” I informed the feline gratefully, “you might very well have given us the first break we needed to solve this. Well done indeed.”

  Purring, he arched against my arm. I put my wand down to give him well deserved scratches behind his ears, which made him purr all the louder.

  “I missed that,” Gibson hissed in frustration. “We checked for anti-locking spells, of course, but the Raskovnik isn’t well known. Or easy to acquire. We don’t normally check for it. Confound it, I should have.”

  “The very reason you called us was to get a different perspective,” Jamie told him with a sympathetic look. “Don’t beat yourself up, man. Thanks to Clint, we now have an interesting lead to follow. Okay, so they used Raskovnik to get through the vaults, at least. What about the compartments and safes?”

  “No hint of anything magical on them. I did check that thoroughly.” Gibson ran a hand through his hair. “Although I’ll check again to be safe.”

  Jamie accepted this with a nod. “Whether they did or didn’t with the safes, they still had to have the Raskovnik for the vaults. That hints they couldn’t unlock it themselves. I would think if it was an inside job, they’d have keys to all the locks.”

  Gibson grunted sourly, still not over missing a vital clue. “You see why I’m not so quick to point fingers.”

  “Yeah, there’s enough wiggle room for doubt. Although it still begs the question of how they knew it was on this baggage car, on this train, on that particular night. Surely they didn’t just luck into it coincidentally. Henri, Gibs, what’s your take on this? Are these magical thieves or more garden variety?”

  “That,” Gibson sighed a decade’s worth of sighs, “is the other question I really want an answer to.”

  “Alright, let me do a sweep for fingerprints, and then I want to take a look at the safes and boxes.”

  “Certainly,” Gibson agreed, still sighing. “I’ll help.”

  The more I learned, the more baffling it became. Just what kind of thieves were we dealing with? And how, under the vast blue skies, had they done this?

  Gibson had taken custody of the safes and boxes, along with everything else found with them. It meant retreating to Kingsmen territory—more precisely, their Evidence Locker.

  It was not nearly the size of the one at the precinct, of course. They didn’t really delve into crimes that much here. Still, they’d encountered some murders, theft, and the like over the years that required a holding room of some sort be established. It was attached directly to the red brick building that served as their office building. Really, it wasn’t much larger than a single room addition. I hadn’t been in here before—Henri hadn’t either from the way he studied the place curiously—and I had to say, it wasn’t impressive at first glance. Just shelves, one long table in the center, and a log nailed to the wall for when evidence was brought in or taken out. Hardly hi-tech, even for them.

  The safes and crates and bags of lead shot were lined up against one shelf, with a neatly pinned card slid into a glass holder on the bottom of the metal bracket that read: Train Gold Heist evidence.

  My cat chose to perch on the edge of the table and attend to his right ear as we worked. I pulled on gloves again before pulling the first safe off the shelf and moving it to the table. “Let me pull fingerprints from these first. Henri?”

  He put the bag down nearby and pulled out the brush, dust, and tape I needed. “Here. While you do that, I want a closer look at the bands. Those metal bands look sturdy, certainly something that can’t be easily bent with bare hands. Gibson, when you arrived, were the boxes open?”

  “Yes. At first they weren’t aware anything was wrong, not until the first box was opened. Then they opened all of them to determine just how much had been stolen.” Gibson made a face. “Which I don’t blame them for, but I wish they’d left at least one intact until we arrived on scene.”

  Henri made a face. “I must agree. Still, I think we can salvage a bit of evidence from this. The bands, while broken, still have some of the wax seals attached to them. If we’re clever, we might be able to piece it together.”

  I didn’t look up from the fingerprint I carefully levered tape over. “You think the seal might tell us something?”

  “I find it curious they didn’t try to replicate the seals of the gold companies,” Henri answered, even as he moved the bands over to the table carefully, trying not to jostle the wax still clinging to them. “There’s only a handful of companies. Seals are small and take little space and weight. Why not forge something? Why take the chance of someone noticing something off while the safes were still on the train?”

  I pursed my lips in thought. He had a good point there. “Gibs, are the safes moved to the clerks’ office? Or are the boxes taken out of the safes and brought in?”

  “I understand the safes are taken out, usually. The boxes stay in the safes until someone claims them.”

  “So, even in a bright office, no one noticed the difference? You said the theft wasn’t discovered until the boxes were opened. Clearly, the clerks are not observant.”

  “Man makes a good point,” I obse
rved to Gibson. “So, Henri, you think…what? The thieves just felt it unnecessary to go to that much trouble to forge a seal?”

  “Or perhaps none of them had the required skills to do so. It would take some effort and expense to have one made, and that assumes you know how to contact a forger. If you don’t, you’ll have to come up with a very good reason to request a legitimate artisan to do the work for you.”

  “Which would still raise questions, considering it’s a gold company’s seal. Huh. Yeah, you’re on to something there. But that begs the question, where did this seal come from?”

  “We can only know”—Henri paused as he concentrated on sliding a fine blade under the wax, lifting it carefully off the iron band—“once we have an idea of what this looks like.”

  “I’ll leave the delicate work to you.”

  Gibson grabbed the other safe and started lifting fingerprints too, once I showed him how to do it. It meant we ran out of powder rather quickly, but it was alright. I only found partial and smudged prints, with very few clear ones that would make any sort of sense when compared. By the time we covered the safes and the boxes, Henri had lifted off every possible wax imprint he could, and I was able to dust the iron bands, too.

  It was quiet as we worked, which was likely why it sounded so loud when Henri straightened with a groan of satisfaction. “There. That’s what it looked like.”

  I stopped dusting and leaned over to get a better look. The mellow light cast funky angles on things sometimes. The seal looked…. “Generic. I think that’s the word I’m looking for. That circle and swoopy thing could belong to several companies.”

  “Yes, I can think of nine companies off-hand with a logo based on a similar design. And not all of them gold. Their choice in grabbing this makes more sense now. It’s rather versatile, isn’t it?” Henri flipped open his notebook to a blank page and started sketching out the seal.