Three Charms for Murder (The Case Files of Henri Davenforth Book 5)

by Honor Raconteur

  “Mr. Drummond.” I kept my voice mild even while I mentally cursed incompetent police. Not only them, but the dogs that had bred them, in true Mulan fashion. “Out of curiosity. Do all your neighbors have wards up around their houses?”

  He shot me a look that spoke volumes. “They do indeed.”

  Three voices made sounds of disgust in the back seats.

  “So, on top of everything else, these thieves have managed a way to get around wards.” Henri made the not-amused-frowning face.

  Poor guy, it seemed like every case we worked these days had wards in them. His brain was barely recovered from the palace fiasco six months ago. I think he still had nightmares about it, too.

  “Yeah. I figured that would be your answer.” I looked at the police station ahead of us, mentally gearing myself up for battle. “This isn’t going to be fun. Anti-fun, guaranteed.”

  The tone of Henri’s voice indicated incoming mayhem. “It is perhaps time for this particular police force to be investigated.”

  Uh-oh. Henri was pissed. Excuse me while I cackle madly.

  The Deems Police Station was a quaint two-story brick affair. No other word for it. It was older than most, quite likely one of the original buildings that could date itself back to the time of the town’s founding. In good enough repair, certainly, but the age of the building could be detected in the smell of old masonry, the more elaborate woodwork in the trim around the doors, and the stained glass of the windows.

  I strode in with the others trailing behind me, Jamie just ahead. She’d left the cats with Drummond in the car, which was just as well. They would have dampened the impression we sought to make. We could hardly be taken seriously with cute balls of fluff in arm.

  Our arrival must have been expected, as a burly man in a very precisely put together dark suit stood just inside the doorway, arms akimbo on his hips and his chin jutting out in defiance.

  “You’d be the ones from Kingston, then?” he asked as if he already knew the answer.

  I stopped dead in front of him, nearly toe to toe, matching his glare. Normally, I’d try to offset this. To not bring the fight so obviously to his door. But he’d started this by failing to properly investigate, and by the sound of things, it wasn’t only murder this station let slide. Multiple burglaries in a year with wards up? No average thief could manage that. If this wasn’t sheer incompetence, then it was aiding and abetting.

  I did not have my money on incompetence.

  “I’m Henri Davenforth, Magical Examiner with the Kingston PD, Fourth Precinct.” I didn’t turn my head but canted it in the others’ direction. “This is Detective Jamie Edwards, Detective McSparrin, and Officer Gerring. You’ll transfer jurisdiction of the Atwood Case over to us immediately.”

  The man’s lip lifted in a snarl. “You don’t get to just storm in here and demand that. You don’t have the authority.”

  Jamie snapped the police commissioner’s letter in her hand. “I think you’ll find we do. And who are you?”

  “Captain Hayes.” He stared her down as if she were nothing more than a speck of dirt. “And you’re out of uniform. Detective.”

  “If by that you mean I’m not in a skirt, bravo! Excellent deduction skills. Now, read this and use a few more.”

  He snatched the paper from her and started reading, red in the face. That high color steadily drained from his round face, leaving him aghast and shaking. His dark eyes came up sharply, staring at me, his fist clenching around the letter.

  I knew what it said, as I’d read it on the way in. The police commissioner had been appalled at the situation and desperate to avoid any sort of public backlash. He’d harshly worded the letter to make it very clear there would be an investigation on how the case had been handled by Deems PD, and the captain would receive at the very least an official reprimand, possibly a deduction in pension. In any case, the possibility of promotion past this small-town station was gone.

  “You can’t do this,” Hayes protested. His bluster disappeared, leaving only desperation. “It’s a simple murder-suicide!”

  “You do not know that,” I answered firmly. “No one can. An autopsy wasn’t even performed.”

  “The coroner examined the bodies before moving them into the morgue!”

  “An autopsy wasn’t even performed,” I repeated, voice going colder. “You have no motive, barely any opportunity, we don’t even know how they died, and the means are so suspect that even hearing about this case second-hand, there’s not a police officer in Kingston who didn’t look askance at your abrupt decision to close the investigation. You are very much on the wrong side of this, Captain. In any case, your words can be directed to the commissioner. This is outside my paygrade. I want jurisdiction of the case, and that is all I’m interested in discussing with you.”

  He opened his mouth, ready to argue the point further, but seemed to realize there was no point in doing so with me. He’d have to appeal to the commissioner. Turning his head, he barked out, “Lawler! Give them the damn file.”

  A werebeaver sat up from behind his desk, looking belligerent to the extreme, and sloppy with his uniform jacket off and shirt untucked. He rummaged in the drawer of his desk, coming up with a stained folder, and lurched to us with the poor automation of a puppet with tangled strings. He thrust the file at me, not even looking up, before turning and lumbering back to his desk.

  “Is he Lurch?” Jamie muttered under her breath.

  I suspected she was referring to some character or other but ignored it for now. I accepted the file, then continued with the second goal of this visit. “Where is your morgue?”

  Hayes jerked a thumb toward a set of stairs. He turned on a heel and retreated into his office, slamming the glass door behind him. It left us in the middle of the bull pen, everyone at their own desks, studiously not lifting their heads or making eye contact. I gave a mental growl and gave up any help from here as a lost cause.

  We marched forward, using a narrow opening on the side to bypass the small collection of desks. I wasn’t sure whether the morgue was up or down, as the stairs both ascended to the next level and apparently descended to the basement.

  Jamie took one sniff and made a face. “Down.”

  I cast her a glance in query.

  “Very obvious smell of decay and chemicals,” she explained.

  I trusted her nose more than mine. We descended, and halfway down the stairs I caught the same scent. Oh dear, that was more overpowering than it should have been. Did they not properly clean down here? Or seal things properly?

  Opening the door answered the questions succinctly. No. Not at all.

  Sighing, I resigned myself to a very smelly few minutes and bravely entered. Deities knew what Weber would do when he arrived. Poor chap had to work in here, after all. Maybe I’d assist him, see if I could apply some charms and spells and limit the assault on his nose. My own nostril hairs had already curled up and died in protest.

  The basement used for the morgue was so cramped it was readily apparent this was never meant to be anything more than storage, with only two small narrow windows and a cement floor that didn’t slope properly toward the drain (that was obvious by the liquid still pooling in various spots). There were precisely four drawer units to hold bodies, an autopsy table in the middle, and a filing cabinet-combination-desk lurking in one corner. Even with such limited equipment, there was barely room for the four of us to stand.

  I barely noted most of it. To my absolute horror, sitting on the examination table in the center of the room, sat Mr. and Mrs. Atwood. Posed in the same statue-like position their children reported to me earlier, their corpses looked beyond eerie with their soulless faces and rigid bodies. The stench of death was mitigated poorly by a hastily applied charm slapped onto both of their laps. It was much like throwing scented orange water over a sewer, and about as effective. We all gagged on the smell.

  Hardened as I was to crime scenes, still, I felt my stomach turn over.

 
; “Oh. My. God,” Jamie said in part horror, part disgust. “Are you freaking kidding me?! They just carted them to the station like that?”

  “This is sad,” McSparrin observed in dismay.

  “I would imagine they don’t get many bodies in Deems,” Gerring pointed out.

  “Even still. They couldn’t even undo this enough to properly transport them?”

  I almost immediately understood why, and my horror twisted queasily in my gut. “They couldn’t.”

  Jamie’s head snapped sharply to me, her attention cemented. “Why?”

  “Several charms are at play here. I can see the magic of them.” I pulled out a wand, followed closely by the slender notebook I’d brought along specifically for this case. I flipped open the book and started a diagnostic spell, watching the numbers and descriptions write itself onto the blank, cream pages even as I waved the wand carefully over the bodies. “A very strong charm is keeping them in this position. A construction charm for molds, to be precise. Quick-set charm. It’s commercial grade, not something the average person can break. They risked mutilating the bodies if they tried to force them out of that position.”

  “In that case, I forgive them a little,” McSparrin muttered. “Although this is still utterly creepy. What else, Dr. Davenforth?”

  “A—oh great good magic, they used a cleaning charm.”

  “Oh. Oh man, don’t tell me. They—” Jamie paused and looked at me with a sympathetic grimace. “Sorry?”

  What was she…oh. “Go ahead, they need to learn this.”

  “Yeah, thanks. Sorry, guys, this is kinda gross. So, after death the bodies relax utterly. The sphincter is the first to go.”

  Gerring looked at the bodies in a different light, his nose wrinkling. “Sphincter as in…”

  “Yeah, as in that. Followed by the bladder. No one likes arriving at a crime scene two hours after a person’s died for that reason. Really messy cleanup. We remove the clothes quickly to avoid getting them soiled and possibly erasing evidence. The thrice-cursed coroner likely used a cleaning charm on them so he didn’t get his hands messy before moving the bodies. Which, I kinda don’t blame him, but it means he erased possible trace evidence too.”

  And that was the sore point with me. Incompetency like this aided the murderer.

  “This case is about to take another plot twist.”

  Her eyebrow came up and she regarded me with a sort of fatalistic humor. “I’m braced. Hit me.”

  “Two cleaning charms, in fact, the first older than the other by several hours. I would say the murderer used the first charm, and the coroner used the second. But also a binding charm—something rather like what you would use to bundle items together. Like firewood or something of that ilk. I doubt a thief would be carrying these sorts of charms about.”

  “Are we looking for a third-rate magician, then?”

  “I doubt it. The quick-set charm is actually quite complicated to make. It requires a very exact design. But the charm is common enough to buy.”

  “Huh. Yeah, okay, you’re right that’s an interesting plot twist.” She paused, frowning at the chairs as if they had personally offended her. “I don’t think I wanted another interesting plot twist.”

  “I can’t say I did either.”

  “Let’s blame it on Sherard.”

  “He isn’t here,” I pointed out.

  “All the better. He can’t protest or defend himself.” She rubbed at her forehead as if a headache threatened. “When you get clues, they’re supposed to help you figure out the overall picture. Not muddy the waters even further.”

  “Explain that to the clues,” I muttered in dark amusement.

  “I would love to. Trust me.” Gesturing to the bodies, Jamie inquired, “Can you undo this?”

  “Yes, fortunately. I’ll require your aid in lifting them properly into body bags afterwards, as we’ll need to situate them until Weber arrives. I want to do a preservation spell on them and ward everything until he gets in.” I wanted to do that before we even properly entered the room—for the smell alone—but I couldn’t until the bodies were properly situated. “I don’t trust things not to be tampered with. Not after the scene upstairs. A stasis spell as well, to preserve any toxicology.”

  “Probably wise. Alright, Henri. Do your magic.”

  I ended the diagnostic spell, putting the book away in my breast pocket, and then went to it. Fortunately, the spell was an easy one. Something about this had to be, to offset the difficulty of everything else. Bodies were sometimes difficult for me to stomach because I couldn’t look at one and see only a corpse. I saw a son, a daughter, a lover, a friend—a life lost that many people would miss and grieve. Never before had I been unfortunate enough to stand over someone I knew. Now, experiencing it, I wished to the deities I never had to again. It was beyond painful. Grief swept over me, a wave that threatened for a moment to crush me. I had to breathe around the knot in my chest, blink rapidly to keep my eyes from burning. Hearing that two people I admired and liked were deceased had been hard enough. Seeing them sitting so unnaturally still, clay with no spirit, was heart-wrenching.

  Now wasn’t the time to grieve. Now was the time to help these two sweet people find their murderer. I owed them that. I owed their children that. I could grieve on my own time.

  The spell worked quickly, and people were quick to catch the bodies as they slumped, and we arranged them on the different drawers.

  “The fumes are getting to me.”

  I looked sharply to Jamie, alarmed at her tone. Wasn’t her nose guard on—no, it wasn’t. Then again, she likely hadn’t anticipated the need for it, considering how far away we were from the scent that had triggered her in Kingston. If the odor in this room made my nose shrivel in protest, then what would it do to her heightened senses?

  It wasn’t a question I wanted an answer to. Pulling free a wand, I cleaned the area with two quick spells, sending liquids and gloop down the drain, and then cleaned the drain out for good measure. Gerring popped the windows open to allow in some fresh air, improving the quality of the room by noticeable degrees.

  “Bless you.” Jamie breathed deeply. “So much better. And Weber will thank you for it too, when he gets in. Alright, affects. Let’s log that in properly so we can figure out if something is missing.”

  A warm hand found mine, squeezing my fingers in gentle comfort. I didn’t look at Jamie, just squeezed back, silently thankful for her concern. Of course she’d noticed not only my stillness but that I didn’t want to share that moment of intense pain and grief with the others. She was giving me a moment and distracting the other two, and I loved her for it.

  They went through pockets, and the more they drew out, the more obvious it had been that no examination of the corpses had been performed. Handkerchiefs, keys, wallets, jewelry, all was in place. McSparrin stared at the line of effects on the table in renewed disgust. “Now I’m irritated. They really had no desire to investigate this, did they?”

  “Apparently not. Especially considering this.” Jamie waved the folder in her hand with the same energy one would use to throw a log onto a bonfire. Possibly because she daydreamed of doing exactly that. “You won’t believe how bad this report is.”

  “I doubt that. After seeing all this, I doubt anything in there could surprise me. Wait, you’ve read it already?”

  “Not a challenge. It’s ridiculously short. Take a look.” She handed it over with eyebrows arched in open challenge.

  A wise man would know better than to say anything, and I tried to be wise, so I accepted the folder instead and flipped it open. Inside that dingy grey folder lay a solitary sheet of paper. It was a single narrative of the investigating detective, handwritten—illegibly handwritten—and it failed to fill up most of the page. I flipped it over, expecting something. Anything, really. But there was nothing on the back, and a second sheet failed to materialize.

  I was so utterly flabbergasted I didn’t even know what to say. I stood there like
a fool, my jaw dangling.

  Gerring and McSparrin, unable to take the suspense, came to read over my shoulder. Gerring spluttered, just as wordlessly astonished as I. McSparrin swore like a stevedore.

  “My reaction precisely.” Jamie gave McSparrin a nod, a woman vindicated. “I think we better report just how bad this is. It’s worse than we expected, and it will give the commissioner firmer ground to stand on.”

  “I quite agree,” I said faintly. For that matter, I was tempted to tell the Atwood siblings the situation here. They had every right to know they were well within the bounds of concern to bypass the Deems PD. Gwyneth had been a little worried about it, perhaps thinking grief had skewed their judgement.

  That was, sadly, not at all the case.

  My first priority after securing jurisdiction and bodies was to get over to the house. I took a handkerchief from Mr. Atwood’s body, as well as a silken scarf-tie from Mrs. Atwood, and brought them out to the car with me. I wanted to track the route of both people. If any scent lingered, the cats would need something to work with. Most human scents, if not exposed to water or weather, could last up to two weeks. Drummond had mopped the floors, though, so I wasn’t sure where that left us.

  I slid back into the front seat and held both pieces of fabric over the basket. “Okay, guys, get a good whiff of that. We’ll need to track it soon. Mr. Drummond, when you said you came over to clean the floors, how much and where did you clean?”

  He half-turned, oriented so he could face me and answer. “The front door and the side patio door. They were the worst off. I dusted the living room as well. I didn’t have a chance to do much else before the real estate agent came.”

  Okay, so we might lose part of the trail but not all of it. I dared to have hope.

  Drummond wet his chapped lips, brows furrowed. “You do not look as if things went well in there.”

  “Disaster.” Henri slammed the door for the back seat. “The level of incompetence in there is appalling—quite appalling. I shudder imagining the reaction when we report it.”