Grimoires and Where to Find Them by Raconteur, Honor (best affordable ebook reader .TXT) 📗

She greeted him with relief. “Eddy, there you are. You made good time.”

Jameson spun and gave her a wide smile. “Detective! I dropped everything and ran here. I was telling the gents, I was, point of pride that someone snuck past me and the guards. I don’t like it, no I don’t.”

“He said he has a few theories on how this might have been done,” I threw in. Mostly because I wanted to know everything he’d thought of so we could plug the holes before someone else had the same bright idea as our thief.

Eddy nodded, head bopping.

“Right, right. Two ways to do it, or as I see it, two easy ways to get around the wards. Both require an innocent dupe. First, take what you’re wanting to get out, and wrap it up in something like papers for disposal. Trash collection happens outside the wards, see. You’ll have to track it, but a staff member will carry it out for you, wards won’t kick up a fuss, and out it goes. You can retrieve it easy before the garbage men come.”

I groaned. The simplicity of that method hurt my soul. Mostly my head, but my soul as well.

Eddy shot me a sympathetic look.

“Sorry, Doctor. Second option is a bit faster for retrieval, means some sleight of hand, but easy to do. Take the thing, whatever it be, and slip it into one of the tourists’ bags—them ladies, they always carry those large bags over their shoulders, full of things. Easy to slip something small in there. Then let them go ahead of you, follow them off grounds, catch back up long enough to slip it back out.”

That also hurt my soul.

I may need a box of chocolates after this.

Jamie tapped a thoughtful finger to her mouth. “The stolen book was on display here for the tour groups that come through. The book it was replaced with was inventory from a nearby shelf. What do you think, Eddy? Sound like he used the bag method?”

“Odds are. Or something similar.”

Seaton was not so easily convinced and demanded, “Show me.”

I, too, wanted to see this in action, actually prove that it worked, and I gave a firm nod.

Eddy shrugged, amenable to this, and gestured toward Jamie. “I need you to carry a bag big enough to fit a book in, and a book to use.”

“I can arrange that.” Jamie put up a hand, staying him in place, then retreated back to the librarian offices. She came back a few minutes later with the head librarian, who had an over-the-shoulder purse clutched in both hands, and while not the largest I’d seen, it was large enough to put a book into with ease.

“They’re not about to let any palace property go marching out,” Jamie informed us with an understanding expression, “but they’re willing to let us borrow one of their blank record books for this purpose. No harm if something happens to it.”

“Works for me.” Eddy clearly didn’t care.

For the intents of the experiment, it would still work. While the book was not incredibly valuable, the wards would still recognize it as palace property and react accordingly.

“Let’s do a dry run,” Jamie suggested. “We’ll gather the staff up, have them pretend to be a tour group, and walk the same route. Miss Adams, if you’ll put the record book in the same place the grimoire would have been? Thank you so much. And please play tour guide, I’d like to see the route the tours take through here.”

An excellent suggestion. It would give us a better feeling for how plausible this scenario was. I found it hard to believe that even a skilled thief could switch books out, put something into a lady’s purse, and pull it out again without a single person catching a glimpse of it.

Jamie had it arranged in minutes. We started at the front doors of the library, the head librarian walking us through the main floor.

She stopped partway and gestured. “We normally stop here, talk about some of the books that are on display, and take some questions.”

Jamie nodded. “Okay, good. Keep going.”

It was a struggle to not turn and stare at Jameson, who was behind us. But the point of this was, the tour group wouldn’t have been staring suspiciously at each other the entire way through the building. I had to act naturally, which meant paying attention to my tour guide.

Miss Adams walked a bit further, then to the next open area, where a grand, sweeping staircase led up to a second level. “We stop again here to tell them about what all we have on the second floor. We keep a great many specialty items up there for our royal mages and kingsmen.”

“Okay, good. Next.”

We continued at something of a leisurely pace until we reached the main counter.

“And then, here’s the last stop before they leave, where we explain the checkout procedure and something of the history of how long the palace library has had a full staff of librarians on hand. It’s actually rather recent, as it didn’t start until Queen Regina’s grandparents took a more direct interest in building the library up.”

Ah? That was news to me, I’d thought their history was longer than that.

Miss Adams gestured toward the front door. “Do we go out?”

“You don’t, no. Or, you can if you wish. Ladies, for the purpose of this exercise, I need you to actually exit palace grounds at this point. I understand this is the last stop for most tour groups and they’re escorted out after this. So, that’s what we need to do.”

Everyone nodded, willing to play this out, and followed Jamie out of the building. We walked steadily toward the gate, and Seaton went ahead to explain that we were doing an experiment, and to ask the guards to let everyone in and out without challenge. We went through, and I spotted Phil sitting on the wall, watching the proceedings with interest.

Once we were past the walls, Jamie led us