Order Only Private Message to R Brodie

Just made it back. All of us.

Turns out it wasn't exactly a burglary after all in Paisley. Bit complicated, but Mr Bernard, the bloke who called us in, is father of the shop owner. It was staged by the daughter to look like someone'd burgled her place, but really she was handing off some things on the sly to cover the 'business tax' that Lestrange's lot have been wringing out of folks.

The father really didn't know. Or only knew that some Protectorate muscle had come nosing around, but then there'd been this break-in, with broken windows and things overturned, and merchandise missing, and he'd called us because he thought 'what good are that other lot, if they come badger us for taxes, but then don't keep us from being burgled?' He said there've been other things happen to other shops and houses. Windows broken, animals frightened off, vandals writing things on buildings.

Anywiz. They sell housewares and expensive grocery items. You know, oils and olives and stuff you bake with--ginger and spices and wotnot. Most of it's stuff that's not available for importing now, so the stock they have is well valuable.

They'd gone through and had a list of what had been taken that included some expensive knives with fancy charmswork on them; some clocks that tell you if the baby's sleeping, and some kitchen timers that tell you when the eggs have done; some silver frames; a couple of mirrors; and a giant hunk of truffle that was supposed to be worth hundreds of galleons.

We realised there was something hinky about it, though, as soon as we began looking over the scene: there were linens and tables and things like coat-trees and umbrella stands overturned at the front of the shop. And loads of pots bashed up and thrown about in the back, but the only food items that'd really been disturbed was a load of flour and sugar: the expensive things were all unbroken, though they were knocked over--more like laid over on their sides as if they'd been knocked off their shelves, but for none of them to've broken, their cushioning charms would have to have been dead excellent.

We were able to use vectoring charms to tell that the scene'd been staged for us--a lot of it just didn't make sense for what we were meant to think had happened. And then we were able to put a trace on the truffle because there'd been a security spell on it, originally, and there were bits of it left behind. A nift piece of magic, that was.

So that's that. The daughter hadn't wanted her father getting mixed up with the MLE thugs who'd come, demanding payments, because she said she knew Mr Bernard would've thought he could protect her, but he'd've been in over his head with them, and she was afraid of what might've happened. She thought she could just set it up to look like a robbery, and her father wouldn't have to know. He keeps the books, see, so she needed a story for where those things had gone.

I don't reckon any of it's recoverable, unless we want to go running after Lestrange's lot.