The Case of the Golden Heron Society - Chapter 3
Chapter Three: Reading Between the Lines
Harry slipped into the library, ignoring the two men following him, and headed over to the small desk that was in a corner of the room. Harry looked over the rest of the room considering; it was possible that the victim could have been there before being confronted by the killer. He sat down on the desk chair and looked down at the desk. The top of the desk was empty of any sort of papers, though there were a couple of scattered pens. It looked unassuming at first, but a closer look revealed that the desk had been cleared in a hurry.
Harry began opening the desk drawers, starting with the drawer that was right in front of him: a flat drawer that was right above the chair. “Bingo,” Harry muttered to himself as he caught sight of a jumble of papers in the drawer.
“What did you find?” Emery asked as Harry took out the pile of papers.
“Whatever Peterson was worried about before he died,” Harry said as he started to sort through the papers. “And something that he didn't want the killer to find.”
“So, you think this might be why he was killed?” Emery asked. He looked over the spread of papers and frowned; it was not the financial data that he had expected. Still, there were enough financial papers there that it might be a motive. “Is it okay if I take these?” he asked, picking out the financial data ones.
“Let me glance over them first?” Harry asked, leaning back in the chair to look up at Emery. “I think that the guys with the body want to talk to you, anyway.”
Emery glanced over to where the Constables were trying to catch his attention and he sighed. He put the papers back down on the desk and nodded. “I’ll be right back, stay with your teacher.”
“Kay,” Harry agreed, nodding as Emery walked away. He then turned back to the papers and started spreading them around, trying to put them in order.
“Why did you want to look over all of the papers?” Snape asked. “What could you possibly get out of them?”
“Motive,” Harry said, relishing the word. “The hardest part is putting this all in order. Because some of these were on the desk before he brought the others out and I think that he just shoved it all into the drawer when he heard the killer.”
“These don't look to be much,” Snape said as he picked out a sheet of paper, holding it gingerly. “It looks to be the minutes of a meeting of some kind.”
“It’s fairly old, too,” Harry said, reading through the same sort of documents. “From what I am looking at, I’m fairly sure that this was from his university days. This is interesting, but I’ll have to get back to that.”
“Oh?” Snape asked, raising his eyebrow.
“I need to go over these documents first so that I can hand them over to Emery,” Harry said. He shrugged. “I could rely on Emery to tell me what they say later on, but it’s always best to get things first hand.”
“And you don't believe that the financials have that much sway on this case?” Snape asked.
Harry looked up, startled at the observation. He then shrugged and turned back to the papers in his hands. “Something’s not right with this case. Sometimes cases like these have simple answers, the common motives disguised as the unusual, but sometimes the unusual cases have unusual motives. I need to look at everything to see which one this is.”
“Unusual cases,” Snape mused. “How often do you end up in these sorts of cases?”
“It’s calmed down a lot after heading into Hogwarts, which I was kind of relieved about,” Harry said. He shuddered. “I think I would go crazy if people started dying all of the time. Of course, when people do die at Hogwarts, it’s not the kind of case that I can solve. Cedric... I know who killed him, but I couldn't catch him and it’s not exactly a mystery.” Harry shook his head, focusing back on the present. “No, instead I seem to get a couple of cases each summer.”
“And do the rest of the ‘Golden Trio’ know about these unusual cases?” Snape asked.
“Not really,” Harry said. He shrugged at the look that Snape sent him. “I haven’t told them about this and even though we solve mysteries each year, it’s not this kind of mystery.”
“Really? You haven’t told your friends about this?” Snape asked, blinking in surprise over the news. “I would have thought that you would share everything with them.”
“It’s not exactly a good conversation starter,” Harry said. He made a face and held out his hand. “Hello, I’m Harry Potter, yes, I’m the Boy-Who-Lived, no, I don't remember the Dark Lord who killed my parents, but I’m a good hand at finding murderers. Yeah, like that would go over well.”
“No, I suppose it wouldn’t,” Snape said. “But they haven’t figured it out during any of your mystery solving?”
“I generally let Hermione handle the research and everything,” Harry said. “But mostly I do the investigating apart from them and then nudge them into the correct conclusion.”
“Oh?” Snape asked. “I can see keeping your ability to solve murders a secret, but keeping your investigating in one of your little adventures a secret from your friends is surprising.”
“The only real investigating I did was back in my third year, when I looked into Sirius Black,” Harry said. “Of course, what I found didn’t quite match what everyone was saying and I couldn’t figure it out until he kidnapped Ron.”
“Interesting,” Snape said. His eyes glinted as he considered Harry. “Tell me, are you hiding your abilities in other areas?”
Harry laughed; keeping his voice low since they were at a murder scene and laughing was generally frowned upon at a murder scene. “I probably could be decent at Potions without you lurking over my shoulder and Malfoy throwing random ingredients into my cauldron, but I’m really only good at problem solving.”
Snape rolled his eyes. “Potions can be like problem solving if you look at it in a certain angle. We shall have to correct your thinking in that area.”
“How did we get to this point?” Harry asked as he shook his head. “The last thing that I expected on this summer holiday was to be solving a murder with my potions professor lurking over my shoulder. Especially since you have been acting so decently.”
“You were acting abnormally and if I did not act decent, as you put it, then I would have no chance of figuring it out,” Snape said. “Now, I believe that you were looking into something here.”
Harry watched Snape for a moment and then shrugged; it was odd, but it wasn't like it was a bad thing. Plus, Snape was right; he needed to go through these papers. He glanced over the financial documents and frowned, following the documents with a little bit of a struggle. That was not his best area, but he still could read through it enough to know that the victim was being blackmailed by someone. There were at least three large withdraws from the man’s bank account in the past three months; past experience told him that meant nothing good.
He put the financial records aside, putting the bank statement on top of the rest of the data. He had a feeling that the pages under the bank report were what Peterson already had on the top of the desk before the situation that led to his death started, which meant that they probably didn't have too much of a bearing on this case. Emery could figure that part out, though, when he got done with dealing with the body.
Harry pulled over the other documents, the one that dealt with the university meetings. These were harder to get through than even the financial stuff, mainly because they were in code. The code was easy to figure out, but it still meant that he had to focus a little more than simply reading through the papers.
“Interesting,” Harry said as the meaning between the lines rose up in front of him. The light was beginning to form; the picture resolving in front of him.
Harry finished reading through the documents and then put them all down in order. He took out one particular sheet and folded it, putting it in his pocket as he stood up. Snape looked up from the one document that he was perusing and put that one down on top of the desk. “Where are you going?” the potions professor asked as Harry moved past him.
“To find out how the killer got in the room,” Harry said. He skirted around the body and the Constables and headed to the far side of the library. Set deep off to the side from the door, the lighting was dim in that part of the room. The shadows made it a perfect place to lie in wait.
“Do you think the killer entered the room before the man locked the door?” Snape asked. Harry glanced over at the man, not surprised at his reasoning skills. After all, Snape had been the one to use logic in his defense for the Stone in his first year.
“The killer would have still needed to get out afterwards,” Harry said. He looked over at Snape to prompt him into more reasoning.
“Could he or she have sneaked out once the door was unlocked?” Snape asked. The bookshelves ran along in such a way that it could have been possible to slip into the chaos unnoticed.
Harry shook his head, however. “The police were the ones who unlocked the door after climbing onto the balcony; they would have checked before unlocking the door. Besides, everyone was accounted for when the police arrived.”
“True,” Snape acknowledged. He turned towards the open balcony doors. “What about the balcony?”
“Possible, but unlikely,” Harry said. He motioned towards the doors. “The Constable had to do some extreme stunts to get in and he used to be a gymnast at one point; I’ve talked to him before.”
“So, what does that leave?” Snape asked. He tapped his foot, looking displeased that all of his suggestions were shot down. Harry was surprised that Snape had handled the whole thing as well as he did, normally he would have given Harry a detention for talking to him like that.
“There’s only one other way for the killer to enter this room unnoticed and leave the room locked from the inside,” Harry said.
“It did not involve magic,” Snape said. He sniffed. “None of the people here are magical in any way, or else they would have reacted to you. Still, one would think that a locked room mystery like this would have been perpetuated by wizards; the some of the younger Death Eaters used to enjoy doing tricks like that.”
Harry grimaced at the idea that murdering people was just a neat trick to do and shook his head. “No, muggles think of tricks like that on their own. In this case, Peterson helped the killer out with this trick.”
“Oh? Are you going to enlighten me, or am I going to have to assign extra homework for you?” Snape asked.
“I just think that you could probably figure it out on your own, considering what Hogwarts is like,” Harry said. He left it like that, thinking that was enough of a prompt for Snape to figure it out. Snape scowled at him, but paused to consider it.
Snape opened his mouth to say something, but a scream echoed through the house.
Chapter Four
Harry slipped into the library, ignoring the two men following him, and headed over to the small desk that was in a corner of the room. Harry looked over the rest of the room considering; it was possible that the victim could have been there before being confronted by the killer. He sat down on the desk chair and looked down at the desk. The top of the desk was empty of any sort of papers, though there were a couple of scattered pens. It looked unassuming at first, but a closer look revealed that the desk had been cleared in a hurry.
Harry began opening the desk drawers, starting with the drawer that was right in front of him: a flat drawer that was right above the chair. “Bingo,” Harry muttered to himself as he caught sight of a jumble of papers in the drawer.
“What did you find?” Emery asked as Harry took out the pile of papers.
“Whatever Peterson was worried about before he died,” Harry said as he started to sort through the papers. “And something that he didn't want the killer to find.”
“So, you think this might be why he was killed?” Emery asked. He looked over the spread of papers and frowned; it was not the financial data that he had expected. Still, there were enough financial papers there that it might be a motive. “Is it okay if I take these?” he asked, picking out the financial data ones.
“Let me glance over them first?” Harry asked, leaning back in the chair to look up at Emery. “I think that the guys with the body want to talk to you, anyway.”
Emery glanced over to where the Constables were trying to catch his attention and he sighed. He put the papers back down on the desk and nodded. “I’ll be right back, stay with your teacher.”
“Kay,” Harry agreed, nodding as Emery walked away. He then turned back to the papers and started spreading them around, trying to put them in order.
“Why did you want to look over all of the papers?” Snape asked. “What could you possibly get out of them?”
“Motive,” Harry said, relishing the word. “The hardest part is putting this all in order. Because some of these were on the desk before he brought the others out and I think that he just shoved it all into the drawer when he heard the killer.”
“These don't look to be much,” Snape said as he picked out a sheet of paper, holding it gingerly. “It looks to be the minutes of a meeting of some kind.”
“It’s fairly old, too,” Harry said, reading through the same sort of documents. “From what I am looking at, I’m fairly sure that this was from his university days. This is interesting, but I’ll have to get back to that.”
“Oh?” Snape asked, raising his eyebrow.
“I need to go over these documents first so that I can hand them over to Emery,” Harry said. He shrugged. “I could rely on Emery to tell me what they say later on, but it’s always best to get things first hand.”
“And you don't believe that the financials have that much sway on this case?” Snape asked.
Harry looked up, startled at the observation. He then shrugged and turned back to the papers in his hands. “Something’s not right with this case. Sometimes cases like these have simple answers, the common motives disguised as the unusual, but sometimes the unusual cases have unusual motives. I need to look at everything to see which one this is.”
“Unusual cases,” Snape mused. “How often do you end up in these sorts of cases?”
“It’s calmed down a lot after heading into Hogwarts, which I was kind of relieved about,” Harry said. He shuddered. “I think I would go crazy if people started dying all of the time. Of course, when people do die at Hogwarts, it’s not the kind of case that I can solve. Cedric... I know who killed him, but I couldn't catch him and it’s not exactly a mystery.” Harry shook his head, focusing back on the present. “No, instead I seem to get a couple of cases each summer.”
“And do the rest of the ‘Golden Trio’ know about these unusual cases?” Snape asked.
“Not really,” Harry said. He shrugged at the look that Snape sent him. “I haven’t told them about this and even though we solve mysteries each year, it’s not this kind of mystery.”
“Really? You haven’t told your friends about this?” Snape asked, blinking in surprise over the news. “I would have thought that you would share everything with them.”
“It’s not exactly a good conversation starter,” Harry said. He made a face and held out his hand. “Hello, I’m Harry Potter, yes, I’m the Boy-Who-Lived, no, I don't remember the Dark Lord who killed my parents, but I’m a good hand at finding murderers. Yeah, like that would go over well.”
“No, I suppose it wouldn’t,” Snape said. “But they haven’t figured it out during any of your mystery solving?”
“I generally let Hermione handle the research and everything,” Harry said. “But mostly I do the investigating apart from them and then nudge them into the correct conclusion.”
“Oh?” Snape asked. “I can see keeping your ability to solve murders a secret, but keeping your investigating in one of your little adventures a secret from your friends is surprising.”
“The only real investigating I did was back in my third year, when I looked into Sirius Black,” Harry said. “Of course, what I found didn’t quite match what everyone was saying and I couldn’t figure it out until he kidnapped Ron.”
“Interesting,” Snape said. His eyes glinted as he considered Harry. “Tell me, are you hiding your abilities in other areas?”
Harry laughed; keeping his voice low since they were at a murder scene and laughing was generally frowned upon at a murder scene. “I probably could be decent at Potions without you lurking over my shoulder and Malfoy throwing random ingredients into my cauldron, but I’m really only good at problem solving.”
Snape rolled his eyes. “Potions can be like problem solving if you look at it in a certain angle. We shall have to correct your thinking in that area.”
“How did we get to this point?” Harry asked as he shook his head. “The last thing that I expected on this summer holiday was to be solving a murder with my potions professor lurking over my shoulder. Especially since you have been acting so decently.”
“You were acting abnormally and if I did not act decent, as you put it, then I would have no chance of figuring it out,” Snape said. “Now, I believe that you were looking into something here.”
Harry watched Snape for a moment and then shrugged; it was odd, but it wasn't like it was a bad thing. Plus, Snape was right; he needed to go through these papers. He glanced over the financial documents and frowned, following the documents with a little bit of a struggle. That was not his best area, but he still could read through it enough to know that the victim was being blackmailed by someone. There were at least three large withdraws from the man’s bank account in the past three months; past experience told him that meant nothing good.
He put the financial records aside, putting the bank statement on top of the rest of the data. He had a feeling that the pages under the bank report were what Peterson already had on the top of the desk before the situation that led to his death started, which meant that they probably didn't have too much of a bearing on this case. Emery could figure that part out, though, when he got done with dealing with the body.
Harry pulled over the other documents, the one that dealt with the university meetings. These were harder to get through than even the financial stuff, mainly because they were in code. The code was easy to figure out, but it still meant that he had to focus a little more than simply reading through the papers.
“Interesting,” Harry said as the meaning between the lines rose up in front of him. The light was beginning to form; the picture resolving in front of him.
Harry finished reading through the documents and then put them all down in order. He took out one particular sheet and folded it, putting it in his pocket as he stood up. Snape looked up from the one document that he was perusing and put that one down on top of the desk. “Where are you going?” the potions professor asked as Harry moved past him.
“To find out how the killer got in the room,” Harry said. He skirted around the body and the Constables and headed to the far side of the library. Set deep off to the side from the door, the lighting was dim in that part of the room. The shadows made it a perfect place to lie in wait.
“Do you think the killer entered the room before the man locked the door?” Snape asked. Harry glanced over at the man, not surprised at his reasoning skills. After all, Snape had been the one to use logic in his defense for the Stone in his first year.
“The killer would have still needed to get out afterwards,” Harry said. He looked over at Snape to prompt him into more reasoning.
“Could he or she have sneaked out once the door was unlocked?” Snape asked. The bookshelves ran along in such a way that it could have been possible to slip into the chaos unnoticed.
Harry shook his head, however. “The police were the ones who unlocked the door after climbing onto the balcony; they would have checked before unlocking the door. Besides, everyone was accounted for when the police arrived.”
“True,” Snape acknowledged. He turned towards the open balcony doors. “What about the balcony?”
“Possible, but unlikely,” Harry said. He motioned towards the doors. “The Constable had to do some extreme stunts to get in and he used to be a gymnast at one point; I’ve talked to him before.”
“So, what does that leave?” Snape asked. He tapped his foot, looking displeased that all of his suggestions were shot down. Harry was surprised that Snape had handled the whole thing as well as he did, normally he would have given Harry a detention for talking to him like that.
“There’s only one other way for the killer to enter this room unnoticed and leave the room locked from the inside,” Harry said.
“It did not involve magic,” Snape said. He sniffed. “None of the people here are magical in any way, or else they would have reacted to you. Still, one would think that a locked room mystery like this would have been perpetuated by wizards; the some of the younger Death Eaters used to enjoy doing tricks like that.”
Harry grimaced at the idea that murdering people was just a neat trick to do and shook his head. “No, muggles think of tricks like that on their own. In this case, Peterson helped the killer out with this trick.”
“Oh? Are you going to enlighten me, or am I going to have to assign extra homework for you?” Snape asked.
“I just think that you could probably figure it out on your own, considering what Hogwarts is like,” Harry said. He left it like that, thinking that was enough of a prompt for Snape to figure it out. Snape scowled at him, but paused to consider it.
Snape opened his mouth to say something, but a scream echoed through the house.
Chapter Four