"Be careful about making assumptions," Marcus said. "First, though, your facts are a little scrambled. Charlotte died 3 years before Gideon. She couldn't have killed him. And, there is no evidence at all to say that Gideon murdered Charlotte either. Moreover, the fact is, we do know that Gideon could not have killed himself. So, who killed Gideon three years after his wife died? And what happened to your great grandfather Elwood? Dead at age 30? Certainly could not have been natural causes. And how did Pearl end up in a disco in platform shoes and hip hugger jeans in 1978, eleven years after she died in 1967? None of it adds up."
"Understood, Jessie," Robert said, "I have to return all these medical records to St. Mungos, so be sure you keep all this information under your hat. So, if Caprice is right, and if we need to check into Pearl deeper, then I will try to dig deeper and see if there is a paper trail that still exists that says where Charlotte, Gideon, Elwood, and Pearl are all buried. If any of you find that information, then for heaven sakes, do not, whatever you do, go there and start tromping around the gravesite areas or doing anything there at all, unless I go with you. There could be some sort of trap laid there. I don't want you snooping around there by yourselves. Understand me?"
"Understood," Marcus said. "I don't know how this all connects to Angus, except that these are all relatives of Suzanne, but I trust we will find out. Robert is right, though, this is one mission that will depend on us staying under the radar of whoever is controlling the elementals. That means we need to make sure that we make sure that we are seen doing nothing more than we would do on any other routine day."
"Indeed," Robert agreed. "This puts the entire team at risk of having to learn some new techniques--things that normally I only assign to Marcus and Michael."
"Espionage," Marcus nodded. "The art of doing whatever you bloody need to do and not being seen doing any of it."
"Pretty much, yes," Robert said. "And, let's be honest. While everyone on this team have some important skills, espionage is not something that can be taught on the fly or in a crash course."
"No, but we can teach stealth and some slight of hand. we can also teach some disguise skills if we need to," Marcus said.
"Agreed," Robert sighed. "I suggest we wait and see what we need. I am a bit reluctant to have to teach anyone safecracking or anything else in the breaking and entering line unless we need it. I think we would be very wise to tread most carefully from this point onward. I will have Michael check the cemetery records through the department of mysteries. He can do that, and no one will be any the wiser. In the meantime, I suggest that, Ruby and Jessie, you go through any papers you have or any more photos and see if there's anything more than might be helpful, and please ask the boys to do the same thing when they might have that could help."
"Well," Marcus looked at Jessie and Ruby, "I know Angus purposely brought back every single sheet of paper that he found in that house, and I know there are, literally, boxes and boxes of paperwork he found that he stuffed in the storage room in the basement here. It might be a good thing for both of you to take the time to go through them. Nobody ever thought any of that would be important, and maybe it still isn't. But, Angus is going to have plenty of care here for the next several days, so this might be a good time to go through that stuff, just in case there's something worthwhile there that could help us. And in the meantime, Robert and Michael and I will see if we need to go do a little midnight grave digging."
"I wasn't going to exactly spell out to Ruby and Jessie that we might be doing that," Robert looked at Marcus.
"Still," Marcus shrugged "we need to see what happened with this family, and new autopsies might be the only way to do it."
"Exactly, and the Wizengamot has always looked dimly at exhuming a body," Robert said. "And they will look even more dimly at it if we ask them for a whole chain of exhumations."
"Robert," Marcus frowned, "question--You've had the chance now to examine and care medically for Suzanne on more than one occasion. When you examine someone, are you able to determine if someone is a squib or not?"
"Generally, yes," Robert said. "Most of the time, the reason someone is a squib is a result of some sort of physical damage to their body's magical system. However, its important to note that someone's inability to cast a spell can result from a psychological block, a trauma that makes them too frightened to be able to do magic."
"Like some of Suzanne's records said she had suffered as a child. In our dealings with her, though, I have never seen her hesitate to try to cast a spell. I've only seen her bollix them up."
"And that's what I've seen too," Robert said. "The only damage I ever saw to her magical system was that her system does not produce high levels of magic, but that isn't entirely abnormal. It's rather like someone with a low metabolism as opposed to a high metabolism. It could have come from some sort of injury that happened way back in her past but certainly I didn't see any sign of any new injury. If it happened from injury, then maybe it explains why she's never been able do much of any kind of spell successfully, like some sort of permanent deficit in magical power. But then again, I wasn't entirely looking to find malfunctions with that system. I didn't look deeply at it because I had no particular need to. If I have to, I suppose I can go to Switzerland and do that. After all, she still falls under the jurisdiction of the ministry. For now, though, let's be as subtle as we can. I think we will get far more accomplished if we look like we're doing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary."
"Agreed," Marcus said.