THE EROTIC RETURN OF AMBROSE HORNE
By Chrissie Bentley
BEING …
The loin-lunging adventures of Victorian London’s most unconventional detective
Armed with only his relentless curiosity for the darkest recesses of human sexuality, Ambrose Horne is the enterprising eroticist for whom no puzzle is too perplexing, no secret is too scandalous, and no position is too impolite. Now, gathered together for the first time, The Erotic Adventures Of Ambrose Horne reveals the Carnal Casebook of the Idiosyncratic Inquisitor, the Horny Holmes ... the man who put the Dick into Private Investigator ... the one-and-only Ambrose Horne.
MOVE OVER SHERLOCK: THERE’S A NEW SLEUTH IN TOWN!
(The London Gentleman’s News Of The Lewd, January 1897)
THRILL! as Horne casts a curious eye over
THE REDISCOVERED HERESY
SHIVER!! as Horne uncovers the groin-grinding truth behind
THE REARRANGED MARRIAGE
DROOL UNCONTROLLABLY!!! as he mops up the mess left by
THE WISHING BOX – A CHRISTMAS MYSTERY
AND MORE
Published by Accent Press Ltd – 2010
ISBN 9781907016929
Copyright © Chrissie Bentley 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Xcite Books, Suite 11769, 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London EC1V 4PY
The stories contained within this book are works of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the authors’ imaginations and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Contents
Introduction/glossary
Lady H --- Lends a Hand
The Strange Case of the Rearranged Marriage
The Strange Case of the Unfaithful Husband
The Strange Case of the Wishing Box - A Christmas Mystery
The Strange Case of the Rediscovered Heresy
AMBROSE HORNE (1865-1963)
(Excerpt from The Crime-Fighter’s Who’s Who: 1986 edition)
British detective and criminologist whose use of explicit sexual situations and solutions aroused considerable controversy in 19th century London. However, the success of his methods can certainly be compared with the more conventional means employed by other amateur detectives of the age, leading to several commissions by the British government, military and, on at least one occasion, the Royal Family. In later years, Horne would detail some 60 of these investigations beneath the umbrella title The Ambrose Horne Mysteries.
Educated at the public school Charterhouse, an institution that he left under less-than-clear circumstances, Horne then spent five years (1883-1888) in India, both as an officer in the British Army, and a student at several native institutions. It was during this period that his talent as an eroticist first attracted attention, as the author of a number of texts published to accompany the paintings of the Hindu artist Lakshmi Kanpur. India also introduced Horne to the English author Captain Charles Devereaux, author of the erotic classic Venus In India – their friendship would survive until Devereaux’s death in the early 20th century.
Returning to London in 1888, with his reputation as a private detective already confirmed by his sub-continental escapades, Horne immediately established himself as an extraordinarily prolific journalist and novelist, publishing an average of five book-length erotic tales a year, for the next half-century. He was also the author of a series of anonymous scientific texts, whose own graphic nature saw them widely circulated on the London sexual underground of the day. Exceedingly rare today, their influence on subsequent researchers (qv: Grafenberg, Kinsey et al), can never be discounted.
In 1892, Horne became patron and head of ‘the Community,’ a socio-sexual utopia in which there were no taboos, no ‘forbidden’ pleasures, no stigma attached to sexuality whatsoever. He remained at the helm of the organisation until his death, safeguarding his founding principles by producing sufficient offspring that the society remains a ‘family business,’ more than four decades after his death.
Horne’s other great legacy was the launch, in 1933, of the erotic quarterly, The Modern Man’s Literary Journal, published from his offices in Belgravia. It was within those pages that he initiated the publication of the aforementioned memoirs, relying upon the Literary Journal’s subscription-only circulation for license to circumvent the laws surrounding the publication of such explicit material.
However, the spring 1941 appearance of The Case of the Congealed Conundrum saw a private prosecution brought under the Obscene Publications Act. Controversially, the case was thrown out of court, largely (it was alleged) because of Horne’s still-powerful connections to the upper echelons of law and society. Full details were then secured under the Official Secrets Act, presumably to prevent attempts to cite the case as precedent in future prosecutions.
In 1955, aged 90, Horne passed the day-to-day running of The Modern Man’s Literary Journal to Martin Fletcher, an ex-army author whom he had been nurturing since 1946; Fletcher’s own autobiographical account of his introduction to Horne, A Man Of Letters, was then selected as the opening tale in the first volume of Horne’s collected memoirs, in 1957. (Subsequent volumes appeared in 1962 – The Casebook of Ambrose Horne; and, posthumously through the auspices of ‘the Community,’ in 1965 (A Study in Scarlet Women).
Horne remained intimately involved with the publication, both intellectually and physically; indeed, a revealing interview by the American journalist Caroline Collins, published in the Journal in late 1963, was illustrated with explicit photographs of Horne’s seduction of his interrogator. Collins subsequently gave birth to Horne’s 17th, and final child; she also worked as the Journal’s office manager during the final months of Horne’s life, and co-edited (with Fletcher) the third volume of Horne’s collected memoirs (1965).
Born one week before the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, Horne died from mundanely natural causes in November 1963, one week after the murder of President Kennedy. Although it was a synchronicity that he would certainly have appreciated, his own final words were reported to be, ‘I don’t have a problem with old age. Unless, of course, it slows her down.’
EDITOR’S NOTE
Although the majority of Ambrose Horne’s memoirs date from the period 1888-1913, it was 1933 before he began preparing them for publication, at which time he made a number of amendments to the texts, most notably in the use of sexual terminology.
This remained an on-going project, with the form of the stories featured in the 1957 ‘Collected Edition’ generally regarded as definitive. Nevertheless, Horne allowed a number of now-archaic terms and expressions to remain in the text; though they may prove unfamiliar to the modern reader, these words have been retained in this edition. A brief glossary follows this note.
The precise chronology of the Memoirs is uncertain. It is presumed that those tales included in this first volume are among the earliest. However, scholars have dated several subsequently published stories to an earlier period in Horne’s life, including a number that clearly pertain to his years in India, while certain incidents and characters featuring in these stories were certainly borrowed from later events.
In Horne’s defence, however, it must be remembered that, at no point did he intend his Memoirs to stand as a definitive autobiography; they were, first and foremost, ‘an entertainment, a diversion and, perhaps, an antidote to the drug-addled blatherings of that other fellow’ – a caustic reference to Horne’s early contemporary (and occasional r
ival) Sherlock Holmes. For this reason, no attempt has been made here to identify those names and places that Horne chose to disguise with an initial and a blank line (his long-time paramour Lady H_____, for example), even in those instances where subsequent research and writings have rendered such devices irrelevant.
Finally, a word about Ambrose Horne’s sexual prowess. It has been written that Holmes had his Watson; Horne had a hard-on. This is true. However, his apparently licentious lifestyle was rarely indulged for the sake of carnality alone. Even in the throes of passion, we must remember that Horne was ‘working.’ In his private life, Horne was a remarkably faithful man, whose true loves can be counted on the fingers of one hand; and who could, in turn, count on Horne never to betray their affections. For Horne, therefore, sex was no less a tool than Miss Marple’s sagacity, Adam Dalglish’s intellect, or Sherlock Holmes’ magnifying glass. And, although his methods might often be regarded as unconventional, his success rate was second-to-none.
A BRIEF GLOSSARY
Acorn – glans (Eng, 18th century)
Balanus – glans (Eng, 19th century)
Baubles – testicles (Eng, late 18th century)
Bun, Bunny – vagina (Eng, 19th century – forerunner of ‘pussy’)
Crisis – orgasm (Eng, 19th century)
Dong – penis (Eng. Late 19th century)
Gamahuche – fellatio (French, 19th century)
Godemiche – dildo (French, 19th century)
Lingam – penis (Hindu)
Little death – orgasm (Eng, 19th century)
Merkin – vagina (Eng, 17th century)
Muff – vagina (Eng, 18th century)
Pintle – penis (Eng, 16th century)
Tribadism, tribade – lesbianism, lesbian (Eng, 19th century)
Wifthing – fucking (Old Eng)
Yoni – vagina (Hindu)
Lady H___ Lends a Hand
‘I’m afraid Mr Horne is out of town. I trust I might be of assistance?’ Lady H_____ seated herself at the small table by the window, and shuddered inwardly. She had never met the man who stood before her, did not know a thing about him. But just one glance told her all she needed to learn. He was young, he’d recently come into a lot of money, and he thought the entire world was at his beck and call. Nevertheless, since Ambrose obviously held him in high enough regard to hand him her card, she should at least find out what he wanted.
Her caller, who did indeed fit that description like a glove, looked disdainfully towards his hostess. ‘I was hoping to speak to Mr Horne personally.’
‘I told you, Mr Horne is out of town and, at the risk of seeming impertinent, I would imagine he apprised you of that fact, before suggesting you called upon me.’
The man nodded. ‘He did say something of that sort, but that was before we were properly introduced.’
‘Before, after, I really don’t see how that makes a difference.’ Lady H_____ was fast losing patience with the insolent pup. ‘Unless you intend travelling to India to complete your acquaintance?’
‘India. Damn it. I need to see him today.’ For the first time, Lady H_____ felt a prickling of curiosity.
‘If it is about a case, Mr Horne has already apprised me of his current schedule,’ she replied, softening her voice a little. ‘If you would be so kind as to ...’ She intended asking his name, to check against the handful of files that Horne had handed her before he departed. But the visitor did not, it appeared, intend being kind enough to do anything of the sort.
‘It really is too bad,’ he growled. ‘I travelled a long way to be here today, spent a small fortune in carriage fares to cross this dreadful city, and now you tell me that I might as well have stayed at home, because your master is sunning himself in the furthest reaches of the empire.’
Lady H_____ bit her tongue. ‘Well, you are correct in one respect. Perhaps you should have stayed at home. In fact, if you take your leave now, you may find yourself still in one piece when you return there.’ Her hand moved slowly towards the bell-rope that would summon her footman from the bowels of the house, but paused as the visitor let loose a mighty sigh, and finally took the chair she had offered him when he entered.
‘I apologise for my rudeness. But it was a long journey. I’m just tired and, I confess, I am at my wits’ end. Horne was the only man who could help me, and I was sure that he would. Our correspondence was quite firm on that point.’ Reaching into his top pocket, he produced a pair of letters, both addressed in Ambrose’s distinctive handwriting. Lady H_____ took them, and read the first: ‘My dear Goffman ...’
She halted. ‘Alexander Goffman?’
The man nodded.
‘If you’d only said that when you arrived. I was just reading your case this morning.’ Of all the modern fads that had descended upon London society in recent years, the insistence of certain people to announce themselves simply as ‘a gentleman’ when they called upon strangers was one of the most infuriating.
‘I’m sorry. You were reading my case?’
‘Mr Horne is meticulous in his record keeping and, before he departed, he entrusted me with the details of each of his on-going investigations, that I might be able to inform him of any developments during his absence. Yours, if I might say so, is by far the most fascinating of them all.’
Goffman blanched. ‘You have read everything?’ He spoke slowly, his words as stiff as his mortified expression. He repeated, ‘everything?’
Lady H_____ nodded. ‘Of course. Is something amiss?’
‘But it’s so personal,’ Goffman whispered, but Lady H_____ merely smiled. ‘I think that it is because you kept it personal that you find yourself in your present predicament. If you had sought assistance when the matter first arose ...’
Goffman interrupted her. ‘No matter who I spoke with, they would have laughed in my face. That’s why I was so desperate to speak to Mr Horne. He is the only man I know of ...’
Now it was Lady H_____’s turn to interrupt. ‘The only man, perhaps. But Mr Horne no more works alone than any other detective of this age. Now, your problem, as I see it, is, you believe someone has stolen your penis.’
His face an absolute portrait of despair, Goffman nodded. ‘They have.’
‘May I see?’ Lady H_____ rose, and drew the curtains. She turned back, to find Goffman had remained resolutely seated. She smiled. ‘Come, Mr Goffman, I can assure you that, if it has miraculously returned, it will be nothing I have not seen before. And if it hasn’t returned, then nothing is what I shall see, and your dignity will be maintained. Correct?’
The wretched man groaned, then slowly stood and, as though he was handling live coals, began to unbutton his trousers.
He granted her little more than a fleeting glimpse, but it was clear that the man was not mistaken. Where once there had hung an organ, there was now a featureless patch of bare flesh. The pubic hair was still in place, and the testicles were certainly present. But, unless the man was the most abject rantallion, his penis was most definitely absent.
‘Oh dear.’ Lady H_____ could not suppress the outburst, but Goffman was so concerned with reassembling his dress that he barely heard her.
She picked up Horne’s notes, smiling at the border of characteristic doodles that surrounded his handwritten comments; then suppressed the smile in case Goffman should think she found his state amusing. ‘Now, the missing item; Mr Horne notes that you describe it as around nine inches long, close to two in circumference ... tell me, is that in an aroused state? Or otherwise?’
Goffman, for whom this conversation had taken on all the qualities of a rigorous torture session, placed his head in his hands. ‘Aroused, Your Ladyship.’
Lady H_____ nodded. Of course it was; how many men measure themselves at any other time? And how many actually employed an accurate tape measure? ‘Uncircumcised,’ she continued, ‘no distinguishing marks or blemishes, no past history of impotence or dysfunction.’
She read on, hoping that Horne might at least have of
fered up some suggestion as to the fate of the missing member. It was not, after all, the sort of item that one simply puts down and forgets where it is; that could be left on a seat in a railway carriage, to be thrown into a heap of similarly misplaced objects in the Lost Property office.
Horne, however, remained silent on that score. He noted, of course, all the notions he had discarded: disease, decay, accidental amputation; Goffman was healthy as a horse (‘and claims to be hung like one,’ he had scribbled in the margin), and the affected area bore no signs of trauma. She continued scanning the page. ‘There is precedent for your complaint,’ she announced, finally. ‘It is alleged to be a regular occurrence in parts of Africa, although no comprehensive study has yet been undertaken. But there was a case here in England; in Framingham, as a matter of fact.
Goffman looked up at her. ‘What was the cause?’
‘I’m afraid the public record is a little vague on that matter,’ she sighed, as she finished the paragraph. ‘Apparently, it was credited to witchcraft. Well, it was 300 years ago. The supposed witch was executed; her victim, however, appears to have vanished from view.’
‘I can hardly blame him,’ Goffman murmured in a tone so despairing that Lady H_____ thoroughly regretted her earlier snappishness. She sat down, her mind throwing questions at her as though they were cricket balls. Some (‘how do you urinate?’) she suppressed. Others, including a minutely detailed recreation of the events preceding Goffman’s discovery of his deprivation, were of interest only in as much as they shed absolutely no light upon the mystery. She was, she mused, thoroughly stumped, and almost admitted as much. But then she reconsidered her choice of euphemism. At this moment in time, the miserable Goffman would have welcomed even a stump. Not for the first time, but certainly for a brand new reason, she cursed Horne for departing as abruptly as he did.
* * *
Ambrose Horne had not visited India since he returned from the army, more than five years previous. Little, of course, had changed. In a land so vast and ancient, history is measured in epochs, not Empires, and Great Britain’s presence on the sub-continent was little more than a gnat-bite on the hide of the ages. Nevertheless, the week-long steamer voyage could not be over fast enough, and Horne spent his first days on dry land simply reacquainting himself with the sites, sounds and, of course, the sweetnesses that had dwelled for so long in his memory alone.
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