Behind his animated expression and easy conversation, however, Horne’s mind was racing. No man is perfect and the Laird certainly acknowledged the failings of his own past, in anecdote, example and self-deprecating humour. But there was little doubt that the man was as sincere and genuine as he appeared to be, and any hopes Horne might have entertained of unearthing some earth-shaking scandal in the man’s distant past, by which he might be persuaded to withdraw from his proposed marriage, were becoming slimmer by the moment.
Dinner was extravagant and delicious. For all the apparent vicissitudes to have assaulted the family fortune, the Laird maintained a magnificent larder, and a staff that was able to do it justice. Feeling more replete than he had in many months, Horne leaned back in a well-stuffed armchair, a brandy in one hand, and readily agreed when the Laird recommended that he stay the night at the castle, rather than attempt the long walk back to the inn in the fast-gathering darkness.
The evening passed much as the day had, quickly and delightfully. At some point, the two men were joined in the main hall by the castle staff, and Horne marvelled at the absolute lack of formality that the Laird required of them. One girl, one of the maids, was perched casually on the arm of the Laird’s armchair, but with her arm draped across the shoulders of a young man – the Laird’s driver, Horne deduced from his conversation. The cook, Mrs Burns, had settled at the great table, to browse through some of the volumes spread there; other servants gathered in a loose semi-circle around Horne and his host, both listening to, and interjecting into, their conversation.
Morag, the girl who had so silently kept the whisky flowing that afternoon, caught Horne’s eye. He smiled and she crossed the room to settle, like her colleague, on the arm of Horne’s chair. They did not touch, but the firelit closeness possessed a profound intimacy regardless, and when she leaned across him to refresh his brandy, the rugged scent of her unperfumed body sent a sharp jolt of unexpected desire through Horne’s heart.
She spoke. ‘Master? Have you told Mr Watson about the castle ghosts yet?’
The Laird laughed. ‘Oh, Mr Watson is from London. He will have no time for your boggachs and beasties.’
‘Quite the contrary, your Lordship,’ Horne replied. ‘I am fascinated by such tales. In fact, my own childhood ...’ – he launched into a short summary of the supernatural events that had indeed highlighted his boyhood, and only just drew short of continuing on with those that had coloured his adulthood, too. It was at times like this that he deeply regretted the need to spend so much time living the life of an alias.
‘I think we can trump that,’ the Laird chuckled, and there followed, to Horne’s intense pleasure, an evening filled with more rattling chains, spectral pipers, portentous snakes and vengeful hags than you’d find in the works of Dickens, Shakespeare and MR James combined. ‘But the most fiercesome of all the beings that call this castle home,’ the Laird concluded, as an old clock chimed 11 o’ clock, ‘is the monster on the second floor.’ And was it Horne’s imagination, but did everyone in the room gasp aloud at the very mention of its existence?
Morag spoke first. ‘Shall we show him?’
The Laird paused. ‘That is for Mr Watson to decide,’ he smiled. ‘If he believes his constitution is up to it?’
Horne nodded. ‘I already fear that my sleep shall be restless tonight,’ he said carefully. ‘If this monster is even twice as nightmarish as the other beings you have spoken of, I cannot imagine it disturbing my rest any more.’ And with that, the Laird, Morag and two of the others arose. ‘In that case,’ the Laird said quietly, ‘let us proceed.’
Laying back on the thick, luxuriously carpeted floor, relaxing into the sensation of the girl’s lips and tongue on his bare stomach, Horne found his mind alive with as many questions as answers.
They had mounted the vast oaken staircases, the flickering lanterns casting grotesque, giant shadows on the old wooden walls. The antlers of long-dead beasts loomed menacingly in the corners of his eyes, as though the darkness concealed the remainder of their owners’ enormous bodies, and the eyes of the portraits that hung on either side took on a malevolent, motion-filled gleam as the light passed across them.
All had been silent as they climbed the stairs; one or two of the party hanging back, although whether for fear or effect, Horne was unable to determine. Only as they reached a heavy wooden door on the second floor landing, and he heard one of the stragglers begin descending once again did Horne surmise that it was the former, fear, which permeated the group.
‘Again, I advise you,’ the Laird spoke clearly. ‘It is not too late to turn back.’ His key turned in the old iron lock and the door creaked open of its own volition. Horne stepped forward, then flinched as a blast of stale, fetid air buffeted his face.
A voice shattered his reverie. ‘You could at least pretend you’re enjoying yourself!’
Opening his eyes, Horne looked at Morag as she crouched between his legs, his still semi-soft penis in one hand, while the other massaged a jaw that had obviously done a lot of work, for very little return.
‘I’m sorry,’ he smiled. ‘It’s been a long day.’
A long day, my foot,’ she chuckled. ‘The Sassenach’s afeared of a smelly old painting.’
‘Is that all you think it is?’ Horne asked. ‘A smelly old painting?’
Morag fixed him with an impatient eye. ‘It’s a painting, it’s old and it smells. What else could it be?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Horne quietly, and he truly meant every word. He reached for her, pulled her up his body to kiss her mouth, and then continued to raise her, so that first her breasts, then her stomach, and finally her loins brushed his lips. She hung motionless, uncertain what to do next; Horne flicked his tongue out and lightly brushed her sex.
Morag giggled. He repeated the motion, a little firmer this time, and was rewarded with the ghost of a reciprocal squirm. Again he teased her flesh, his tongue parting her lips now and darting through her soft moisture; she froze as it connected with her clitoris, and a light murmur escaped through her breath.
Horne, too, froze and, for a moment, neither moved. And then very slowly, uncertainly, Morag began grinding herself against his face. He placed his hands on her thighs, so that they might move with her, and encouraging her to continue her movements. His lips relaxed to her rhythm; her gyrations were slower, more luxurious than he expected them to be – the look of the girl had convinced him that she would be transformed to a tigress in bed. Instead, she had a lazy grace that other men might have taken for disinterest, but which Horne knew bespoke a passion that, once enflamed, would burn all night. And lying there, his head pinioned between her strong thighs, as she rode him with ever-increasing confidence, he hoped that it would.
Three times that night Morag orgasmed, without Horne barely having to move a muscle, and each one was more intense, more explosive, than its predecessor. Horne marvelled that so exquisite an experience had never presented itself to his researches in the past – as so often in the past, he had much to thank Lady H_____ for. Finally, however, the girl collapsed exhausted alongside him and reached her hand down to his loins, squeezing the erection that awaited her. Wordlessly, she rolled over, so that her buttocks pressed against his thighs and, reaching between her legs, she guided him inside her.
They made love slowly and gently and, when it was over, they slept without even thinking of disengaging. In years to come, Horne would remember that night as one of the most sexually satisfying of his life. Only one cloud hung over his thoughts as he prepared for breakfast the following morning. The painting. The monster.
Clamping a hand over his face, he had entered the room, the Laird one step behind him, raising the lantern so that Horne might see its occupant.
The painting stood some seven feet high – if it did not represent its subject in life-sized dimensions, it came close enough. But what kind of life could its subject have endured? Once, the painting suggested, the creature had been human, and vestige
s of that humanity were still apparent. One head, two arms, two legs.
But the face was distorted and cracked – blood coated whatever flesh may still have clung to the yellowed skull, and a putrefying slime seemed to ooze through the crimson, to pool and solidify in grotesque cakes of yellow. One eye, its orb ragged, its pupil blind, gazed blankly out at the viewer; the other appeared to have melted away completely. A blackened tongue lolled crippled from a toothless, lipless mouth, but a gaping wound on one cheek appeared to allow light to flood that fetid chamber.
The limbs, too, hung in decaying despair; the torso was ragged and torn. Pustulent boils glistened on bare flesh, and appeared to protrude through the last rags of clothing. The sexual organs were all but absent, as though eaten away by ... what? Rats? Disease? Acid?
‘This creature,’ Horne breathed, tearing his eyes from the spectacle before him. ‘This abomination. Does it still live?’
‘It still lives,’ murmured the Laird and, as if in acknowledgement of his words, a movement glimpsed from his peripheral vision caused Horne to whirl around to face the painting again. Had the head tilted slightly? Or a shoulder raised a little? He stepped closer. ‘The workmanship is exquisite.’
‘Emma Sandys. It was one of the last commissions she undertook before her death.’
Horne thought for a moment; almost spoke but then fell silent again. Clasping his hands together in front of him, he broke off a fingernail and, as though tracing one of the portrait’s bold lines with one finger, allowed the nail to trail across the canvas. Then he dropped it into his pocket, and pressed gently at the lining. Lined with a watertight material, the pocket was now airtight, too, the perfect means of transporting delicate specimens out of the field and into his laboratory.
Now, two days later and back in London, Horne was hunched over a microscope, inspecting the detritus he had scraped from the portrait, and looking up occasionally to compare what he saw on the slide with the glossy illustration in the book that lay alongside him. Treponema pallidum. It was scarcely pleasant to contemplate, but that is so often the way with venereal diseases. They are, as Mr Oscar Wilde might have put it, as repulsive in their own flesh as they are in somebody else’s.
The thought of Wilde jarred Horne from his studies – they were going nowhere, anyway. He looked again at the letter that Lady H_____ had delivered to him that morning; she and the Duke had certainly been busy during his absence; had, in fact, charmed almost all the opposition to Griffiths from both the press and the parliamentary opposition. People’s sympathy still lay with the Laird, of course. But men are jilted every day, and why shouldn’t the young lady be permitted to choose the man she wanted to marry? ‘For heaven’s sake,’ as the Prime Minister told his Cabinet. ‘The Empire has spent a hundred years trying to dissuade her subjects from arranging marriages for their children. How would it look if our aristocracy were permitted to carry on regardless?’
Griffiths continued hidden from view, of course. So far as the world was concerned, he remained incommunicado on an ocean liner, three days out from New York. But already there was a whisper going around that it would not be the police who greeted him in America, but a delegation from the British consulate, who would offer their apologies and a complimentary berth back to England.
The Laird, however, continued to prove a formidable opponent. He had already made it plain that he had no intention of relinquishing his right to wed Bessie, loveless and hateful though the union might become. And he retained sufficient political clout in his native Scotland to make things very unpleasant for the English government. The question that exerted everybody now was, how could he be mollified? Or, perhaps more incisively, could he be mollified?
Horne tidied away his equipment, shot one last puzzled glance at the notes he’d made while he studied the slide, then turned and left the room. Stepping onto the street outside, he hailed a passing cab. ‘Bond Street, please.’
Wilde was as punctual and punctilious as ever, seated in one corner of the club. He rose as Horne entered, but mercifully forbore from greeting him with the flow of maddening puns and gratuitous witticisms that were his forte. Shaking hands, Horne wondered whether Wilde was himself as tired of uttering such things as others were desperate to hear them? It must be so difficult to have to perform all the time.
‘You wished to question me on a former acquaintance, Mr Horne?’
Horne named his quarry. ‘I believe you were once acquainted.’
‘Many years ago. We shared, shall we say, certain similar dispositions.’
‘Dispositions?’ Horne knew from experience that, when Wilde spoke, no word could be overlooked, every sentence should be weighed for its precise meaning.
‘We were introduced by a mutual physician. We both possessed a certain notoriety at the time, he through that unfortunate business with the songbird, I because I chose to.’
‘How long ago was this?’
‘Five, maybe six years ago. It’s so hard to be certain. Time appears to fly whether you are having fun or not.’
Horne smiled tightly. ‘Did you ever see his portrait? The Emma Sandys?’
‘No, sadly that had been long lost by the time I made his acquaintance. I did, however, catch glimpse of its replacement.’
Horne started. ‘A replacement?’
‘Basil Hallward undertook the commission. You may not even know his work – even his finest was mediocre at best. I’m afraid the wretched man is better remembered for his mysterious disappearance than for anything he accomplished in life. “Here tomorrow, gone today,” you might say.’
Horne’s mind was racing. ‘And what became of the picture? The Laird himself told me that he had no portrait of himself.’
‘I told you I caught a glimpse. I also told you we were introduced by our physician. Are you not curious as to why we should both be visiting a physician? Two healthy young men, with not a day’s sickness in our lives?’
‘I believe you wish to tell me, whether I am curious or not,’ Horne teased. ‘But, as it happens, I am very curious indeed.’
‘We had the clap!’ Wilde cackled delightedly. ‘And, in the spirit of all birds of a feather, we flocked together at the Laird’s London quarters, to drown our medication in whisky and gin. That is when I saw the painting and, perhaps I was speaking out of turn, but I’ve already divulged my opinion of Basil Hallward’s work. This was one of his viler creations, pallid and pocked with great livid blotches. “Why,” I told my host, “to look at that painting, I would say it needs the sulphur pills more than you do.” And the next time I visited his chambers, it was gone.’
‘Did he explain?’
‘Did I ask? I’m afraid not. But I will tell you this. I was as sick as a dog for weeks before the medicine worked its magic on me. The Laird did not even develop a pimple.’
‘He does possess the most astonishing constitution,’ Horne mused. ‘I’d swear he doesn’t look a day over 25 even now.’
Wilde shrugged. ‘He never has, and I dare say he never will. But, much as I’d like to, I’m afraid I cannot sit here and gossip all day. My first novel is due at the presses today, and I am anxious to watch my babe being born. However, anticipating the topic of our conversation today – the dear Laird has been somewhat in the news, after all – might I presume to make you a gift of a pre-publication copy?’ He reached into a large floral valise and extracted a thin volume, bound with the traditional parsimony of what the trade termed a galley proof.
‘I also took the liberty of sending a second copy to the Laird,’ Wilde continued as he wrapped his cloak around himself. ‘I don’t think he’ll be troubling your client any longer.’
Horne thanked him and, as Wilde left the room, he opened the book to the title page and started to read The Picture of Dorian Gray. When he closed the book, an hour or so later, it was in the knowledge that, once again, he really hadn’t done anything to close this particular case. But he’d made things happen, all the same.
The Strange Case of
the Unfaithful Husband
‘Damnable woman. Whatever does she think I am?’
Ambrose Horne did not lose his temper very often, and Lady H_____ flinched slightly under the unavoidable onslaught of the forthcoming tempest.
‘A piddling tuppenny-halfpenny detective, that’s what,’ he continued, without waiting for her reply. ‘Lost dogs found, missing families reunited, cheating husbands unmasked. Well, I’ll tell you this. There are only two reasons why a man cheats on his wife. The first is because he’s found someone he likes more, and the second is because he’s found someone he likes to fuck more. In the first case, there is nothing she can do about it and, in the second, all she needs do is find out what he’s taking elsewhere, that he ought to be given at home. It’s as simple as that.’
He ducked comically as Lady H_____ feigned to hurl a heavy inkstand in his direction.
‘Ambrose. You may have a brilliant mind, but your mouth really does lag behind it sometimes.’
‘I disagree. For whatever reason, be it abject lust or some deeper seated emotional issue, a man requires certain sexual pleasures. He might mention them to his wife, if he believes there is some chance that she will agree; he may not, if he feels certain she will reject them out of hand. It might be a passing curiosity, it might be an entrenched fetish, or it might be something in between. Either way, if he cannot find fulfilment at home, he needs to seek it elsewhere, or the absence will fester like a canker in his mind.’
‘So he finds a prostitute,’ Lady H_____ snapped.
Horne shook his head. ‘There are emotional issues there, as well. A whore might relieve the physical urge, but the emotional will never be assuaged for as long as the arrangement is a business transaction. For full satisfaction, the man needs to feel as though his partner is fulfilling his dreams of her own free will, out of an emotional attachment to him, not to his pocketbook.’
The Erotic Return of Ambrose Horne Page 5
