His perusal halted as he arrived at one of his own books, from several years before. Venus In Eden, he proudly recalled, was the first ever investigation of horticultural eroticism, a work that encompassed everything from the libidinous properties of certain herbs and shrubs, to the manner in which that most innocent rituals of courtship, giving a lady a bouquet of flowers, had itself grown out of a considerably less refined ritual at which she was, contrarily, deflowered.
He took the book off the shelf, but he already suspected what he would find. Page after page of the book remained uncut and certainly unperused. But still the spine fell open to a page that had obviously been pored over at some length in the past. Only this time, it the text, not the accompanying illustration, that had been circled.
Horne looked over at the Squire, but the older man’s face had already lost its earlier colour and cheerfulness. ‘You know, don’t you,’ he muttered. ‘As soon as Dolores ... Lady Batsford, that is ... told me you were coming here, I knew that, if the game was ever going to end, you’d be the man who ended it.’
Horne nodded a polite acknowledgement of the compliment, then stepped to the window and signalled to Katie, who waited outside. And, little more than an hour later, as the Squire awaited his transportation to Maidstone Gaol, Horne watched as the footman loaded his luggage onto the carriage that was taking him back to London, while Katie – under strict orders from her mistress to make sure the detective had the most pleasant journey home – hung impatiently on his arm, desperate for Horne to tell her all that had transpired in the Squire’s study.
He waited until the carriage had pulled away from the hall. ‘In the end, my dear, it was you that set me on the course, by drawing me that icy bath and then making your remark about mushrooms. The previous night, I had observed your mistress ... well, let us just say she certainly enjoyed feasting on that part of the Squire’s physique that most resembles that same delicacy. And suddenly it all became clear to me.’
Katie gazed at him blankly. ‘I don’t quite follow you.’
‘Tell me, Katie, you’re a country girl. Are you familiar with–’ he named a certain mushroom, then described it for good measure. The girl frowned. ‘I know it, of course. They grow everywhere. But you can’t eat them. Besides, what do they have to do with the Squire and my mistress?’
‘Everything, my dear. You are right to say that you cannot eat the mushroom in question. You can, however, imbibe the oils that it secretes and, if you were to do so, you would discover that, far from being a foul poison, it also acts as an irresistibly powerful aphrodisiac, one that produces an insatiable urge to bite, to lick and to suck.’ He chuckled nostalgically. ‘I myself first experienced it on the nipple of a particularly buxom botanist at Kew Gardens and, believe me, with that oil dancing on my tongue, I almost understood cannibalism.
‘But it must be used very sparingly, indeed. An overdose is rarely fatal, but it will certainly render one unconscious and, because it is relatively taste-free and odourless, there is no way of knowing just how much is too much. And that was how the Squire ensnared your mistress. They would spend their evenings together, doing whatever questing lovers will do. Then, when he was gone, ever-punctual at ten o’clock, she would retire to bed, having first dusted herself with her favourite trinkets to assure herself sweet dreams. And, within an hour or so of receiving the overdose, she would be dead to the world.
‘Your mistress knew nothing of her lover’s use of the potion, of that I am certain. But he was well-versed in its properties; might even, I fear, have received a little assistance from me in that department’ – and here he told the wide-eyed girl about the chance discovery of his own book in the Squire’s library. ‘He had marked just one page. That which gave the vital statistics of our little mushroom friend. The bountiful crop of them in your Fairy Field must have caught his eye; add that to your mistress’ undying devotion to fellatio; and the remainder of the scenario, I think, I must leave to your imagination.’
Katie was half laughing, half horrified. ‘You mean, he’d smear the mushroom on his John Henry, let her suck it all away and then, when she was out cold, he’d come back to steal the jewels?’
Horne nodded. ‘Exactly. The precise means of his re-entry, I will leave to the constabulary. No doubt he had a key or some such, which would allow him to return once the house was quiet. Suffice to say, of all the iniquities that I have encountered in my years of work, the base transformation of a natural pleasure into such an unconscionable felony makes me regret ever publishing that particular book in the first place – or, at least, allowing it to be placed on open sale, where a bounder like the Squire would be able to lay his filthy hands on a copy.
‘I fervently believe that science is a calling that can only be described as the quest for a better world. That it should be degraded in such a way fills me with so much despair that ...’ and then his voice trailed off, as Katie placed one finger over his lips, while her other hand deftly unbuttoned his trousers.
‘I know you never picked any mushrooms, and I don’t have any jewellery for you to steal if I had,’ she smiled. ‘So, I was wondering whether you remember our journey into Nether Winchington? In particular, the last 30 miles of it?’
Horne, thrilling to the gentle flick of her tongue on the thick head of his cock, nodded. ‘I do.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘we have 120 miles to get through this evening. And I was just wondering, how many you’re going to be good for this time?’
Horne glanced thoughtfully down at her bobbing head. ‘I will estimate 50,’ he said. ‘And, if I am correct, then you must allow me to devote the remaining 70 miles to your pleasures. Do we have a bargain?’
Her eyes flashed her answer; her tongue produced the exclamation point, and Horne smiled ecstatically. ‘Then, let the challenge commence.’
The Strange Case of the Reluctant Smuggler
The evening fog was rolling in, as Ambrose Horne finally took his leave of the dock, pulling up the collar of his military greatcoat to keep out the chill, and thrusting his hands into the deep pockets.
‘I think a drink is in order?’
His companion, the short, portly figure that could not have disguised its profession if its life depended upon the deception, glanced up at him. ‘A drink is definitely in order,’ Inspector Toynbee replied. ‘And then, perhaps, you will be good enough to explain the meaning of this charade?’
Horne remained silent for a moment, as though uncertain whether to be amused, or affronted, by the policeman’s remark. He chose, at length, to be amused. ‘I will explain,’ he said, ‘but only because you are too dunderheaded to have figured it out for yourself. No wonder little boys take such delight in knocking policemen’s helmets off their heads. It’s worth the telling off, just to see the look of confusion on their faces.’
Now it was Toynbee’s turn to fall silent. It had not been his idea to involve Horne in this investigation; neither had it been his decision to allow the man free rein across every aspect of the case. And now that it was all over, and the felon was on a trans-Atlantic steamer to freedom, Toynbee couldn’t help but wonder just what the point of the entire affair was? Dash it all, it really was the most confounded business; and, as the two men turned one dark corner after another, and another welcoming public house disappeared into the night behind them, it was clear that it was not over yet.
Horne finally halted at a most unprepossessing doorway, the single opening in the towering grey wall that had risen up before them. ‘Our journey’s end, Inspector,’ he remarked with just a hint of that unctuousness that Toynbee found so infuriating. ‘A little off the beaten track, but I think you will find its diversions worthwhile.’
He produced a key from his breast pocket and, for a moment, Toynbee thought they had simply arrived at one of Horne’s own abodes – apparently, he had several, each one leased to another of his many aliases. That impression, however, was dismissed the moment they entered the building.
Three liver
ied man-servants stood attentively in the hallway, one sweeping away the visitors’ coats and hats, another holding a second door open, a third falling into step behind them as Toynbee blinked in the sudden splendour and brilliance of the room they were entering – a vast ballroom, around which any number of couples disported in states of undress that the Inspector himself could scarcely believe.
Drawing himself up to his full height, puffing out his chest, Toynbee turned to Horne with an expression of absolute fury – that was deflated the moment he caught the detective’s eye, followed his glance and found himself face-to-face with three of his own superiors from Scotland Yard, themselves revelling in the embrace of any number of lithe young women.
One of that group detached himself from a position he could only have discovered in a book of the basest carnal imaginings and, wrapping a gilt-edged towel around his lower quarters, approached the newcomers. ‘Ah, Horne ... Toynbee. I trust everything ended as satisfactorily as we hoped it would?’
Horne nodded. ‘Indeed it did. Although I must say, without Toynbee here, we could have been looking at a very different scenario indeed. I really don’t know what I would have done without him.’
Nothing more than a quizzically raised eyebrow communicated the questioner’s surprise at Horne’s recommendation; Toynbee himself felt a faint blush coming on, and wondered whether he had misjudged Horne a little. The man remained an appalling paradigm of perversion, snobbery and cynical patronization, but credit where credit’s due, he did get the job done, even if his methods were somewhat unconventional.
At the back of his mind, Toynbee did wonder precisely what it was he’d done that the detective found so remarkably indispensable, but – as with the remainder of this adventure – that would doubtless be made clear in the fullness of time. He just hoped that it wouldn’t be quite yet. From across the room, Toynbee’s eye had been caught by a statuesque black woman, naked as the day she was born, but endowed with breasts that would have distinguished the bawdiest ship’s figurehead. He turned to his companions to beg their leave for a moment, and discovered that they had already departed. Shrugging, he straightened his tie, adjusted his jacket and began walking towards his Amazonian destiny.
It would be several voluptuous hours before the three men met up again, but Horne was not idle in the meantime.
Lying back on the thick, luxuriously carpeted floor, relaxing into the sensation of the girl’s lips and tongue on his bare stomach, he, too, found his mind alive with as many questions as answers.
The case itself had been straightforward enough. Once he had chased from his mind all of the baggage and speculation that the daily newspapers had invented to camouflage the lack of actual fact; once Scotland Yard had dismissed its original insistence that the entire affair was a lot more complicated than it appeared to be; once all of that was accomplished, it took Horne a matter of days to arrive at conclusions which the Yard had spent a month vainly seeking.
From there, it was simply (simply!) a matter of persuading the police to forget everything they thought they knew about detection, to reassess the clues that they’d discarded as irrelevancies, and to acknowledge that, sometimes, two wrongs really do make a right. At least until another right comes along to restore the natural order of events. The only question was, would he be able to communicate the necessary details in time?
A voice shattered his reverie. ‘You could at least pretend you’re enjoying yourself!’
Opening his eyes, Horne looked at the girl 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.’
‘Hard work, soft cock,’ she giggled. ‘More of your stories?’
He reached down and ruffled the girl’s hair. ‘Ah, Cassie, you know me so well.’ And it was true, she did. For as long as Horne had been visiting this establishment (was it four years now? Maybe even five?), Cassie ... Cassandra ... had been his constant companion, the one girl with whom he could share every thought, secret, even fear that ever preyed upon him. And she treated him with similar intimacy. If anybody could help him resolve an affair that demanded so much of his attention that even his reflex actions had fallen silent, it was Cassie.
He pulled her towards him and she, so familiar with his moods, snuggled herself against his chest and lay, silently listening to him. She knew from experience that his thoughts were as enthralling as any of his tales. His problems would surely be just as fascinating.
In fact, neither his thoughts nor his problems were anywhere near as remarkable as Cassie believed. They were, however, over 3,000 miles away, reclining in the arms of the only woman such a cavalier soul as Horne could ever have admitted to loving, who herself was doubtless sunning herself at the end of another hot American afternoon, or else romping in the company of the only woman that she had ever loved, in the luxurious confines of an antebellum mansion, perched in the heart of one of the largest tobacco plantations in the United States.
Yet he did not wish himself there, nor her here. Just that the Trans-Atlantic mail did not take such a damnably long time. His letter to Lady H_____ had left on a steamer two days before his quarry had departed. He anticipated it arriving with much the same advantage and, had Lady H_____ remained in New York, as her original schedule had insisted, then all would have been fine. Instead, an invitation to the British consulate saw her run into a friend she had not seen in years ... a friend who just happened to be stopping off in New York for a few days before leaving to join her husband at his family estate in Virginia. Perhaps Lady H_____ would like to accompany her? As Lady H_____ only half-joked in the letter that Horne had received just this morning, however could she decline an invitation like that?
Horne flicked idly through the pages of the photograph album that he stored in his mind. Princess Louisa, beloved wife of ... what was the confounded man’s name? The son of the son of the cousin of the brother of the uncle of the – not for the first time in his career, Horne smiled wryly at his steadfast refusal to memorise every single scion of the Royal house of Hanover. Suffice to say, the man was somehow related to Her Majesty the Queen, and that had been enough for him to now reign over the tiny German principality of F___ S___ D___.
Louisa, on the other hand; now Louisa was a beauty. Even as a girl she had turned heads, and as a teen she was haughtily rejecting would-be suitors as quickly as the crowned heads of Europe could offer them to her. Horne had not seen her since her marriage; Lady H_____, however, who had known her since infancy, had spent several apparently blissful holidays in the Prince’s ancient family home, and now they were enjoying another together.
But who, Horne was wondering now; who else knew how the two women spent these long, luxurious hours together? And he smiled now because, as that knowledge crossed his mind, so it also stirred his blood and Cassie ... dear, patient Cassie ... suddenly gave a little squeak of delight, before falling greedily upon his long-awaited erection. One day, Horne mused before he surrendered completely to her caresses, he would write a pamphlet about the power that the Sapphic sisterhood holds over men. Especially when the sisters in question are both women that the man, too, admires.
* * *
An ocean away, as Horne’s passion rose, Lady H_____ finally closed her eyes, secure in the knowledge that hers was spent. Louisa, busying herself at the beautifully ornate wash basin on the other side of the room, laughed aloud. ‘I wonder if I could employ somebody just to wash my toys when I’ve finished with them?’ she asked.
‘A dildo maid,’ Lady H_____ murmured in response. ‘What a lovely idea. You could leave them on the mat outside your chamber, she’d sweep by and pick them up, and then return them clean and sparkling in the morning.’
‘Or later that same night. Just in case you require a second round.’
‘I wonder how you would word the advertisement,’ Lady H_____ mused. ‘Lady of pleasure and l
eisure requires discreet handmaiden to undertake the disinfection of certain and sundry devices. Must be of pleasant disposition and unenquiring mind.’
‘Unlike you,’ the princess teased her lightly. ‘I thought I’d done everything with one of these, but you really surprised me tonight.’
Lady H smiled. ‘I surprised myself. And what made it all the more exciting was, I didn’t need Ambrose to plant the seed. I came up with that all on my own.’
‘Well, any time you want to try out any other ideas,’ Louisa told her, ‘you know where I am.’ She turned, took three steps and then hurled herself through the air onto the bed, landing with a gentle thump on the exquisitely over-stuffed mattress and kissing Lady H_____ hard on the mouth. ‘You weren’t thinking of going to sleep any time soon, were you?’
Lady H_____ shook her head, as the Princess’s feather light kisses inched slowly down her body, pausing at her breasts and again at her stomach, her teasing tongue so exquisite on her best friend’s expectant alabaster flesh until Lady H_____ could take no more, and pushed the girl’s face between her legs. She gasped as Louisa’s breath caressed her pussy, and again as a tongue gently parted the damp folds of her sex. She squeezed out one last sentence before Louisa’s caresses consumed her. ‘Sleep? Not if you keep doing that.’
They had not always been so familiar with one another. It took many years for these closest of friends to became the closest of lovers, although once they had succumbed to one another’s temptations, both asked why it had taken so long. It was the night before Louisa left London for the last time, to prepare for her marriage to the young man who then was merely the heir to the principality’s fortunes.
The Erotic Memoirs of Ambrose Horne Page 6
