Fangs at Fasching

The Rolls-Royce Phantom II stopped at the gates before the long drive down to the shore of Chiemsee Lake in Bavaria to the palatial villa of the Baron Heinz Luderman. Viscount Terrence Winter disembarked from behind the driving wheel and, getting into the backseat for the entrance he knew would be expected of him, turned the wheel over to his half-Chinese, half-Russian chauffer, Jimmy Chin. It was a long drive down to the entry circle of the villa then, but they must have heard the Rolls coming, as the entire staff was mustered out to greet him. Driving one's own Rolls sedan wasn't seemly for a viscount, so Terry judged it a good call to switch at the outer gates.

The baron himself, forty-five, a bit heavy set, hirsute, dark, nearly good-looking but not quite, was standing forward of the semicircle of servants and greeted Terry as he exited the back of the Rolls.

"So good of you to come at my call for help, Terry," he said as the two men, both elegantly dressed in afternoon tweed that was in high style in 1932 Europe. "And you're just in time for the practice masked ball this evening."

"You knew I'd come when you said you needed me," the young, at twenty-five, half-British dandy answered, giving the baron a broad smile. He was high enough in the snobbery class, his father being impoverished British nobility, and his mother being from the wealthy American family that saved the father's bacon, that he could afford not to be a snob. Even without the title, he turned out well. He was a trim, blond, blue-eyed, achingly handsome young dilettante.

"I wasn't sure. I thought you might have been detained in Geneva over the maharajah situation."

"The brother of the Maharajah of Nagpur, not the maharajah himself. That appeared to have made all of the difference. If it had been the maharajah himself, you wouldn't have heard anything about it. But, no, I'm not escaping a murder investigation—"

"Another murder investigation," Luderman interjected, with a laugh.

"Yes, another one. I'm afraid I exposed the maharajah's brother as the murderer, which didn't endear him to me and caused me to have to find my own bed, but it prompted the Geneva authorities to release me in time to be here. A masked ball, did you say? It's October 31st. Has the American Halloween tradition made it to the shore of a Bavarian lake?"

"No, not at all. I've gathered a group of possible collaborators in a new project—a ballet opera on the theme of Fasching, which is almost, I think, a parallel to the American Halloween. It comes later, though, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, a last-moment boisterous celebration of life before setting into a dreary winter. It's usually marked by a masked costume party, much like American Halloween. We're doing a practice of one tonight. I'll open the house to a bigger costume bash this year at Fasching. It's connected to my wish to produce a new operatic work. Those I've gathered here for the week are involved in that in various facets—or I wish to involve them in the production. You're a composer and were a ballet dancer, so I hope you will find time and effort to be involved in that as well as the other matter I've sought your help with."

"My notoriety will not damage your production?"

"Not at all," the baron answered. "As you should well know, scandal—especially sexual scandal—attracts an audience."

"I certainly can provide the 'sexual' in scandal," the viscount said.

"Yes, you certainly can," the baron answered. Both of them looked down to where the baron had rested his hand on Winter's hip. Their eyes met and their shared smiles were based in shared couplings.

Baron Luderman was a director of the Bayreuth Wagnerian Festival, but, in asking Terry for help in a family matter, he also noted that he wanted to put forth an opera-ballet of his own. He wanted to stage something along the lines of Edgar Allen Poe's "Masque of the Red Death," in which death stalks a fancy masked ball being conducted to try to ignore the threat from the external world. Poe's threat was the plague. Luderman's was more of a current political nature. He didn't hide that his intent was to try to point to the danger to Europe of the growing brown shirt political movement in German in the early 1930s.

"And, speaking of dance," the baron said, "does your leg wound still hurt much? I notice you are limping a bit."

It had been three years since rebounding from the Lord Claibourne scandal. Winter had been linked sexually with the man when the British military hero had been found present in a Torquay hotel room with the babbling son of a duke and a dead footman, all of them naked, Winter, in an adjacent room riding the lord's carriage driver, barely having missed it all. He had solved that mystery himself but was hounded to leave England for Europe for what was revealed in his relationship with Claibourne. The viscount had gone to Leningrad to live with Mikhail Rostov, director of the Kirov Ballet. Winter couldn't escape being linked sexually with other prominent men.

Rostov was murdered in his bed, where he was on top of and inside Winter and doing vigorous pushups. Winter had been shot in the leg in this assassination, which ended his dancing career, but he had solved this murder mystery too. Subsequently, the young viscount was marked both for his connection to the deaths of male partners and for his amateur sleuthing talents.

"Are you asking if it gets in the way of the athletic positions I could take as a ballet dancer or whether it compromises my flexibility in sexual positions with men?" Terry asked, the amusement reflecting in his eyes. He was famous for being openly sexually provocative in an age where sex was rampant but that it wasn't socially acceptable to talk about it. The baron well knew that Terry Winter was what was known as a satyriasis, the male equivalent of a nymphomaniac, and couldn't go long without being covered by a man. The baron had covered him before himself and hoped to do so again this weekend.

"Not really. I assume we can manage, if not quite with the exuberance of our earlier days. I did find the athletic positions with you very invigorating, though. I fondly remember you doing the splits for me on the credenza overlooking Lake Como." His hand moved around to brush against Winter's basket. Terry took the hand in his, looking around to see if any servants were in view. The baron took the hint and pulled his hand back.

"Your wish for me to stop by isn't just for family or artistic reasons then, is it?" the young viscount asked.

"You know it isn't. I assumed that after the loss of your latest lover in Geneva, you would want some solace from an established partner before developing a new, interesting liaison—hopefully someone who survives the experience better than has been the case with your recent lovers."

"And you thought that saying you had needs of my sleuthing skills would make me stop here from Geneva on my way to somewhere else?"

"Where is somewhere else?"

"I thought I might try America—New York, perhaps—land of my mother."

"Broadway, perhaps? You are keeping your hand in with the theater, I hope. But my understanding was that your ballet days were over."

"Alas, all of my dancing needs to be private now and isn't what it used to be. I do need to pursue something useful. I thought I'd give composing a greater emphasis."

"Your CV on that might be helped by composing for my ballet-opera venture. I will not pretend that enlisting you for that on my new opera isn't in my mind."

"Yes, it might. But back to your reasons for asking me here. Not just sleuthing or musical projects, I assume? You do want to lay me again, don't you?"

"Yes, of course. I thought when you got settled in, before lunch and meeting the others, we might go for a ride."

"You have horses here?"

"Yes, it's a large estate. We could ride horses, yes, although that wasn't the riding I was referring too—if your leg can take it. Do you still ride cocks as well as you did with me the last time we bedded?"

"I manage," Terry answered, "or so I'm told."

"Several times a day, if I remember rightly," the baron said., "and very, very good at it—the equestrian of the bed chamber was a term I've heard applied to you." They both laughed. "But now, to meet the staff. They have been standing out here in the cold long enough. I'll have Andre show you and your man to your accommodations—Andre can valet for you while you're here. He can find jodhpurs for you if you didn't bring your own."

"I did, of course," the viscount said, gesturing to the mountain of luggage his Chinese-Russian chauffer, Jimmy Chin, thirty-five, big, muscular, bald, scowling, inscrutable, was still pulling out of the boot of the Rolls.

"And then we can go for that ride," the baron said. Thereupon he introduced his house staff: the housekeeper, Sophie Vetterman (forty-five, statuesque, frowning, austere, severely dressed, appearing everywhere in the background, seeing everything), the cook, Frau Snodgras—Gilda (fifty-five, pudgy, always smiling and bowing and scraping, quite subservient) and the house maids, Katie (flirty, twenty, willowy, beautiful) and Ingrid (plump, shy, nineteen, attractive but not beautiful). And on the male side, his indispensable butler, Jozef (fifties, tall, withdrawn, always business like, but everywhere and sees everything, just like the housekeeper, Fraulein Sophie Vetterman, except that he sees through Sophie as well), the houseman and sometimes valet, Mustafa Atakan (Turkish, twenty-eight, beefy, muscular, bald, commanding, dominating, and with a knowing eye for the young viscount; obviously fucking the baron, who was known for his versatility).

"And then, no, where's Andre?" the baron said.

Andre (French, twenty-three, handsome, well-formed, and yielding to other men), who was the valet, was nowhere to be seen.

"I don't know what has happened to Andre. He is to valet for you. If you were a top you would find him a delight, although, who knows, maybe the two of you will manage an accommodation of some sort. He does have a very soft mouth, if I do say so myself. Mustafa will have to show you to your room."

"My chauffeur, Jimmy, valets for me as well," Terry said. "He can do for me here if you can give him a room near me."

The baron looked at Jimmy Chin as if seeing him for the first time. He was quick to assess the man's duties toward the viscount. "Ah, yes, I can see where your man will do better than Andre would. Andre is strictly a submissive." He continued. "Your room has a dressing room between the bedroom and the bath. There is a divan in there, if that will do for him," said the baron, knowing full well that the valet probably wouldn't be using the separate bed in the suite much, if at all.

"That will be perfect. I do need to have Chin nearby to help when I become nervy and need relaxing. You said there are other guests for this week."

"Yes, but most of them are sleeping in today. We had quite an evening of it. All we were missing was someone with nimble fingers on the piano. Now that you're here, though, we are complete for happy hour this evening. I presume you have kept up with your playing. We are quite lucky that Rostov's assassin didn't shoot you in the hand or the arm. But here are two guests now. I think you know my daughter, Madeleine."

"Yes, of course." Terry did remember the baron's daughter, now twenty-one, small, willowy, quiet, pale, delicate, a ballet dancer already of some renown. The viscount assumed that much of the baron's wish to launch his own new ballet-opera was to feature his daughter. Terry remembered the young woman as being more robust, though. She looked quite pale and listless now.

"And her fiancé: Drago Corvius (Romanian, thirty, tall, well-built, dark, handsome, hirsute, commanding, sultry eyes. Uncertain origin. A classic gigolo). Drago is an operatic baritone," the baron said, in introduction. "He's interested in taking the male lead in my production." It was quite clear in how the baron said that that he didn't really want Drago in that role—and was leery of having him in the role of son-in-law as well—but this was only clear to Terry in the discussion he'd had with Luderman that brought him here in the first place.

As the couple moved around the side of the house to the back terrace for breakfast and the baron was turning Terry and his chauffeur over to the Turkish valet, Luderman murmured, "And what is your impression? I don't like the look that Corvius gave you."

"He's a handsome man. I'm pleased by the look he gave me," Terry answered, with a smile. "If his emphasis was not on your daughter, I would be busy trying to get the measure of him myself. But, yes, you may be right about his ambitions. I'll check it out."

"If he lays you, I certainly won't be anxious to give my daughter to him," the baron said. "In the meantime, we have playtime of our own before all of the rest are up and about. I can't wait for the ride."

They did go horse riding in the estate's park. This concluded in the stables, in the loft, where Terry, jodhpurs stripped off his legs and puddled at his feet, and bare buttocks raised, was bent over a hay bale, feet and the palms of his hands pressed to the floor boards as the baron was mounted on his ass, grasping Terry's blond curls in one hand, arching the young man's chest into his; and strapping the willing viscount's buttocks with a riding crop with the other, as he rode the young man's ass with deep-cocking vigor. The baron liked to ride his young men just as he rode his horses—over all the hurdles and into the ground.

Winter's talents, despite being a celebrated titled swell, were in enduring pain and testing and in being a submissive whore to whatever man was fucking him at the time. He was able to make his partner feel like a stud king and to maximize the pleasure for both of them. He did no less for the baron in the stable loft.

As they reached climax, Terry turned his gaze to the far corner of the stable loft and let out a surprised exclamation. It wasn't a declaration of release, though.

The baron turned his gaze to where Terry's was arrested and he let out a "Fuck!"

They had found why the young French valet, Andre, had not appeared at the arrival all in the front courtyard when the viscount was driven up in his Rolls-Royce Phantom II.

The young man, naked, was bent over a saddle rack, his wrists and ankles restrained at the floor of the loft on the legs of the rack. His back, buttocks, and thighs were stripped with angry red welts, which stood out in stark contrast to the rest of him. His unmoving body was unnervingly pale, as if he'd been drained of blood.

He obviously was quite dead.

Terry turned his eyes to the baron's face, gauging the older man's expression. "You didn't . . .?"

"Absolutely not," the baron answered indignantly. "I use my servants; I don't kill them."

* * * *

The baron asked Terry to stay with the body of the young valet while he went to call the police. "The nearest police unit is in Garmisch," he said. "It will probably take them time to get here. I don't think we should do anything with the body until they arrive."

He hardly needed to tell the viscount that as often as Winter had been involved with dead bodies in his young life. While the baron was gone, though, he, after pulling his undergarments and jodhpurs back on, did a cursory look at the body, using a thick strand of hay to touch the body here and there. As he suspected, there wasn't much blood left in this body. Yet, it didn't appear that he'd bled out on the floor of the loft.

"Not again," Winter said, with a sigh.

When Luderman returned, he brought the Turkish houseman, Mustafa, with him. The horror of the situation didn't keep the Turk from giving Winter lustful looks—or from the young viscount returning them. As a satyriasis, he cultivated good cock wherever he could find it. His coupling with the baron had been interrupted, and Terry was hot for someone to cover him—with the hunky Turk being a likely candidate. He looked to Terry to be very commanding and cruel, which was what the young man liked the best. There was every evidence that the houseman had been apprised that the viscount craved cock and would be an easy lay for someone as well-endowed at the Turk was.

"The police said it would be a few hours for the inspector on duty to get to us," Luderman said. "He's out on another case. They asked that we get everyone into the lounge and hold them there, not telling them what the issue is until the inspector arrives."

"They won't suspect something's wrong?" Terry asked.

"I don't think so. We gather for drinks and entertainment at about this time every afternoon. We can get focused and intent on discussing opera. They are a self-absorbed lot. As long as we keep the drinks and canapes coming, they won't know anything's wrong—or care as long as it just involves the servants. I've told them you're coming. Most of them know who you are and are interested in you. They know that your coming means we have an accompanist for the singers too. That's what we'll feature this afternoon."

"And how will they be gotten into the lounge?"

"We'll leave Mustafa here with the body and you and I can split up the house—me downstairs and you on the bedroom level, to guide them all to the lounge. The call for drinks alone should get them there."

So, that's what they did. Winter left Mustafa with the body with a bit of regret, as he'd hoped for a short, satisfying losing wrestling match with him, especially in light of his tryst with the baron having been interrupted. As a satyriasis, the young viscount was quick to check out possibilities and equipment with every man he came in contact with. The baron was a known commodity to him, they had fucked all over Europe when he was a ballet dancer and Baron Luderman was an impresario.

When he had arrived at the villa, Terry had checked the other men out. The butler was dismissed immediately as far too old, straightlaced, and sour. Mustafa had been an obvious "yes." He was a hunk, he'd given Terry the eye, and the viscount had discerned movement at a protruding crotch of the Turk when they were introduced. Even the baron's prospective son-in-law showed promise and interest, which Terry returned, when they were introduced—and this even though Madeleine Luderman was hanging onto the opera singer's arm. It looked to Terry that the main reason the baron had asked him to stop by—to check out Drago Corvius's preferences would bear out the baron's suspicions.

As he was moving down the bedroom hall, Terry wondered if the baron was getting as good an entertainment—and shock—as he was. In one bedroom, he found Frau Vetterman, in a black corset, high-top black boots, and black gloves, standing over a slightly pudgy dark-haired man in his forties, who was bent over the foot of a bed, naked, arms outstretched in a cruciform position, and grunting as the dominatrix flicked his buttocks with a riding crop.

The man looked around in embarrassment as Terry calmly invited them to the lounge, whereas the housekeeper showed no sign of surprise or remorse at all. Her glare at Terry revealed her assessment that he was of no sexual interest or possibility to her at all and, more damning from her position, she had discerned that he would willingly go under the lash for man as this man was going under the lash for her.

He was even more surprised by finding the baron's daughter, Madeleine, stretched out on a bed in another room, with a voluptuous and siren-like woman, perhaps in her forties, lying beside her, embracing her, with her face buried in Madeleine's throat and the fingers of her other hand moving from cupping her breasts to being buried in the young lady's cunt, rubbing her clit and plunging fingers inside her. Both women were naked and were writhing against each other, Madeline doing most of the writhing. Madeleine looked even more pale than she had that afternoon. She was emitting low, guttural moans and holding the other woman's hand between her legs with one of her own hands.