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 Germany 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 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 the 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 a 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.

When Terry announced they were expected in the lounge, Madeleine didn’t respond—she just lay there, half conscious, a dreamy look on her face. The other woman, though, sat up in bed, cupped her voluptuous breasts, and gave a saucy look at Terry. She languidly stood from the bed and was shrugging into her dress as the young viscount continued down the hall.

The next bedroom door he opened revealed the naked backside of a man in his fifties of military bearing, bald, and chunky but muscular, standing at the foot of the bed and holding the maid, Katie, naked and trussed up, to the mattress. He’d tied her wrists to her ankles with rope and had pillows under her belly, bringing her rump to the edge of the foot of the bed. He was leaning over her, one beefy hand pressing her cheek to the bed with a grip on the back of her neck. Her pelvis was raised to give Terry a good view of what the soldier type with a ramrod straight back was doing to her. The man had a thumb in her ass, his other fingers splayed over the small of her back, and he was fucking her in the ass, pressing in under the stretch of his thumb, with a thick-rooted cock.

The maid was gazing out at the wall by the bed with a wide-eyed stare. She was looking stoic, though, taking the ass fucking in silence like it was just one of her duties at the villa. And perhaps it was. The baron ran a household that was more bordello than residence. That was a major reason that Terry visited him regularly. Terry didn’t announce what the two were supposed to interrupt that to do. He just quietly shut the door and moved on down the corridor. From the vigor with which the old man was fucking the girl’s ass, though, Terry thought they probably were close to climax. He’d stop back a little later to announce drinks time.

He reviewed the position the old man was taking on the maid in his mind. He didn’t think he’d ever been put in a position like that. He thought he might like to try it—maybe even with the man fucking the maid, if he was bisexual. Terry didn’t mind who else a vigorous, inventive, commanding man fucked as long as he fucked Terry.

His last stop didn’t surprise him at all. His chauffeur, Jimmy Chin, had already gotten busy with his own pleasures. Terry peeked into the dressing room off his bedroom to find that Jimmy was sitting, naked, on the side of the divan and a young man, in his mid-twenties, auburn haired, small, cute, with effeminate movements, was sitting in Jimmy’s lap, also naked, facing him, and Jimmy, grasping the young man’s waist between strong, bronze hands, was lifting and lowering the young man on his cock. Terry well knew that his chauffeur had a champion-length shaft, so he wasn’t surprised at the groaning and moaning the young man did. He was taking the shaft deep.

He looked up to see that the opera baritone, Madeleine’s fiancé, Drago Corvius, was standing across the dressing room, in the doorway of the bathroom, and watching the fuck on the divan. He had his fly open and his erection in hand. As closely as he was watching the young man rising and falling on Chin’s cock, it was obvious that Corvius wanted to fuck the young man himself.

That answered the question of how broad the baritone’s sexual interests were.

He looked at Terry and Terry looked at him. Neither withdrew for the next moment or two as the bouncing motion on the divan increased in intensity, the young man leaned back, grasping Chin’s knees, and panted hard, rising up into the clouds of ecstasy.

Terry turned and walked into his bedroom, he moved to the foot of the bed and stood there. Corvius walked through the dressing room and into the bedroom, pulling up behind Terry. He placed his hands on Terry’s hips and leaned into him.

“I’ve heard about you,” he said. “A male nympho, I’m told. Can’t get enough, and well worth the ride.”

“That’s what you’ve heard?” Terry asked, not pulling away. “Do it.”

Corvius laughed. “I didn’t know you would be this easy.”

“Fuck me. I need a cock.”

The opera singer reached around and fondled Terry through the material of the crotch of his jodhpurs. What he found only egged the dominating opera singer on.

“Lean over on the bed and extend your arms.” It was the same position Terry had seen the middle-aged man in just now with the housekeeper dominating him. The baron hadn’t completed Terry. They had been interrupted by finding the valet dead in the stable hayloft. Terry bent over the bed and extended his arms to the side. Corvius reached around and unbuttoned the waistband and the fly of Terry’s jodhpurs. Those, and his undergarments were pulled down and off his legs. Corvius went down on his knees behind Terry, his mouth going to Terry’s hole, one hand palming the young viscount’s belly to hold him in place, and the other milking the young man’s cock.

Terry moaned appreciatively at the attention.

After a few minutes, the tall, muscular man rose over Terry from behind and on top. He put his erection in position; mounted the young, moaning viscount; penetrated; and quickly and efficiently fucked Winter to a mutual ejaculation. It was all over in a few minutes. Terry was still lying there, in that position, on his belly on the bed, feet on the floor, when Corvius was gone and the young man Chin had fucked had scurried behind him as well.

When Chin entered the room, he helped Terry up and dressed in afternoon clothes. “Are you all right, My Lord? Your tensions assuaged? You don’t need my cock?” He was standing behind Terry and reached around and palmed the young man’s lower belly, ready to be of service as Terry required.

“Yes, Jimmy, thanks. No need for you at the moment. I’ve been satisfied for now. We’re supposed to all be gathering in the lounge,” Terry continued. “You need to go down with me.”

“What has happened?” Chin asked. He wasn’t asked about the circumstances of Corvius having fucked Terry—there was nothing new or unusual about that scenario. Terry let—no, begged—any half-decent and well-hung man to fuck him. But the Chinese-Russian chauffeur recognized how unusual it was that he be asked to be in attendance in the entertainment rooms.

“There’s been a death,” Terry said. He kept nothing away from Chin.

“Of course there has,” Chin said, with a sigh.

“A murder.”

“Of course. But no, don’t put that collar on yet, My Lord. You are bleeding at the throat. I’ll have to do something to stop the bleeding.”

“Well, fuck,” Terry said. “That bastard. He bit me while he fucked me.”

“Yes, it seems so, Sir. That’s a most peculiar bite mark, sir, if I say so. Somewhat like in Montevideo.”

Chin had saved Winter in the nick of time in Montevideo. “Where did the baron say Corvius was from—and what sort of name is Drago?”

“Romanian, I believe, My Lord. And I think ‘Drago’ is a form of ‘Count.’”

“Isn’t Transylvania in Romania?” Terry asked.

“Yes, My Lord, I believe it is. There the bleeding has stopped.”

“Good. We’ll say nothing more of this for the moment. But we’ll need to be observant. These matters can easily get out of hand.”

“I understand, sir. I’ll put a plaster on it and, with the collar over that, no one will notice. Then we best being going downstairs as requested. Was it a gruesome murder, Sir?”

“He was bound, whipped, and, I think fucked. And I think the body had been almost completely drained of blood.”

“Had it, Sir? Nothing new for us, though, I think.”

“Yes, but still very unusual. A bit disturbing—and a delicate matter.” His thoughts went to remembering the view of the siren suckling at Madeleine’s throat, and he wondered if Corvius suckled there too. Madeleine was very much paler than she’d been when Terry last saw her—and so docile. Terry remembered her as being fiery. He had liked her that way. Not that he’d ever had any desire to fuck her.

* * * *

Jimmy and Terry Winter weren’t the last ones to get down to the lounge. Drago Corvius came in soon after Terry and his chauffeur, his arm around a still-groggy Madeleine. He had the effrontery to smile at Terry, while brazenly cooing to Madeleine. Next was the older military-bearing man who had been fucking the maid, Katie. The baron introduced him to Terry as another baron, with the military bearing being explained as him being retired German general Baron Otto Merkel, who now was an arms industrialist and a backer of the brown shirt movement. He also dabbled in the stage arts, and Baron Luderman was cajoling him to be a financial backer for the ballet-opera Luderman was trying to put together. That no doubt was why Merkel was feeling he had a free pass to spike the house staff. Terry had already determined that if the man was bi, he certainly could discipline Terry if he wanted to. He showed every indication that he would be militant and cruel. Although Terry would never willingly join the military, he would have no trouble serving under a military man.

A Spanish couple showed up next. The wife was introduced to Terry as an opera contralto, Maria Alonso, who Luderman wished to sing in his opera. She was pushing fifty and was a small, flighty woman but with a rich commanding voice. She was as pale as Madeleine was and seemed to be walking in a fog. She could probably be made to look a lot younger on stage, but not young. She was always turning her profile to what she considered her best side, and as the evening wore on and she slipped in and out of focused attention, she had little to say unless she was ticked off and then she was explosive—very Spanish.

Her husband, Rodrigo’s, claim to relevance here was that he was his wife’s manager. He was of undetermined age, but he looked to be in his low thirties, and thus Maria’s boy toy when they had first met and married. He was foxy, always with a piercing look and a bit of a sneer. Terry, of course, checked him out immediately as a possible sex partner and found him to be trim, with almost a gaunt body, but he wore tight pants, and Terry determined he dressed right and was admirably long. Yes, Terry would lie down for him if there was no better prospect on the offing.

When their eyes met, a recognition passed between them, and Terry knew that the man would bed him, given the opportunity.

The voluptuous woman who had been sucking on Madeleine’s throat and fingering her cunt was the last of the guests to appear. Now that he could see her well, Terry recognized her as a notorious lesbian who wrote erotic novels. She was a claimed Polish countess, Caroline Radiswal, and her age was anywhere in the forties range, although it seemed like her novels had been in the marketplace for a century or more. Perhaps she’d taken over some older writer’s franchise and name. She was sultry, voluptuous, dark, mysterious, sarcastic, and quick with the stinging quip. After she’d been introduced, had given Terry a condescending sneer, and wafted on to the drinks cart, Baron Luderman confided to Terry that he was trying to get her to write the storyline for his ballet-opera, “Laugh at Death.”

“What is this unspoken threat from the external world to those attending your masked ball in your opera?” Terry asked. “Is the ball beset with vampires or something as nefarious and shocking? Is that what you wish to convey about this Hitler fellow and his brown shirts—that they are vampires setting upon us all to suck us dry of moral integrity.”

“Shh, it’s not safe, even here, to speak such of the brown shirts,” the baron hissed. He nodded toward Otto Merkel as a likely threat in this vein. “And why do you ask about vampires?”

“Radiswal writes books about vampires and the theme seems to fit your production.” That wasn’t the only reference he was making to the woman novelist, though. “You don’t believe in vampires?”

“No, of course not. Do you, Terry?”

“Sometimes I almost do, yes. There have been times and places . . . a word to the wise. Does your bedroom have a dressing room with a divan, like mine does?”

“My bedroom is a two-room bedroom suite. My wife and I shared a suite but we had separate bedrooms. Why do you ask?”

“Tonight, and until you become comfortable with whatever arrangement there is with your daughter, I suggest you have her sleep under your supervision and without informing any of the other guests that she is there.”

“She sleeps with Drago Corvius. You aren’t saying you’ve already made a determination on his suitability for her, are you?”

Terry just grinned at him.

The baron snorted. “You aren’t saying he’s already laid you and you think he’s just a gay gold digger?”

“He’s at least bisexual, yes. And I think he wants to be the lead male singer in your opera—very much. That may be the gold he’s after. I also think your daughter is looking entirely too pale.” Winter wouldn’t go further on his suspicions along those lines until the baron had a chance to acquire some belief and understanding.

Other guests had already been in the lounge when Terry and Jimmy arrived. The middle-aged man the housekeeper had been dominating in a bedroom upstairs turned out to be a stage set designer, Charles Frankel, a quiet, mousy American Jew in his forties, who looked perpetually embarrassed—beyond realizing that Terry had seen him in a compromised position upstairs. He was drinking a lot and seemingly was on the edge of drunkenness. Art was his escape, though. Rather than socializing with others in the lounge, he clung to a sketch pad, sketching other guests as they really were in his perceptive observation. Terry was both amused and surprised when he got a look at the pad to see that the man was sketching the other guests, rendering them as animals who were both clearly identifiable as them and quite accurate about their basic nature. He had drawn Frau Vetterman, his dominatrix, as an allegator. Frankel was too mousy for Terry to develop any sexual interest in. He was just another submissive—and not a particularly interesting one.

The young man Jimmy had been fucking on the divan in Terry’s dressing room was also there, standing by the piano, looking through some sheet music. The baron introduced him as a twenty-six-year-old Italian opera tenor, Guido Salvitore. He was small, effeminate, and more pretty than handsome. “His voice is quite good,” the baron said, as they approached him at the piano. “I want him for my opera.”

“I think from the looks of him that you want him for your bed or bent over a sawhorse with you mounted on him,” Terry said, having already discounted the young man as a determined submissive and therefore not a fit with Terry and of no further sexual interest personally.

“I already have him for my bed,” the baron said, “and I’ve ridden him as a mare. I want him for the high tenor roles in the opera. I’ve told him you will accompany him. To keep these people in order, I’ve said that you will play and he will sing for our happy hour.”

“I’d be happy to,” Terry said, with a smile. He said a few words to a blushing Guido, who apparently didn’t realize that Terry had seen him bottoming for Terry’s chauffeur, and the guests settled and the two put on a show for much of the time before the police arrived. They stopped, though, when the baron came to Terry and said, “Everyone’s accounted for except for one of the maids. And the staff is shorthanded with Andre dead and Mustafa sitting with the body. We could use Katie to help serve and the cook says she has to leave off service here now and go start preparing our dinner.”

Indeed, when the cook left, only the other maid, Ingrid, and the butler, Joseph, remained to replenish drinks, serve canapes, and, at the baron’s request, keep the guests from wanting to leave the lounge.

Frau Vetterman was, of course, of no help in the service. Her role was to stand stern guard to the doorway to the service wing and command and control.

“OK, I’ll run her down,” Winter said. “I’ll take Jimmy with me, though.” The baron’s servants hadn’t asked the exotic and, to them, strange and foreboding Asian man to help with the service, and Jimmy had not volunteered to do so. He covered several functions, but serving at table wasn’t one of them.

Their search was extensive, but they finally found the maid, Katie. They found her in the attic, where the servant’s rooms were, but in what appeared to be a box room, but one with a mattress on the floor. She was stretched out on it, looking quite content and peaceful, but very, very pale, in death. Terry only touched her enough to turn her head, her luxurious hair fanning out from her head like angel wings, to the side to see if there were bite marks on her throat.

There were.

As he and Jimmy were coming back downstairs, the police from Garmisch were, at last, arriving.

* * * *

“Should we cancel the masked party we were having tonight?” the baron was asking the arriving detective inspector, Friedrich Halterman, having come out of the lounge with Jozef, the butler, to answer the knocking at the door, as Terry Winter and his chauffeur descended the stairs.

“No, it would be best to keep everyone together as much as possible until we get to the bottom of this,” the detective answered after introductions were made. “A distracting party, with them all together in one place, would be better than them scattered about in their rooms and planning unannounced departures. Now, as to the body of the victim. In the stables, I have heard.”

A flurry of men had entered the building behind the detective. Most seemed to be forensic technicians. They were dressed in disposable uniforms. There also were two uniformed policemen, both brown shirters. These men were insidiously inserting themselves into positions of authority. The ranks of the police had already been taken over by them. Both were young men. One, introduced as Fritz, was the elder and obviously the more dominating of the two. He was muscular, in his late twenties. He came across as a militant brown shirter. Terry was immediately attracted to him, not only because of his fit, Nordic looks, but because he had a cruel, brutal, dominating aura about him. The initial look he had turned to Terry was the possessing one of men who topped other men. There also was distinct mounding at his crotch.

The other policeman, Hans, was younger than either Fritz or Terry, barely into his twenties. He was quiet and diffident, obviously in training from the manner in which he looked to Fritz for guidance on everything. Although he was cute, he seemed unsure of himself and thus Terry wasn’t particularly interested in him sexually. If he went with men, it would be, like Terry, under the men. They would be of little use to each other. Terry, who had considerable experience in such things, instantly recognized that Fritz would go with a man or woman, as long as they gave him pleasure—and that pleasure for him would involve at least a little pain for his partner.

In contrast, the detective inspector was quite evidently Jewish and thus not connected in any way with the brown shirters. Hans gave him some respect, but he got nothing but sneers and sassiness from Fritz. Although senior and clearly the most intelligent policeman in the room and able to command, Friedrich Halterman, identified as forty-two on the warrant card he produced, was smart enough to pick his clashes with the brown shirters for when it really was needed.

Halterman was of great interest to Terry. He was move-star handsome, well built, showed promise in the crotch area, and had a commanding presence. His attention also went directly to Terry Winter as the young viscount descended the stairs to the foyer. Both men experienced a flash of electricity between them. Terry, at least, knew that if the opportunity arose, they would fuck. That is if the detective was game for it.

“Ah, you are Viscount Terrence Winter, are you not?” Halterman asked.

“Yes, how did you know?” Terry asked.

“The baron reported you as having found the body of the victim. And I know you by reputation. The Geneva police informed us you were headed in our direction when they called off their identification of you as a person of interest in a murder investigation. I’ve seen you in the papers. You seem to collect murder cases.”

“And to help solve them,” Baron Luderman said.

“Yes, that too,” Halterman conceded. “There are various reputations you have, and that’s one of them,” he said, looking directly at Terry, his eyes conveying an interest that the handsome young viscount so often saw.

“And you are interested in another reputation I have?” Terry asked.

“I could be, but I’m here to look into what has been described as a gruesome murder. And here you are involved in another one of those.”

“At least two, I’m afraid,” Winter said. “Before we go out to the stable, I’m afraid that you and your people need to come up to the attic.”

“Not Katie?” the baron said, his voice a bit strangled.

“Yes, Katie, I’m afraid.”

“Perhaps you should go back to the lounge and keep your guests occupied there,” Halterman said to the baron. “The viscount can show me the way. It seems we will be a while before we can start our interviews with your guests. And do go ahead with your dinner and party plans. I will, of course, attend the party, as will my two policemen.”

“It’s a costume party—a practice for Fasching next month.”

“I’ll come as a German Jewish policeman in a world falling apart for both Jews and Germans,” Halterman said, as he gestured for Winter to guide him to Katie. And I’m afraid we’ll all need to be getting used to the costumes my two policemen are wearing.

* * * *

“I wouldn’t have believed you could be right, but the medical examiner agrees with you on both victims. They’ve both been nearly drained of blood.”

Detective Halterman was standing with Terry Winter in the loft of the stable, where they’d been in attendance to the second examination. They’d already finished with the body of Katie, the maid, in the house. The forensic team was releasing the body from the saddle horse and preparing to take it away to join that of the maid in the ambulance for the eight-mile trip back to Garmisch.

“I wish it weren’t so,” Terry said.

“So, what are your observations? The detective in Geneva said you were a great help in the case there after getting past the initial tension between you two.”

“The initial tension?” Terry asked.

“I think you know—your reputation for laying down for any man with an erection and the attraction men have for you. I wasn’t expecting you to be so good-looking, fit, and sexy.”

“My, you don’t mince words, do you, Detective?” Terry asked, more amused than insulted. “Are you saying that you’re attracted to me too?”

“We don’t really have time for being subtle and, from what I have heard about you, you bypass subtle altogether.”

“And you think this is a tension between you and me that would benefit this case if we get move past it?” Terry asked, still amused and not backing off.

“Are you asking if I want to fuck you—to clear the air so we can move forward on this case, as happened with you and the detective in Geneva?”

“Yes.”

“Then the answer is yes. You know you shouldn’t dress and move as you do if you don’t want men to want to fuck you.”

“That, of course, is why I do it, detective. But do we have time? There are people waiting in the lounge who have little idea what this is all about.”

“I think one of them has a very good idea,” Halterman said. “But, yes, a quick one to clear the air and more later. The detective in Geneva said it’s something that should be done and gotten over with.” Halterman was looking around the loft. “But he also said it was something that should continue to be indulged in, along with consultations on the case. He said you have a real talent.”

“A talent for detecting?”

“That too.”

“Here, now? You want to fuck me now?”

“Yes, if we can find someplace.”

“That hay bale over there should do. It’s done before.”

“You’ve been fucked on that before?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You are such a slut.”

“Yes, I am.” Terry came in close for a kiss, during which he let a hand run down the detective’s torso. He unbuttoned the man’s fly and pulled out his erection.  “My, you are a big boy, and already hard for me.”

“Yes, yes, I am.”

Terry backed away toward the hay bale on the other side of the loft, stripping as he moved, with only one hand, the other one pulling Halterman with him, using the man’s hard shaft as a handle. Naked, he sat on the hay bale and spread and raised his legs. “Fuck me, big boy, but mind the leg, please,” he whispered, turning lustful eyes toward Halterman’s.

There was no preliminary foreplay. They didn’t have time for that. Hovering over the smaller blond’s body, Halterman clutched Terry’s throat with one hand while putting his cockhead in place with the other.

Terry cried out an “Oh Shit. Fuck! Fuck, you’re big” groan and started to pant hard.

“Too big?” Halterman asked.

“Never too big. The cock can never be too big,” Terry declared. And it wasn’t too big to take now.

It was a bit of a grunting effort given the lack of preparation, but the detective forced himself inside, stretching and conquering, and immediately starting to pump.

The position was different than it had been with the baron. Terry lay on his back, his ankles on Halterman’s shoulders—Terry naked, by preference, and Halterman only taking the time to produce an erection to be proud of from his unbuttoned fly. The detective fucked the young viscount in strong, swift, long strokes, as Terry arched his back, clutched at the older man’s biceps, digging and releasing to the cadence of the assured, deep thrusts. Nine minutes to an explosive release and the sexual tension was dissipated between them, Halterman was standing back and buttoning up and the young viscount was scrambling for his clothes.

“God, you are big and masterful,” Terry murmured.

“And you are every bit the talented slut the detective in Geneva said you’d be.”

On their way back to the house, the detective repeated his question. “So, what are your observations? What and who do you think did this?”

“Tell me, detective, do you believe in vampires?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then this doesn’t seem to be a good time yet for me to give my observations.”

“Let me know when you have some theories that are plausible. In the meantime, stay close to me in my interviews.”

“To look for opportunities to fuck longer?”

“There is that thing you do with the muscles of your channel walls on a man’s shaft that I’d like to explore at greater length, yes, but I also want you close by so that you can give me council. This is a strange case. Very strange indeed.”

Stranger than you are prepared to believe, Winter thought.

* * * *

The interviews that afternoon were inconclusive. Everyone had an alibi for the presumed periods of opportunity for both murders but no one had a very good alibi. No one seemed anxious to reveal who they’d been fucking at the time, not so much wanting to conceal that from the detective as much as wanting to conceal it from their regular partners and the other guests. The guests, on the whole, seemed more bored and irritated at having been kept in the lounge that long than being concerned about the murders—after all, they were both merely servants. Surely no one would carry the attacks over to the houseguests. That would be bad form. It wasn’t long before Halterman released them to prepare for dinner and the costume party afterward in the ballroom.

It was rather superfluous that the guests all wore masks at the costume party that night. There were so few of them that everyone could identify all the others. But Baron Luderman wanted to make this as much like the Fasching party that would follow with many more guests eleven days later as possible. As it was, Terry Winter was happy to scrutinize each costume chosen to see if that told him more of who the guests were in their innermost lives. He hardly thought his costume revealed him. He hadn’t even picked it out. The baron had provided it, with a wink. Terry was at the party as a young Greek serving boy, with just the slip of a skirt, sandals lacing up to his knees with golden cord, and golden bracelets around his biceps. The baron thought that that, at least, did represent Terry’s innermost life, indicating that he was a gorgeous young man and willing to drop his skirt for almost any man.

Jimmy Chin, the chauffeur, and, obviously, Terry’s “man” and bodyguard, had also come in costume. He wore a turban and gauzing harem pants, with a jeweled breastplate, and he had a curved carving knife he liberated from the kitchen tucked in the sash used as his belt. Thus, with his muscular torso and inscrutable gaze, he was as functional for keeping a wary eye on this crowd as he was ornamental.

The baron came as a huntsman and his daughter, Madeliene, as Shakespeare’s Ophelia, floating around pale and in a daze and, when he wasn’t nosing around elsewhere, hanging on the arm of her fiancé, Drago Corvius. Drago was dressed more suggestively than any of the others. He came as a vampire and kept reminding everyone that Transylvania was in Romania, his home country. In doing so, Terry thought the man must be either clever and vastly self-assured to be hiding in plain sight or that he was entirely innocent and had no idea, under the circumstances, how bumbling his choice was. Terry was inclined to think it was the latter.

In any event, Terry observed that not all of the guests took kindly to Corvius’s vampire costume. Both Countess Caroline Radiswal and the Spaniard manager of his contralto wife, Rodrigo Alonso, hissed at the Romanian in passing. Terry saw that he wasn’t the only one who observed this.

The Spaniards had come in full flamboyant display, obviously having thought ahead and brought elaborate costumes with them. The contralto, Maria, nearly as pale and vacuous as Madeleine was being, was there as Cleopatra. This permitted her to lie, apparently totally spent, post asp, on a divan and stare around her in erotic bewilderment most of the night. At some point the Turkish valet, Mustafa, carried her up to her room—and took a long time coming back, showing a very satisfied look when he returned. Her husband, Rodrigo Alonso, dressed garishly in a tight-fitting multicolored matador outfit covered with shiny sequins and looking perpetually young, had zeroed in on the effeminate young tenor, Guido Salvitore, who had wandered around, dressed as a shepherd boy, pensively playing a flute, and, after a certain point, neither man was seen at the party again. When last overheard, Rodrigo was offering to manage the young tenor’s career.

The Polish countess, Caroline Radiswal, dressed both majestically and sultrily as a Valkyrie, one of those mythical Norse warrior females, the handmaidens of the god Oden, was sitting behind the divan the Spanish Maria was draped on and was petting her, spending considerable time before Mustafa spirited her away squeezing and stroking the contralto’s breasts, but her eyes were following Madeleine around the room.

The mousy set designer, Charles Frankel, visited the punch bowl early and often and, dressed as Charles Frankel, sat quietly off to the side, observing and sketching. The detective, Friedrich Halterman, also dressed as himself, stood behind Frankel, observing both the guests and what Frankel’s artwork was revealing to him of what the perceptive set designer saw in the guests. Terry wafted by at one point to see that Frankel had rendered the young viscount in the nude with several of the men in the room, including the detective, arrayed around him, waiting their turn to mount him. He did a double take when he saw the sketch showed the detective as the one fucking him at that moment.

And then the choice of costuming continued to the ranks of the servants present: Jozef, the butler, Sophia, the dominatrix housekeeper, and Ingrid, the plump, bobbing maid. They all rather dully came as they ever were: servants.

That left the stormtrooper contingent. The three of them came as the future: they maintained their brown-shirt stormtrooper personas. The younger policeman, Hans, seemed more shy and bewildered in this heady company than menacing. But the swagger of the other policeman, Fritz, who kept giving Terry lustful and possessing looks, and of the German industrialist and former military cavalry officer from Munich, Otto Merkel, dressed austerely and militantly as a brown-shirt general, complete with jodhpurs and a riding crop, moved in the room arrogantly and served to bring in the oppressive atmosphere that existed in Germany beyond the palace walls at that time.

Military and cruel were among Terry Winter’s favorite domination styles, so he wasn’t being shy about returning the sexual interest that both Fritz and Merkel were signaling to him.

This perhaps was what led them out of the room, following Terry, when the young viscount moved down a long, dark hall in search of a urinal to piss in. On his way back, Fritz barred his way going forward in a darkened corridor, with the other policeman, Hans, lurking in the shadows behind him. The bulky body of Merkel appeared on the other side of the corridor from Terry, trapping him between brown shirts. The atmosphere was heavy with militant intent. Fritz left no doubt what he wanted from Winter in the darkened corridor, and Terry, being the slut he was, gave no opposition. There had been visual signaling between them all night. Fritz, unbuttoned his fly and fished out his half-hardened cock and Terry went down on his knees in front of him and took the shaft into his mouth.

The Turkish hunk, Mustafa, appeared behind Hans, beyond Fritz, embraced the young policeman, and reached around, unbuttoned and released him, and stroked the German’s cock while Terry gave his partner head. Merkel came in at Terry’s back, laid one hand on his shoulder and ran his fingers into Terry’s hair with the other, helping to position and move Terry’s head as he serviced Fritz.

In contrast to Frankel’s sketch, the men weren’t waiting around to mount Terry in turn anymore. This was about to become a brown-shirt orgy. And this was just fine with the randy viscount.

And then Terry’s man, Jimmy Chin, materialized down the hall from the shadows behind Otto Merkel. Understanding his master well, he held off, and once he decided the young viscount didn’t consider himself to be in any trouble, Chin relaxed to enjoy the show as well.

“Mind the leg, you brute,” Terry exclaimed, which was both given and taken as a sign of acceptance.

Fritz fucked Terry against the wall of the darkened corridor, the young viscount’s back against the wall and his knees hooked on the brown-shirted policeman’s hips as Fritz cruelly thrust up deep inside him. Merkel stood close to them, one strong hand grasping Terry’s wrists together, holding the young man’s arms above his head and against the wall. He grasped Terry’s throat with the other, pressing the young man’s head between his arms. He pulled his face in close, his eyes taking in the effect of each of Fritz’s brutal strokes up into Terry’s channel.

When he was finished, Fritz just let Terry sink to the floor. Merkel released him as well, leaning down and hissing, “You will be mine later. I want it all.” The two readjusted their clothing and returned to the party. Hans and Mustafa had already withdrawn.

“Shit, that was a good fuck. I do love a military man,” Terry muttered, as he pulled himself together and returned to the party as well. When he returned, the guests had thinned out and the party was winding down. Mustafa had returned from taking the Spanish contralto, Maria Alonso, to—and in—her room and accosting the young policeman, Hans, in the corridor. Hans was there too, flustered and, if anything, showing more effeminate signs than before. Drago Corvius was playing more court to both Hans and Terry now than to his fiancée, Madeleine, and she was making sounds of retiring from the party, with her father telling her he wanted her to sleep in the second bedroom of his suite that night, “With your door locked.”

The Polish countess; Spanish husband of Maria Alonso, in his tight-fitting sequined matador costume; and the flighty Italian tenor, Guido Salvitore, were all absent. Otto Merkel hadn’t come back to the party. Fritz was strutting around like this now was his party, his house, his world. Only the Jewish American set designer Charles Frankel and the detective, Friedrich Halterman, remained as they had been positioned when Terry had left for the tryst with the brown shirts in the remote corridor. They were off to the side, Frankel still sketching his impressions of the party and the partiers and Halterman standing behind him, taking it all in.

Frankel’s current sketch showed a heap of naked, but unidentifiable, bodies strew around the room’s floor.

Taking his daughter’s arm, Baron Luderman declared the party over and guided her to the stairs to the bedroom level.

* * * *

An hour later an eerie darkness and a heavy silence had descended with just the hint of sex in the night floating through the lakeside palace. Terry and Jimmy Chin were in Terry’s bed, the young viscount on his back, his arms raised and separated, his wrists restrained to the corners of the headboard. His legs were spread and bent, his heels being used as leverage to help with the thrusting. Chin hovered between his thighs, in a pushup position, palms pressing into the mattress on either side of Terry’s shoulders and back ramrod straight down to his feet pressing into the sheets on his toes, rising and falling, fucking his master-by-day deep, being Terry’s master at night as he so often was. And doing it as Terry liked to have it done.

Terry heard the squeak of the door to the corridor as it slowly open. Chin was too much into the grunting of his efforts to service the young viscount fully and well to have heard. The light in the corridor, via dimmed gaslights on the walls, was brighter than in the room, where moonbeams barely filtered into the room through two large French doors out onto a balcony. Terry could see that there was someone out there, obviously with the intent of entering the room, probably to enjoy themselves with the English slut who couldn’t seem to get enough and was open to the cock of almost any man.

The figure silhouetted in the dim light from the corridor was tall and bulky: the promised visitation by the German military industrialist, Otto Merkel? Perhaps Drago Corvius, who had been nosing around Terry as the party was closing down, and Madeleine obviously wasn’t going to be in his bed that night, with the prospect of a second go at Terry? Or maybe it was the Baron Luderman himself, wanting more attention from the guest he cajoled to visit him at Chiemsee Lake. The detective, Halterman? That would be very nice.

Whoever it was, he saw Chin doing his calisthenics on Terry’s body and withdrew.

An hour later, in a bedroom in the third-floor servants’ quarters, Mustafa, riding the young policeman, Hans, from above and behind in the doggy position, with Hans on his belly, his hands raised and grasping the rungs of the brass headboard, and panting hard and huffing and puffing as the size and vigor of the Turk, gave a grunt and a jerk and released his seed. Another jerk and a release, and then a long sigh from them both, Mustafa rolled off the bed and went into the adjoining bathroom, took a piss in the toilet, and turned on the water in the shower.

While he was gone, the door from the corridor opened, and a caped figure glided in. He saw the naked body of the handsome young policeman stretched out, belly down, on the bed, and, teeth flashing, he attacked.

Hans only had time to turn and open his eyes in horror at the black-caped figure descending on him before he was punched in the face and fell back on the bed in surprise and shock. He tried to rise again, but his attacker slapped him hard across the face, both from one side and then the other. The young man collapsed under the onslaught, as his assailant grabbed his wrists with both hand, forcing the young man’s arms above his head, inserted himself between Hans’s thighs, mounted, and penetrated, and fucked him hard and deep. Though in shock, the fuck was a good one, so Hans gave in to it.

Coming out the bathroom, toweling himself off, Mustafa saw the assault in progress, gauged Hans’s cries to mean that this was not a willing fuck, although at this point, it was, and went into action. He threw himself on the assailant’s back, his strong hands going to the man’s throat and squeezing hard.

In a short time, Drago Corvius had been dragged off of Hans and the bed and lay dead on the floor.

“You best get dressed and go find your detective,” Mustafa said, standing over the body, his hands still flexing and unflexing from the exhilaration of having done their worst. If asked, he’d admit that he never did like Drago Corvius—too slimy by far, Mustafa thought.

* * * *

“Well, that solves the murders,” Friedrich Halterman said, standing in the third-floor servants’ room and looking down at the dead body of the opera baritone, Drago Corvius, wrapped in the black cape of his masked-party vampire costume.

“You keep mentioning vampires,” Halterman turned to Terry Winter and said. “Surely you don’t think Corvius really was a vampire.”

“No, of course not. He was being a bit too blatant about that,” Winter answered. “Besides, he’s clearly dead. Throttling wouldn’t do that for a real vampire.”

The detective laughed. “I wish it was that easy to figure out,” he said.

“I suppose it can be taken that way—that the murders are now solved,” Terry Winter said, and before Halterman could query him about that, he turned to Baron Luderman and said, “It does, of course, close out your concern of his intentions toward Madeleine.”

“I can see now why you wanted me to keep Madeleine close to me last night and not let her go with Corvius. It wasn’t women he was interested in, was it? Or he at least was interested in men too. His interests were mostly in money and position.”

“Corvius wasn’t the only one Madeleine needed protection from,” the young viscount said. “I think you need to steel yourself.”

“How so?”

“Chances are good Madeleine’s interest go beyond having a husband—having a man. And don’t look so shocked at me. With the choices you yourself have made, you should understand if your daughter’s preferences aren’t the usual either.”

The baron was about to say something when the screaming started from the guest bedroom level below. The maid, Ingrid, was exercising her considerable lung power.

When they got there, they found the Italian tenor, Guido Salvitore, stretched out on his back, naked, on the bed, a beatific expression on his face. In death he was as pale as the prior two victims had been, which Halterman immediately remarked on.

“Yes, I would bet your medical examiner will say he’s almost drained of blood, as the other two were,” Winter affirmed.

“And you have an explanation for that?” Halterman asked.

“I’ll repeat what I asked you before,” Winter said. “Do you believe in vampires?”

“No, of course, not,” Halterman retorted, “although it would seem that Drago Corvius was playing at that. He must have done this before he assaulted Hans upstairs. At least this closes the case.”

“It would seem so if you don’t believe in vampires,” Winter said. He was moving his hand around on the sheets around Salvitore’s body and coming up with multicolored sequins.

“I suppose we need to gather everyone up in the lounge and wrap this up,” Halterman said. He sent Fritz and Hans to attend to that. Once in the lounge, they discovered that not everyone was present.

“The woman, the Polish countess, and the Spanish couple seem to have departed in the night,” Fritz reported. All of their luggage is gone. The butler, Jozef, said he was awakened twice this morning and that Mustafa drove them, separately, to the train station in Garmisch. They claimed the detective told them they could go.

“What do you make of that, Terry?” Halterman asked the young viscount. “And of course I didn’t tell them they could leave.”

“I’m surprised to have found two of them in the same place at the same time,” Terry answered, and when Halterman gave him a quizzing look for that, he sighed, and said, “I suppose putting this all on Corvius is going to provide the neatest conclusion of your case under the circumstances. Let’s leave it at that. Unless you have brought a golden spike with you—no, two, it seems—and you don’t want to rush to the Garmisch train station, there’s no other satisfactory result in the offing here.”

The guests—those who were left—milled around the lounge, chatting with each other, as the medical examiner finished with the bodies of the Romanian baritone and the Italian tenor. The detective concluded his work, announced the case closed, and declared that they all were free to go about their business. He saw no reason to try to track down those who had absconded in the night. They probably did so for their own safety, he said.

“Maybe,” Terry Winter said to that. “And about you and your safety, Friedrich,” he added. “What about that?”

“I don’t understand,” the detective said.

“I think you do. You know the political atmosphere here in Germany. I see the distain that even Fritz, your subordinate, shows you—and he’s watching you like a hawk. I’m betting you’re under surveillance. You’re Jewish. It’s only a matter of time before that will work against you here, not only in your position, but in your very life.”

“I don’t see what can be done about that.”

“I do. I’m going to America—to New York—when I finish my travels here. You could come to the States—sooner than later. I could help you get established there. I’ve grown quite fond of you.”

“It’s something to think about,” Halterman said, taking the stateside contact information for Winter from the young viscount.

“Just don’t take too long to think about it. And,” Winter said, turning to Baron Luderman, “your reason for asking me here has been settled and the people you have been gathering to help you with your new ballet-opera idea have dispersed or died. I think that’s on hold now—and, again because of the building political climate here—perhaps it would be best not to be producing something just now that tries to raise warnings about the brown shirts. I think your country is beyond that now. I think it best that you return to your work with the Wagner festival. I think that’s safe for the current mood in Germany.”

The baron nodded his unspoken understanding, and said, “Then you’ll be leaving soon?”

“Yes, later this afternoon. Otto Merkel has asked for a lift to Munich and a brief stay with him.”

“Ah, yes, Otto was telling me about the new playroom—the dungeon, he said—he’s installed in that castle he’s renovating in Munich. You were always susceptible to the cruelty of military types, as I recall. Do be careful, though. One of these days you are likely to go too far—to give too much of yourself.”

Winter just gave him a smile.

“Well, enjoy yourself,” Luderman said. “One question, though. You don’t really think that Corvius was the murderer here, do you? I watched you. You don’t think this case really was solved but you are letting loose of it.”

“Let’s just say I don’t think you or Madeleine are in any danger anymore and that I think Corvius got just what he deserved. Beyond that, I’ll ask you what I’ve asked Friedrich Halterman a couple of times. Do you believe in vampires?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then we’ll leave it at that.” Winter had seen one of Charles Frankel’s sketch pads lying on a table and had picked it up and looked at the sketches the man had done at the party the previous evening. Frankel was watching him closely. The sketches he’d done both of the Polish countess, Caroline Radiswal, and the Spaniard, Rodrigo Alonso, depicted them with bared, sharp fangs, dripping in blood and enshrouded in black capes. “Do you mind if I take a couple of these sketches?” he asked Frankel. “Perhaps they’d be safer with me.”

“If you wish. If you think that would be best,” the diffident set designer answered.

“I suppose it’s necessary,” Winter said, “since everyone but you and I say they don’t believe in vampires.” He took the sketches of Caroline and Rodrigo, crumpled them up, walked over to the fireplace, and fed them into the fire.

“And that, I guess, is that,” he said, turning to Jimmy Chin. “Perhaps you should go and tell Otto Merkel that I’m ready for the next adventure.”

Chin gave him a sour look, but he went off to find Merkel.