Chapter 6 – Chapter 6
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, seem 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 sultry 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 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 of 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 to the wall. 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.