The Back Passage Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  EPILOGUE

  Copyright Page

  I

  IT WAS THE HOTTEST DAY OF THE SUMMER OF 1925, with temperatures in the high 80s—not the ideal conditions for being indoors, in formal attire, squeezed into small, cramped spaces with other overheated, overdressed bodies. But, this being a country house weekend, and organized games being the order of the day, we had little choice, my fellow guests and I, but to play along with the whims of our hosts. And the whim of Sir James Eagle and his wife, Lady Caroline, was that we should play a game called Sardines.

  Where I come from, sardines are something eaten by those who can’t afford cod. But I was far from home in 1925. The north coast of Norfolk, England, where I was sweltering on that August afternoon, is a mighty long way from Boston, Massachusetts, and the large townhouse where I was born and whence I set out, a year ago to pursue postgraduate studies at Cambridge University.

  Forgive the tedious details; what you really want to know is that I was squeezed into a cupboard under the stairs, usually used for storing croquet mallets and raincoats, with my best friend from Cambridge, Harry “Boy” Morgan—athlete, rowing blue, indifferent scholar, sweetheart of the daughter of the house—whose long, stiff cock was about to make its first-ever entrance into another man’s mouth, namely, mine. I had been pursuing “Boy” Morgan, so named for his absurdly fresh, outdoorsy looks, his rangy limbs, his high spirits, and tendency, despite dark coloring, to blush easily, ever since I first caught sight of him carrying an upended rowboat from the waters of the Isis. His arms, raised above his head, were all long curves and elegant lines; his armpits, sweaty from his waterborne efforts, were matted with damp hair. The vest and shorts that he wore for training were likewise damp, and he smelled of strenuous athletic endeavor. If that weren’t enough, he had smiled at me—a goofy, trusting smile of unquestioning welcome, which the new Yank in town had not always been given by the inward-looking burghers of Cambridge, who loved our new-world money but not our new-world manners.

  I swore to myself that day by the river that I would have Boy Morgan by hook or by crook, and no amount of innocence, incomprehension, or downright stupidity on his part was going to stand in my way. Nor was the fact that he was recently engaged to the lovely and popular Miss Belinda Eagle, the sister of a teammate. I launched a campaign of teas in my rooms, of little lunches in Cambridge pubs washed down with pints of warm, flat Cambridge beer, of jolly afternoons punting down the Cam, of long, studious evenings in my rooms when I would guide him through the studies, easy for me, that defeated him.

  Finally, during the long vacation, he’d taken pity on a lonely foreigner and secured me an invitation to beautiful Drekeham Hall, the Eagle family seat a stone’s throw from the crumbly cliffs of the north Norfolk coast, for my first experience of the English upper classes in full cry. And now, in the darkness of a musty cupboard off the main stairwell, my campaign was about to be crowned with success. As I closed in on the prize, the musky smell of overheated athlete overpowered the ambient odor of Wellington boots and linseed oil. I could only imagine the burning blush on Morgan’s cheeks, the parted lips, the dark hair tumbling from its brilliantined neatness. I could only imagine the thick vein swelling on his pale, high forehead, just as it did when he exerted himself at the oars. And I could only imagine his cock, which I had seen so many times in changing rooms and during our skinny-dipping jaunts in the river (how many of those had I organized!), now almost entirely hard, about to be swallowed and tasted, every long, lean inch of it.

  And how, you may ask, had I engineered this situation? I had hardly done a thing; the manners and mores of the time did my work for me. We were sharing a room, of course—as two single male guests down from Cambridge, that was only to be expected, and such good pals as we were. I kept Morgan awake long into our first night, the Thursday, talking about his lovely soon-to-be fiancée, his future hopes, and present frustrations. Young gentlemen at that time did not talk openly about sex, not even to their bosom buddies and rowing pals, but Morgan came as close as he could without naming the parts—and it was enough for me to learn that he was as horny as a twenty-year-old athlete can be. At lunch that fateful (as it was to prove) Friday, I made sure that Morgan drank a little more Hock than he might have intended; he was thirsty, and I told him that there was nothing like a cold glass of white wine to set a chap up.

  And so we found ourselves in a stuffy cupboard, two slightly drink-fuddled young men, pressed against each other in an attempt to evade detection by the hunting team. To close the cupboard door, it had been necessary for Morgan to wrap his long legs around me in the most awkward (but, to me, delightful) posture. Once inside, we could maneuver a little, and somehow Morgan ended up straddling me as I half-sat, half-lay, my back propped against a pile of picnic blankets. In this position it was easy for me to get my arm trapped—oh, how casually! How accidentally!—between his thigh and my waist. In working it free, with many a push, and a shove, and another push, and another, my hand came to rest over his groin. To Morgan’s surprise, but not to mine, the contact and pressure had brought him to near erection.

  “Hey, Boy,” I whispered, “there’s little enough room in here without you taking up space with that thing!” I gave his cock a squeeze through his blue flannels, just to make it clear what I was talking about. (Although he was a student of medicine, and thus of anatomy, Morgan was sometimes slow on the uptake in these matters.)

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he said—and I was delighted to hear that, though whispering, he was genuinely hoarse with embarrassment and desire.

  “It must be the heat,” I said.

  “That’s it. The heat...”

  “And maybe the wine?”

  “Oh, yes. Certainly the wine.”

  He shifted his hips around, but couldn’t get up or off me. Not that he wanted to, I think, for in moving his hips he pressed his lengthening prick harder into my hand, and moved everything forward a few inches in so doing. Now he was positioned on my rib cage; it’s a good thing I’m a strong, thickset Bostonian, or I’d have been crushed by those rower’s thighs.

  “Hell,” I said, “feels like you’ve got an iron bar down there.” I was taking a risk in referring so directly to his cock, but I counted on the Hock having done its work. And it had; Morgan was unused to wine, particularly at lunchtime, and seemed happy with the turn the conversation was taking. Even then, I dared not push my luck; one false move and my long-sought quarry would bolt, heedless of Sardine hunters.

  “It’s so uncomfortable in here,” he said, wriggling around even more. To an experienced hand like me, the bucking movement of his hips suggested an urgent need for sexual release. I, of course, was stiff as a pole myself, had been ever since we climbed into the cupboard. I tilted my pelvis upward a little.

  “Maybe if you leaned back a bit,” I whispered. It worked like a charm. In lowering himself, Morgan achieved two things. First, he brought his butt into contact with my groin, and by the muffled gasp I could only assume that he figured out what was grinding into his coccyx. Second, he pressed his own cock even more painfully against the restricting fabric of his trousers.

  “Oh, God...” It was half a whisper, half a moan.

  “Here,” I said, staking my all on this endgame, “let me make you a little more comfortable.” With my free hand, I started unbuttoning his fly; he did nothing to resist. When I finally fished him out into the open, he seemed to
relax, sighing and sinking backward. I got the impression that he’d finally figured out what all those nights in the pub, those naked swimming sessions, had really been about. I raised my knees to provide him with the support of my thighs; again, I thanked all those hours of training in gyms and boats.

  As soon as his cock was out in the open, I knew he was mine for the taking. He wasn’t yet fully erect; that would come when I got to work. For now I just let his prick rest in the palm of my hand, and I blew gently on it. Feeling the cool movement of the air, it jumped like a freshly landed catfish. My mouth watered.

  “Shift your fat ass,” I said. (Morgan always found my Americanisms amusing, and repeated them when we dined.) His ass was far from fat—in fact it resembled nothing more than a brace of cantaloupe melons—but he did as he was told. He struggled upward and allowed me to scoot out from beneath him, creating a racket of banging and bumping which should have alerted any sharp ears in the vicinity. Fortunately for us, there were none.

  Now I had him. He was kneeling, sitting back on his heels, his cock sticking straight up in the air. By dint of crushing myself painfully against a pile of croquet hoops, I managed to get my head down to the right level. His prick was three inches from my lips.... I inhaled deeply, savoring the last moment of the hunt, the last moments of Morgan’s innocence. Two inches... I opened my mouth, ready to receive him. One inch... I allowed my tongue to extend a little, tasting the first tentative contact with his glans.... And with that first, featherlight contact, an electric thrill passed through his body and into mine. He drew breath, fast and sharp. Had he sobered up too soon? And then, with one long exhalation, he sighed.

  “Oh, yes...” His hands, warm and damp, moved onto my head, caressing my short-cropped brown hair.

  And then, as I closed the gap between us and prepared to take Morgan’s cock places it had never been before (specifically the back of my throat), the air was rent by a bloodcurdling scream.

  We froze, the head of his cock resting on my lower lip, a drip of precum, unattended, gathering on my tongue.

  “What was...”

  He had no time to finish the question. Again, closer this time—a scream of horror and despair, the sound of feet running, heavy breathing, the panting of hysteria.

  Reluctantly I relinquished Morgan’s cock, stuffed him back into his pants and burst out of the cupboard, leaving him to fumble with his buttons in the gloom.

  And there, standing at the head of the stairs, her hands clutched in her blonde hair in an attitude of crazed terror, her eyes wide and wet and her mouth open to scream again, stood the young heiress, Boy Morgan’s fiancée, Belinda Eagle.

  My first thought, quickly dismissed, was that she had somehow witnessed my lips closing around the head of her boyfriend’s dick. That was impossible; there were no spy holes in English country houses, except in sensational novels, and besides, the initial scream had come from some yards away, possibly from a nearby landing.

  Confident that my misdeeds remained undiscovered, I slipped immediately into Gallant American mode.

  “Why, Miss Belinda,” I said, still tasting Boy Morgan’s salty precum where it had pooled on my tongue, “whatever is the matter?”

  She looked at me, her pale blue eyes vacant, the pupils tiny. Was she, I wondered for a moment, a secret society cocaine fiend, such as I had read about in station waiting rooms?

  Her mouth worked for a moment, but no sound came; I hoped, for the sake of my ears, that she wouldn’t scream again.

  “He’s...”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, God, he’s...”

  What? Queer? About to get his dick sucked? Hung like a horse? Begging for it? “What, Belinda? He’s what?”

  “He’s...”

  By this time Morgan had rebuttoned his fly, done a decent (but far from perfect) job of concealing his engorgement, and staggered out of our cupboard.

  “Belinda! My darling!”

  At the sight of her sweetheart, Belinda’s terror melted into something much more manageable. “Oh, Harry!” She teetered toward him. “He’s...dead!” And with that she fainted into his arms in a tableau worthy of the London stage.

  Within moments, Drekeham Hall was in uproar. No sooner had Belinda made her swooning confession than the place was swarming with policemen, who poured into the lobby from every direction. Now, I enjoyed plays in the West End during my occasional trips to the capital, particularly farces, and was always mightily amused by the speed with which the bobby appeared on the scene the moment the crime had been committed. I never imagined, however, that this was based on actual fact. But there before my very eyes was living, running proof of the uncanny efficiency of the British police force. Three came through the front door, two from the stairs that led to the kitchens, two from the direction of the park and garden. They converged on the decorative inlay that formed an intricate design of concentric circles and stars on the hall floor (all Italian marble; Sir James Eagle was a man of substance). Of all this I had a bird’s-eye view, poised on the landing and peering down through the railings.

  Sir James himself strode out of his study and straight up to what I took to be the senior cop.

  “Officer,” he said, in the same tones with which he regularly quelled an unruly House of Commons, “there has been an appalling accident.”

  “Sir?” The officer did not seem particularly surprised.

  “A young man has been found in the most distressing circumstances.”

  “Dead, Sir James?”

  “Dead, sergeant.”

  “His name, sir?”

  Sir James seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then: “Reginald Walworth. Known as Reg, I believe.”

  “A guest, Sir James?”

  “Yes. A guest in Drekeham Hall. It’s appalling. Really most appalling...” He shaded his eyes with a hand and turned his back on the Greek chorus of seven policemen. It looked, at first, like a well-rehearsed gesture of grief—and yet I could see, from my vantage point, that Sir James’s features were distorted in genuine distress. His eyes were screwed up as if he was in pain; he grimaced as if he had just taken some very nasty medicine. He breathed deeply to compose himself, stared heavenward—and caught my gaze, looking straight down into his eyes. Sir James Eagle, MP, was in his forties—once himself a Cambridge Rowing Blue, and still, despite the lines etched deeply in his face by public office, a handsome man. Catching my puzzled expression, he turned on his heel and addressed the police.

  “The body is in my study, gentlemen, where it...he...was found. Would you follow me?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  And with that, the entire squadron marched up the stairs with Sir James at the head, the sergeant at his heels, the rest in pairs behind. I backed up against the wall to let them pass, asking myself if all country-house murders went off with such precision drilling. (I was not so perplexed, however, that I did not notice that at least two of the policemen, including the sergeant, were good-looking, and that at least four of them gave me an appraising glance as they passed me on the landing. I must have still been bulging.)

  The procession disappeared down a corridor—in the direction, I guessed, from which we first heard Belinda scream. I longed to follow them, to penetrate this mystery, but decorum held me back. Even in America, we don’t barge in on personal tragedy, and I knew only too well that any display of inquisitiveness would be frostily repelled at Drekeham Hall.

  And yet my curiosity was piqued—so much that I had almost forgotten Boy Morgan, who had laid his beloved out on the carpet and was now hopping from one foot to the other, his cock giving him some discomfort. Youth and athleticism are a wonderful combination: not even a sudden murder can quell the storm in a young man’s flannels.

  Now, I was caught between a rock and, quite literally, a hard place. You will understand that part of me wanted nothing more than to take advantage of the hubbub in the house, lure Morgan off to our bedroom, and spend the rest of the afternoon fucking his brains out. But
there was another part of me that wanted to find out what was really going on in the dressing room of Sir James Eagle, MP—and to understand that, you must know a little more about me.

  As a child in Boston, growing up in comfortable affluence with my merchant father and heiress mother, I, Edward Mitchell, became addicted to detective fiction. It was my first love. At the age of seven, I read Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, and from there I devoured every Sherlock Holmes story in the bookstores. By scouring our public libraries, I discovered more: G. K. Chesterton, Wilkie Collins, and a new English writer of promise, Agatha Christie. Of course, I remained faithful to Doyle—but, as I grew to manhood and spent more time at my studies or sporting activities, I found that I could relax with anything that came to hand, no matter how trashy. Serial publications were readily available for a few cents—and, if it had a corpse and a cop, I was the first in line to buy the new number, which I would devour whole in my bed at night (unless I had company, when that was devoured whole instead).

  And so you will understand why little Teddy Mitchell grew up with a burning desire to be a private detective. Like Doyle, I was a student of medicine—and, I flattered myself, I had an eye for the telling forensic detail. I also had a nose for hypocrisy, and an instinct for divining the truths of human motivation. This, perhaps, I had acquired in my late teens, when I discovered that the offices, drawing rooms, public libraries, and sporting facilities of middle-class Boston were home to activities that would have made the Revolutionary Fathers blush. My first important lover was a prominent Boston businessman—he was twice my age, but that didn’t stop us from fucking each other silly at every opportunity for a period of nearly three years. And under his welcome tutelage I discovered pleasure almost wherever I looked. I was shameless, and handsome, and well-endowed, and those three things in combination, I think, will never leave you high and dry.

  To cut a long story short, as a twenty-two-year-old postgraduate medical student, I was ruled by two passions: cock and crime. And here, at Drekeham Hall, both were being offered to me. Which would I choose?