My Friend the Murderer

Fiction ~ short story
Published October 1895
Approx. 5,800 words
(First read 21/12/1994)

One of EFB's earliest published stories.  Despite being a fairly humdrum crime anecdote (set in Greece*, where else?), I'm sure Mr O. Wilde & Co. would've loved it and instantly spotted a 'fellow traveller' in Benson.  The fruitiest bit of homoeroticism is worth quoting in full ~ the narrator's talking about his Greek pal of the title, who's been on the lam for a while [my italics added]:

He got up and stretched himself after his meal, and for a moment I really thought his head would go through the top of my tent, and, standing on a chair, I measured him against the pole.  He was just over six-foot-six.  "Yes, you have grown," I said, "and your tunic is getting too short."

Available in Fine Feathers and Other Stories (1994)

* No, not that Greece ~ just plain ordinary 1890s Greece.