The witching hour lotmw-1

by Anne Rice

  “Both my parents are so secretive,” said Beatrice. “I don’t think my dad really remembers anything anymore. He’s past eighty, and my mother just won’t tell me things. I myself didn’t marry a Mayfair, you know. My husband knows nothing about the family, really.” (Note: Beatrice’s husband died of throat cancer in the seventies.) “I don’t remember Mary Beth. I was only two years old when she died. I have some pictures of myself at her feet at one of the reunions, you know, with all the other little Mayfair babies. But I remember Stella. Oh, I loved Stella. I loved her so.

  “It kills me not to be able to go up there. Years ago I stopped visiting Aunt Millie Dear. She’s sweet, but she doesn’t really know who I am. Every time I have to say, I’m Alice’s daughter, Rémy’s granddaughter. She remembers for a little while and then blanks out. And Carlotta doesn’t really want me there. She doesn’t want anyone there. She’s simply awful. She killed that house! She drove all the life out of it. I don’t care what anyone else says, she’s to blame.”

  “Do you believe the house is haunted, that there’s something evil perhaps … ”

  “Oh! Carlotta. She’s evil! But you know, if it’s that sort of thing you’re after, well, it’s too bad you couldn’t have talked to Amanda Grady Mayfair. She was Cortland’s wife. She’s been dead for years. She believed some fantastic things! But it was interesting actually … Well, in a way. They said that was why she left Cortland. She said Cortland knew the house was haunted. That he could see and talk to spirits. I was always shocked that a grown woman would believe things like that! But she became completely convinced of some sort of Satanic plot. I think Stella caused all that, inadvertently. I was too young then to really know. But Stella was no evil person! No voodoo queen. Stella went to bed with anybody and everybody, and if that’s witchcraft, well, half the city of New Orleans ought to be burnt at the stake.”

  … And so on it went, the gossip becoming slightly more intimate and reckless as Beatrice continued to pick at her food and smoke Pall Mall cigarettes.

  “Deirdre’s oversexed,” she said, “that’s all that’s wrong with her. She’s been ridiculously sheltered. No wonder she takes up with strange men. I’m relying upon Cortland to take care of Deirdre. Cortland has become the venerable elder of the family. And he is certainly the only one who can stand up to Carlotta. Now, that’s a witch in my book. Carlotta. She gives me the shivers. They ought to get Deirdre away from her.”

  Indeed, there was already some talk about a school in Texas, a little university where Deirdre might go in the fall. It seemed that Rhonda Mayfair, a great-granddaughter of Suzette’s sister Marianne (this was an aunt of Cortland’s), had married a young man in Texas who taught at this school. It was in fact a small state school for women, heavily endowed, and with many of the traditions and accoutrements of an expensive private school. The whole question was, would that awful Carlotta let Deirdre go. “Now, Carlotta. That is a witch!”

  Once more, Beatrice became quite worked up on the subject of Carlotta, her criticisms including Carlotta’s style of dressing (business suits) and style of talking (businesslike), when abruptly she leaned across the table and said:

  “And you know that witch killed Irwin Dandrich, don’t you?”

  Not only did I not know this, I had never heard the faintest whisper of such a thing. It had been reported to us in 1952 that Dandrich died of a heart attack in his apartment some time after four in the afternoon. It had been well-known that he had a heart condition.

  “I talked to him,” Beatrice said, her manner one of great self-importance and thinly concealed drama. “I talked to him the day he died. He said Carlotta had called. Carlotta had accused him of spying on the family, and had said, ‘Well, if you want to know about us, come up here to First Street. I’ll tell you more than you’ll ever want to hear.’ I told him not to go. I said: ‘She’ll sue you. She’ll do something terrible to you. She’s out of her mind.’ But he wouldn’t listen to me. ‘I’m going to see that house for myself,’ he said. ‘Nobody I know has been in it since Stella died.’ I made him promise to call me as soon as he got home. Well, he never did call me. He died that very afternoon. She poisoned him. I know she did. She poisoned him. And they said it was a heart attack when they found him. She poisoned him but she gave it to him so he could go home on his own steam and die in his own bed.”

  “What makes you so certain?” I asked.

  “Because it isn’t the first time something like that has happened. Deirdre told Cortland there was a dead body in the attic of the house at First Street. Yes, a dead body.”

  “Cortland told you this?”

  She nodded gravely. “Poor Deirdre. She tells these doctors things like that and they give her shock treatment! Cortland thinks she’s seeing things!” She shook her head. “That’s Cortland. He believes the house is haunted, that there are ghosts up there you can talk to! But a body in the attic? Oh, no, he won’t believe in that!” She laughed softly, then became extremely serious. “But I’ll bet it’s true. I remember something about a young man who disappeared right before Stella died. I heard about it years later. Aunt Millie Dear said something about it to my cousin, Angela. Later on, Dandrich told me about it. The police were looking for him. Private detectives were looking. A Texan from England, Irwin said, who had actually spent the night with Stella, and then just disappeared.

  “I’ll tell you who else knew about it. Amanda knew about it. Last time I saw her in New York we were rehashing the whole thing, and she said, ‘And what about that man who strangely disappeared!’ Of course she connected it with Cornell, you know the one who died in the hotel downtown after he called on Carlotta. I tell you, she poisons them and they go home and die afterwards. It’s one of those chemicals with a delayed effect. This Texan was some sort of historian from England. Knew about our family’s past-”

  Suddenly she made a connection. I was a historian from England. She laughed. “Mr. Lightner, you better watch your step!” she said. She sat back laughing softly to herself.

  “I suppose you’re right. But you don’t really believe all this, do you, Miss Mayfair?”

  She thought for a moment. “Well, I do and I don’t.” Again, she laughed. “I wouldn’t put anything past Carlotta. But if the truth be known, the woman’s too dull to actually poison somebody. But I thought about it! I thought about it when Irwin Dandrich died. I loved Irwin. And he did die right after he went to see Carlotta. I hope Deirdre goes to college in Texas. And if Carlotta invites you up for tea, don’t go!”

  “About the ghost particularly … ” I said. (Throughout this interview, it was rarely necessary for me to complete a sentence.)

  “Oh, which one! There’s the ghost of Julien-everybody’s seen that ghost. I thought I saw it once. And then there’s the spook that throws over people’s ladders. That’s a regular invisible man.”

  “But isn’t there one whom they call ‘the man’?”

  She had never heard that expression. But I ought to talk to Cortland. That is, if Cortland would talk to me. Cortland didn’t like outsiders asking him questions. Cortland lived in a family world.

  We parted ways at the corner as I helped her into her taxi. “If you do talk to Cortland,” she said, “don’t tell him you talked to me. He thinks I’m an awful gossip. But do ask him about that Texan. You never know what he might say.”

  As soon as the cab drove away, I called Juliette Milton, our society spy.

  “Don’t ever go near the house,” I said. “Don’t ever have anything to do personally with Carlotta Mayfair. Don’t ever go to lunch again with Beatrice. We’ll give you a handsome check. Simply bow out.”

  “But what did I do? What did I say? Beatrice is an impossible gossip. She tells everyone those stories. I haven’t repeated anything that wasn’t common knowledge.”

  “You’ve done a fine job. But there are dangers. Definite dangers. Just do as I say.”

  “Oh, she told you that about Carlotta killing people. That’s nonsense. Carlot
ta’s an old stick. To hear her tell it, Carlotta went to New York and killed Deirdre’s father, Sean Lacy. Now, that is sheer nonsense!”

  I repeated my warnings, or orders, for what they were worth.

  The following day I drove out to Metairie, parked my car, and took a walk in the quiet streets around Cortland’s house. Except for the large oak trees and the soft velvet green of the grass, the neighborhood had nothing of the atmosphere of New Orleans. It might as well have been a rich suburb near Houston, Texas, or Oklahoma City. Very beautiful, very restful, very seemingly safe. I saw nothing of Deirdre. I hoped she was happy in this wholesome place.

  I was convinced that I must see her from afar before I attempted to speak to her. In the meantime, I tried to make direct contact with Cortland, but he did not return my calls. Finally his secretary told me he did not want to talk to me, that he had heard I’d been talking to his cousins and he wished that I would leave the family alone.

  I was undecided as to whether I should press the matter with Cortland. Same old questions that always plague us at such junctures-what were my obligations, my goals? I left the message finally that I had a great deal of information about the Mayfair family, going back to the 1600s, and would welcome an interview. I never received a response.

  The following week, I learned from Juliette Milton that Deirdre had just left for Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas, where Rhonda Mayfair’s husband, Ellis Clement, taught English to small classes of well-bred girls. Carlotta was absolutely against it; it had been done without her permission, and Carlotta was not speaking to Cortland.

  Cortland had driven Deirdre to Texas, and remained long enough to see that she was comfortable in the home of Rhonda Mayfair and Ellis Clement, and then came home.

  It was not difficult for us to ascertain that Deirdre had been admitted as a “special student,” educated at home. She had been assigned a private room in the freshman dormitory, and was registered for a full schedule of routine course work.

  I arrived in Denton two days later. Texas Woman’s University was a lovely little school situated on low rolling green hills with vine-covered brick buildings, and neatly tended lawns. It was quite impossible to believe that it was a state institution.

  At the age of thirty-six, with prematurely gray hair and addicted to well-tailored linen suits, I found it effortlessly easy to roam about the campus probably passing for a faculty member to anyone who took notice. I stopped on benches for long periods to write in my notebook. I browsed in the small open library. I wandered the halls of the old buildings, exchanging pleasantries with a few elderly women teachers and with fresh-faced young women in blouses and pleated skirts.

  I caught my first glimpse of Deirdre unexpectedly on the second day after my arrival. She came out of the freshman dormitory, a modest Georgian-style building, and walked for about an hour around the campus-a lovely young woman with long loose black hair, strolling idly up and down small winding paths beneath old trees. She wore the usual cotton blouse and skirt.

  Seeing her at last overwhelmed me with confusion. I was glimpsing a great celebrity. And as I followed her, at a remove, I suffered unanticipated agonies over what I was doing. Should I leave this woman alone? Should I tell her what I knew of her early history? What right had I to be here?

  In silence, I watched her return to her dormitory. The following morning, I followed her to the first of her classes, and then afterwards into a large basement canteen area where she drank coffee alone at a small table and put nickels into the jukebox over and over to play one selection repeatedly-a mournful Gershwin tune sung by Nina Simone.

  It seemed to me she was enjoying her freedom. She read for a while, then sat looking around her. I found myself utterly unable to move from the chair and go towards her. I dreaded frightening her. How terrible to discover that one is being followed. I left before she did and went back to my little downtown hotel.

  That afternoon, I again wandered the campus, and as soon as I approached her dormitory, she appeared. This time she wore a white cotton dress with short sleeves and a beautifully fitted bodice, and a rather loose billowy skirt.

  Once again, she appeared to be walking aimlessly; however this time she took an unexpected turn towards the back of the campus, so to speak, away from the groomed lawns and the traffic, and I soon found myself following her into a large, deeply neglected botanical garden-a place so shadowy and wild and overgrown that I became fearful for her as she proceeded, way ahead of me, along the uneven path.

  At last the large stands of bamboo blotted out all signs of the distant dormitories, and all noise from the even more distant streets. The air felt heavy as it feels in New Orleans, yet slightly more dry.

  I came down a small walkway over a little bridge, and looked up to see Deirdre facing me as she stood quite still beneath a large flowering tree. She lifted her right hand and beckoned for me to come closer. Were my eyes deceiving me? No. She was staring straight at me.

  “Mr. Lightner,” she said, “what is it you want?” Her voice was low, and faintly tremulous. She seemed neither angry nor afraid. I was unable to answer her. I realized suddenly she was wearing the Mayfair emerald around her neck. It must have been under her dress when she came out of the dormitory. Now it was plainly in view.

  A tiny alarm sounded inside me. I struggled to say something simple and honest and thoughtful. Instead, I said, “I’ve been following you, Deirdre.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I know.”

  She turned her back to me, beckoning for me to follow, and went down a narrow overgrown set of steps to a near secret place where cement benches formed a circle, all but hidden from the main path. The bamboo was crackling faintly in the breeze. The smell of the nearby pond was rank. But the spot had an undeniable beauty to it.

  She settled on the bench, her dress a shining whiteness in the shadows, the emerald flashing against her breast.

  Danger, Lightner, I said to myself. You are in danger.

  “Mr. Lightner,” she said, looking up as I sat opposite, “just tell me what you want!”

  “Deirdre, I know many things,” I said. “Things about you and your mother, and your mother’s mother, and about her mother before her. History, secrets, gossip, genealogies … all sorts of things really. In a house in Amsterdam there is a portrait of a woman, your ancestor. Her name was Deborah. She was the one who bought that emerald from a jeweler in Holland hundreds of years ago.”

  None of this seemed to surprise her. She was studying me, obviously scanning for lies and ill intentions. I myself was unaccountably shaken. I was talking to Deirdre Mayfair. I was sitting with Deirdre Mayfair at last.

  “Deirdre,” I said, “tell me if you want to know what I know. Do you want to see the letters of a man who loved your ancestor, Deborah? Do you want to hear how she died in France, and how her daughter came across the sea to Saint-Domingue? On the day she died, Lasher brought a storm to the village … ”

  I stopped. It was as if the words had dried up in my mouth. Her face had undergone a shocking change. For a moment I thought it was rage that had overwhelmed her. Then I realized it was some consuming inner struggle.

  “Mr. Lightner,” she whispered, “I don’t want to know. I want to forget what I do know. I came here to get away.”

  “Ah.” I said nothing for a moment.

  I could feel her growing more calm. I was the one at a loss, quite completely. Then she said:

  “Mr. Lightner”-her voice very steady yet infused with emotion-“my aunt says that you study us because you believe we are special people. That you would help the evil in us, out of curiosity, if you could. No, don’t misunderstand me. She means that by talking about the evil, you would feed it. By studying it, you would give it more life.” Her soft blue eyes pleaded for my understanding. How remarkably poised she seemed; how surprisingly calm.

  “I understand your aunt’s point of view,” I said. In fact, I was amazed. Amazed that Carlotta Mayfair knew who we were, or understood
even that much of our purpose. And then I thought of Stuart. Stuart must have spoken to her. There was the proof of it. This, and a thousand other thoughts were crowding my brain.

  “It’s like the spiritualists, Mr. Lightner,” Deirdre said in the same polite sympathetic manner. “They want to speak with the spirits of dead ancestors; and in spite of all their good intentions, they merely strengthen demons about whom they understand nothing … ”

  “Yes, I know what you’re saying, believe me I know. I wanted only to give you the information, to let you know that if you … ”

  “But you see, I don’t want it. I want to put the past behind me.” Her voice faltered slightly. “I want never to go home again.”

  “Very well then,” I said. “I understand perfectly. But will you do this for me? Memorize my name. Take this card from me. Memorize the phone numbers on it. Call me if ever you need me.”

  She took the card from me. She studied it for a length of time and then slipped it into her pocket.

  I found myself looking at her in silence, looking into her large innocent blue eyes, and trying not to dwell upon the beauty of her young body, her exquisitely molded breasts in the cotton dress. Her face seemed full of sadness to me in the shadows.

  “He’s the devil, Mr. Lightner,” she whispered. “He really is.”

  “Then why are you wearing the emerald, my dear?” I asked her impulsively.

  A smile came over her face. She reached for it. closing her right hand around it, and then pulled hard on it so the chain broke. “For one very definite reason, Mr. Lightner. It was the simplest way to bring it here, and I mean to give it to you.” She reached out and dropped it in my hand.