Rice, Anne - The Witching Hour

by Greyspid

  ‘What is wrong with that girl?’ Juliette asked Beatrice finally, to which Beatrice answered, ‘Nobody knows, darling. Nobody knows’

  Carlotta brought Deirdre home from the asylum, and there she languished for another month

  Relentless canvassing by our investigators indicated that a dark shadowy figure was often seen with Deirdre in the garden A delivery-man from Solan’s grocery was ‘scared out of his wits’ as he was leaving the property when he saw’that wild-eyed girl and that man’ in the tall bamboo thicket by the old pool.

  A spinster who lived on Prytama Street saw the pair in the chapel after dark. ‘I told Miss Belle I stopped by the gate the following morning. I didn’t think it was quite proper. It had happened in the evening, just after dark. I went into the chapel to light a candle and say my rosary as I always do, and there she was in a back pew with this man. I could scarcely see them at first I was a little frightened Then when she got up and hurried out I saw her clearly under the street lamp It was Deirdre Mayfair I don’t know what happened to the young man.’

  Several other persons reported similar sightings. The images were always the same - Deirdre and the mysterious young man in the shadows. Deirdre and the mysterious young man flushed from their place, or peering out at the stranger in an unsettling manner We have fifteen different variations on these two themes.

  Some of these stories reached Beatrice on Esplanade Avenue ‘I don’t know if anyone is watching out for her And she is so . so well developed physically,’ she told Juliette. Juliette went with Beatrice to First Street.

  ‘The girl was wandering in the garden. Beatrice went up to the fence and called to her For a few minutes she didn’t seem to know who Bea was. Then she went to get the key to the gate. Of course Bea did all the talking after that. But the girl is shockingly beautiful It has to do with the strangeness of her personality as much as anything else She seems wild and deeply suspicious of people, and at the same time keenly interested in things about her. She fell in love with a cameo I was wearing. I gave it to her, and she was absolutely childlike in her delight. I hesitate to add that she was barefoot and wearing a filthy cotton dress.’

  As fall came on, there were more reports of fights and screaming. Neighbors went so far as to call the police on two different occasions. Of the first occasion in September I was personally able, two years later, to obtain a full account.

  ‘I didn’t like going there,’ the officer told me ‘You know, bothering these Garden District families just isn’t my line. And that lady really put us through it at the front door. It was Carlotta Mayfair, the one they call Miss Carl; the one who works for the judge.

  ‘"Who called you here? What do you want? Who are you? Let me see your identification. I’ll have to talk to Judge Byrnes about this if you come here again." Finally my partner said that people had heard the young lady in the house screaming, and we would like to talk to her and make certain for ourselves she was all right. I thought Miss Carl was going to kill him on the spot. But she went and got the young girl, Deirdre Mayfair, the one they talk about She was crying and shaking all over. She said to my partner, C J., "You make her give me my mother’s things. She took my mother’s things."

  ‘Miss Carl said she had had enough of this "intrusion," that this was a family argument and the police weren’t needed here If we didn’t leave, she’d call Judge Byrnes. Then this girl, Deirdre, ran out of the house and towards the squad car. "Take me away!" she screamed.

  ‘Then something happened to Miss Carl She was looking at the girl standing at the curb by our squad car, and she started crying. She tried to hide it. She took out her handkerchief and covered her face But we could see, the lady was crying. The girl really had the lady at her wit’s ends.

  ‘C.J. said, "Miss Carl, what do you want us to do?" She went past him down to the sidewalk, and she laid her hand on the girl and she said, "Deirdre, do you want to go back to the asylum? Please, Deirdre. Please." And then she just broke down. She couldn’t talk. The girl stared at her, all wide-eyed and crazy, and then she broke into sobs.

  And Miss Carl put her arm around the girl and took her back up the steps and inside.’

  ‘Are you sure it was Carl?’ I asked the officer.

  ‘Oh, yeah, everybody knows her. Boy. I’ll never forget her. She called the captain the next day and tried to have C J. and me fired’

  A different squad car answered the neighbor’s call a week later. All we know of this occasion is that Deirdre was trying to leave the house when the police arrived; they persuaded her to sit down on the porch steps and wait until her Uncle Cortland arrived.

  Deirdre ran away the following day. Legal gossip reports of numerous phone calls back and forth, of Cortland rushing up to First Street, and Mayfair and Mayfair calling the New York cousins in search for Deirdre as they had when Antha disappeared years before.

  Amanda Grady Mayfair was dead Dr Cornell Mayfair’s mother, Rosalind Mayfair, wanted nothing to do with’the First Street crowd’ as she called them Nevertheless she called the other New York cousins. Then the police contacted Cortland in New Orleans Deirdre had been found wandering around barefoot and incoherent in Greenwich Village. There was some evidence that she had been raped. Cortland flew to New York that night. The following morning he brought Deirdre back with him.

  The repeat of history came full circle with Deirdre’s second commitment to St Ann’s Asylum. A week later she was released, and went to live with Cortland in his old family home in Metairie.

  Family gossip described Carlotta as beaten down and discouraged She told Judge Byrnes and his wife that she had failed with her niece She feared the girl would ’never be normal.’

  When Beatrice Mayfair went to call on Carlotta one Saturday, she found her sitting alone in the parlor at First Street with all the curtains drawn Carlotta wouldn’t talk

  ‘I realized later she had been staring at the very spot where they put the coffin in the old days when the funerals were still at home. All she said to me was yes or no, or hmmmm when I asked her questions. Finally that horrible Nancy came in and offered me some iced tea. She acted put upon when I accepted. I told her I would get it myself and she said, oh, no Aunt Carl wouldn’t have that’

  When Beatrice had had her fill of sadness and rudeness she left.

  She went out to Metame to visit Deirdre at Cortland’s house on Country Club Lane.

  This house had been in the Mayfair family since Cortland built it when he was a young man. A brick mansion with white columns and French windows and every ’modern convenience,’ it later passed to Ryan Mayfair, Pierce’s son, who lives there now. For years Sheffield and Eugenie Mayfair shared it with Cortland. Their only child, Elbe Mayfair, the woman who later adopted Deirdre’s daughter, Rowan, was born in this house.

  At this period, Sheffield Mayfair had already died of a heart attack; Eugenie had been gone for years. Ellie lived in California, where she had just gotten married to a lawyer named Graham Franklin. And Cortland lived in the Metaine mansion on his own.

  By all reports, the house was extremely cheerful, filled with bright colors, gay wallpaper, traditional furnishings, and books Numerous French doors opened on the garden, the pool, and the front lawn.

  The entire family seems to have thought it was the best place for Deirdre Metaine had none of the gloom of the Garden District. Cortland assured Beatrice that Deirdre was resting, that the girl’s problems had been compounded by a lot of secrecy and bad judgment on the part of Carlotta.

  ‘But he won’t really tell me what’s happening,’ Beatrice complained to Juliette ‘He never does. What does he mean, secrecy?’

  Beatrice queried the maid by phone whenever she could. Deirdre was just fine, said the maid. The girl’s color was excellent She had even had a guest, a very nice-looking young man The maid had only seen him for a second or two - he and Deirdre had been out in the garden - but he was a handsome, gentlemanly sort of young man.

  ‘Now, who could that be?’ Beatrice w
ondered over lunch with Juliette Milton ‘Not that same scoundrel who sneaked into the nuns’ garden to bother her at St Ro’s!’

  ‘Seems to me,’ wrote Juliette to her London contact, ‘that this family does not realize this girl has a lover. I mean one lover — one very distinguished and easily recognized lover, who is seen in her company over and over. All the descriptions of this young man are the same!’

  The significant thing about this story is that Juliette Milton had never heard any rumors about ghosts, witches, curses, or the like associated with the Mayfair family She and Beatrice truly believed this mysterious person was a human being

  Yet at the very same time, in the Irish Channel old people gossiped over kitchen tables about ‘Deirdre and the man ’ And by ‘the man,’ they did not mean a human being The elderly sister of Father Lafferty knew about ‘the man.’ She tried to talk to her brother about it; but he would not confide in her. She gossiped with an elderly friend named Dave Collins about it; she gossiped with our investigator, who walked along with her on Constance Street as she made her way home from Sunday Mass

  Miss Rosie, who worked in the sacristy, changing the altar cloths and seeing to the sacramental wine, also knew the shocking facts about those Mayfairs and ‘the man.’ ‘First it was Stella, then Antha, now Deirdre,’ she told her nephew, a college boy at Loyola who thought she was a superstitious fool.

  An old black maid who lived in the same block knew all about’that man ’ He was the family ghost, that’s who he was, and the only ghost she ever saw in broad daylight, sitting with that girl in the back garden. That girl was going to hell when she died.

  It was at this point, in the summer of 1958, that I prepared to go to New Orleans.

  I had finished putting the entire Mayfair history into an early version of the foregoing narrative, which was substantially the same as what the reader has only just read And I was deeply and passionately concerned about Deirdre Mayfair.

  I felt that her psychic powers, and especially her ability to see and communicate with spirits, were driving her out of her mind.

  After numerous discussions with Scott Reynolds, our new director, and several meetings with the entire council, it was decided that I should make the trip, and that I should use my own judgment as to whether Deirdre Mayfair was old enough or stable enough to be approached

  Elaine Barrett, one of the oldest and most experienced members of the Talamasca, had died the preceding year, and I was now considered (undeservedly) the leading expert in the Talamasca on witch families My credentials were never questioned. And indeed, those who had been most frightened by the deaths of Stuart Townsend and Arthur Langtry — and most likely to forbid my going to New Orleans — were no longer alive.

  TWENTY-THREE

  THE FILE ON THE MAYFAIR WITCHES

  PART IX

  The Story of Deirdre Mayfair

  Revised Completely 1989

  I ARRIVED in New Orleans in July of 1958, and immediately checked into a small, informal French Quarter hotel. I then proceeded to meet with our ablest professional investigators, and to consult some public records, and to satisfy myself upon other points.

  Over the years we had acquired the names of several people close to the Mayfair family. I attempted contact. With Richard Llewellyn I was quite successful, as has already been described, and this report alone occupied me for days.

  I also managed ‘to run into’ a young lay teacher from St Rose de Lima’s who had known Deirdre during her months there, and more or less clarified the reasons for the expulsion. Tragically this young woman believed Deirdre to have had an affair with ’an older man’ and to have been a vile and deceitful girl. Other girls had known of the Mayfair emerald. It was concluded that Deirdre had stolen it from her aunt. For why else would the child have had such a valuable jewel at school?

  The more I talked with the woman the more I realized that Deirdre’s aura of sensuality had made an impression on those around her. ‘She was so… mature, you know. A young girl has no business really having enormous breasts like that at the age of sixteen.’

  Poor Deirdre. I found myself on the verge of asking whether or not the teacher thought mutilation was appropriate in these circum stances, then terminated the interview. I went back to the hotel, drank a stiff brandy, and lectured myself on the dangers of becoming emotionally involved.

  Unfortunately I was no less emotional when I visited the Garden District the following day, and the day after that, during which time I spent hours walking through the quiet streets and observing the First Street house from all angles. After years of reading of this place and its inhabitants, I found this extremely exciting. But if ever a house exuded an atmosphere of evil, it was this house.

  Why? I asked myself.

  By this time it was extremely neglected. The violet paint had faded from the masonry. Weeds and tiny ferns grew in crevices on the parapets. Flowering vines covered the side galleries so that the ornamental ironwork was scarcely visible, and the wild cherry laurels screened the garden from view.

  Nevertheless it ought to have been romantic. Yet in the heavy summer heat, with the burnished sun shining drowsily and dustily through the trees, the place looked damp and dark and decidedly unpleasant. During the idle hours that I stood contemplating it, I noted that passersby invariably crossed the street when they approached it. And though its flagstone walk was slick with moss and cracked from the roots of the oak trees, so were other sidewalks in the area which people did not seek to avoid.

  Something evil lived in this house, lived and breathed as it were, and waited, and perhaps mourned.

  Accusing myself again, and with reason, of being overemotional, I defined my terms. This something was evil because it was destructive. It ’lived and breathed’ in the sense that it influenced the environment and its presence could be felt. As for my belief that this ‘something’ was in mourning, I needed only to remind myself that no workman had made any repairs on the place since Stella’s death. Since Stella’s death the decline had been steady and unbroken. Did not the thing want the house to rot even as Stella’s body decayed in the grave?

  Ah, so many unanswered questions. I went to the Lafayette Cemetery and visited the Mayfair tomb. A kindly caretaker volunteered the information that there were always fresh flowers in the stone vases before the face of the crypt, though no one ever saw the person who put them there.

  ‘Do you think it is some old lover of Stella Mayfair’s?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said the elderly man, with a cracking laugh. ‘Good heavens, no. It’s him, that’s who it is, the Mayfair ghost. He’s the one that puts those flowers there. And you want to know something? Sometimes he takes them off the altar at the chapel. You know, the chapel, down there on Prytania and Third? Father Morgan came here one afternoon just steaming Seems he had just put out the gladiolus, and there they were in the vases before the Mayfair grave He went by and rang the bell over there on First Street. I heard Miss Carl told him to go to hell.’ The man laughed and laughed at such an idea… somebody telling a priest to go to hell.

  Renting a car, I drove down the river road to Riverbend and explored what was left of the plantation, and then I called our undercover society investigator, Juliette Milton, and invited her to lunch.

  She was more than happy to provide me with an introduction to Beatrice Mayfair. Beatrice agreed to meet me for lunch, accepting without the slightest question my superficial explanation that I was interested in southern history and the history of the Mayfair family.

  Beatrice Mayfair was thirty-five years old, an attractively dressed dark-haired woman with a charming blend of southern and New Orleans (Brooklyn, Boston) accent, and something of a ‘rebel’ as far as the family was concerned.

  For three hours she talked to me nonstop at Galatoire’s, pouring out all sorts of little stories about the Mayfair family, and verifying what I had already suspected, that little or nothing was known in the present time about the family’s remote past. It was the
most vague sort of legend, in which names were confused, and scandal had become near preposterous.

  Beatrice didn’t know who built Riverbend, or when. Or even who had built First Street. She thought Julien had built it. As for stories of ghosts and legends of purses full of coins, she had believed all that when she was young, but not now. Her mother had been born at First Street (this woman, Alice Mayfair, was the second to the last daughter of Remy Mayfair; Millie Dear, or Miss Millie as she was known, was Remy’s youngest child, and Beatrice’s aunt) and she had said some awfully strange things about that house. But she’d left it when she was only seventeen to marry Aldrich Mayfair, a great-grandson of Maurice Mayfair, and Aldrich didn’t like Beatrice’s mother to talk about that house.

  ‘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, Remy’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’