The Witching Hour

  Again and again, I was reminded that whatever my aspirations I would only be allowed to proceed with caution. Antha Mayfair had died violently. So had the father of her daughter, Deirdre. So had a Mayfair cousin from New York--Dr. Cornell Mayfair--who had come to New Orleans in 1945 expressly to see little eight-year-old Deirdre and investigate Carlotta's claim that Antha had been congenitally insane.

  I accepted the terms of the assignment. I set to work translating the diary of Petyr van Abel. In the meantime, I was given an unlimited budget to amplify the research in any and all directions. So I also commenced a "long distance" investigation into the present state of things with twelve-year-old Deirdre Mayfair, Antha's only child.

  I should like to add in conclusion that two factors apparently play a large role in any investigation which I undertake. The first of these seems to be that my personal manner and appearance put people at ease, almost unaccountably. They talk to me more freely perhaps than they might talk to someone else. How much I control this by any sort of "telepathic persuasion" is quite difficult or impossible to determine. In retrospect, I would say it has more to do with the fact that I appear to be "an Old World gentleman," and that people assume that I am basically good. I also empathize strongly with those I interview. I am in no way an antagonistic listener.

  I hope and pray that in spite of the deceptions I have maintained in connection with my work that I have never really betrayed anyone's trust. To do good with what I know is my life's imperative.

  The second factor which influences my interviews and fieldwork is my mild mind-reading ability. I frequently pick up names and details from people's thoughts. In general I do not include this information in my reports. It's too unreliable. But my telepathic discoveries have certainly provided me with significant "leads" over the years. And this trait is definitely connected with my keen ability to sense danger, as the following narrative will eventually reveal ...

  It is time now to return to the narrative, and to reconstruct the tragic tale of Antha's life and Deirdre's birth.

  THE MAYFAIR WITCHES FROM 1929

  TO THE PRESENT TIME

  Antha Mayfair

  With the death of Stella, an era ended for the Mayfairs. And the tragic history of Stella's daughter Antha, and her only child, Deirdre, remains shrouded in mystery to this day.

  As the years passed, the household staff at First Street dwindled to a couple of silent, unreachable, and completely loyal servants; the outbuildings, no longer needed for housemaids and coachmen and stable boys, fell slowly into disrepair.

  The women of First Street maintained a reclusive existence, Belle and Millie Dear becoming "sweet old ladies" of the Garden District as they walked to daily Mass at the Prytania Street chapel, or stopped in their ceaseless and ineffectual gardening to chat with neighbors passing the iron fence.

  Only six months after her mother's death, Antha was expelled from a Canadian boarding school, which was the last public institution she was ever to attend. It was a surprisingly simple matter for a private investigator to learn from teacher gossip that Antha had frightened people with her mind reading, her talking to an invisible friend, and threats against those who ridiculed her or talked behind her back. She was described as a nervous girl, always crying, complaining of the cold in all kinds of weather, and subject to long unexplained fevers and chills.

  Carlotta Mayfair took Antha home by train from Canada, and to the best of our knowledge, Antha never spent another night out of the First Street house until she was seventeen.

  Nancy, a sullen, dumpy young woman, only two years older than Antha, continued to go to school every day until she was eighteen. At that point she went to work as a file clerk in Carlotta's law offices, where she worked for four years. Every morning, without fail, she and Carlotta walked from First and Chestnut to St. Charles Avenue, where they caught the St. Charles car for downtown.

  By this time the First Street house had taken on an air of perpetual gloom. Its shutters were never opened. Its violet-gray paint began to peel, and its garden grew wild along the iron fences, with cherry laurels and rain trees sprouting among the old camellias and gardenias, which had been so carefully tended years before. When the old unoccupied stable burned to the ground in 1938, weeds soon filled up the open space at the back of the property. Another dilapidated building was razed shortly after, and nothing remained but the old garconnieres, and one great and beautiful oak, its branches poignantly outstretched above the wild grass towards the distant main house.

  In 1934, we started to receive the first reports from workmen who found it impossible to complete repairs or other jobs on the house. The Molloy brothers told everyone in Corona's Bar on Magazine Street that they couldn't paint that place because every time they turned around their ladders were on the ground, or their paint was spilled, or their brushes somehow got knocked in the dirt. "It must have happened six times," said Davey Molloy, "that my paint just went right over, off the ladder, and poured out on the ground. Now, I know I never knocked over a full paint can! And that's what she said to me, Miss Carlotta, she said, 'You knocked it over yourself.' Well, when that ladder went over with me on it, I tell you, that was it. I quit."

  Davey's brother, Thompson Molloy, had a theory as to who was responsible. "It's that brown-haired fella, the one who was always watching us. I told Miss Carlotta, 'Don't you think he could be doing it? That fella that's always over there under the tree?' She acted like she didn't know what I was talking about. But he was always watching us. We were trying to patch the wall on Chestnut Street and I seen him looking at us through the library shutters. Gave me the creeps, it did. Who is he? Is he one of them cousins? I'm not working there. I don't care how bad times are. I'm not working on that house again."

  Another workman, hired only to paint the black cast-iron railings, reported the same "goings-on." He gave up after half a day during which time debris fell on him from the roof and leaves constantly fell into his paint.

  By 1935, it was common knowledge in the Irish Channel that nothing could be done "on that old house." When a couple of young men were hired to clean out the pool that same year, one of them was knocked into the stagnant water and almost drowned. The other had a hell of a time getting him out. "It was like I couldn't see anything. I had a hold of him, and I was hollering for somebody to help me, and we were going down in all that muck, and then thank God he had a hold of the side and he was saving me. That old colored woman, Aunt Easter, come out there with a towel for us and she hollered, 'Just get away from that swimming pool. Never mind cleaning it. Just get away.' "

  Even Irwin Dandrich heard the gossip. "They're saying it's haunted, that Stella's spirit won't let anyone touch anything. It's as if the whole place is in mourning for Stella." Had Dandrich heard of a mysterious brown-haired man? "I hear all kinds of things. Some say it's Julien's ghost. That he's keeping an eye on Antha. Well, if he is, he isn't doing a very good job."

  Shortly thereafter a vague story appeared in the Times-Picayune describing a "mysterious uptown mansion" where no work could be done. Dandrich clipped it and sent it to London with the note "My Big Mouth" in the margin.

  One of our investigators took the reporter to lunch. She was happy to talk about it, and yes indeed it was the Mayfair house. Everyone knew it. A plumber said he was trapped under that house for hours when he tried to fix a pipe. He actually lost consciousness. When he finally came to himself and got out of there, he had to be taken to the hospital. Then there was the telephone man who was called to fix a phone in the library. He said he would never set foot in that house again. One of the portraits on the wall had actually looked at him. And he thought sure he saw a ghost in that very room.

  "I could have written a great deal more," said the young woman, "but the people at the paper don't want any trouble with Carlotta Mayfair. Did I tell you about the gardener? He goes in there regularly to cut the grass, you know, and he said the weirdest thing when I called him. He said, 'Oh, he never bothers me. He and I ge
t along just fine. He and I are just real regular friends.' Now, who do you suppose this man was referring to? When I asked him he said, 'You just go up there. You'll see him. He's been there forever. My grandfather used to see him. He's all right. He can't move or talk to you. He just stands there looking at you from the shadows. One minute you see him. Then he's gone. He don't bother me. He's all right by me. I get paid plenty to work there. I've always worked there. He don't frighten me."

  Family gossip of the period dismissed the "ghost stories." So did uptown society, according to Dandrich, though he implied he thought that people were naive.

  "I think Carlotta herself started all those silly ghost stories," said one of the cousins years after. "She wanted to keep people away. We just laughed when we heard it."

  "Ghosts at First Street? Carlotta was responsible for that house becoming a ruin. She always was penny-wise and pound-foolish. That's the difference between her and her mother."

  But whatever the attitudes of the cousins and the local society, the priests at the Redemptorist rectory heard countless stories of ghosts and mysterious mischief at First Street. Father Lafferty called regularly at First Street, and rumor had it that he would not allow himself to be turned away.

  His sister told one of our investigators, "My brother knew plenty about what was going on, but he never gossiped about it. I asked him how Antha was doing, and he wouldn't answer me. But I know he saw Antha. He got into that house. After Antha died, he came over here one Sunday and he just put his head on his arms on the dining table and he cried. That's the only time I ever saw my brother, Father Thomas Lafferty, break down and cry."

  The family remained concerned about Antha throughout this period. The official story was that Antha was "insane," and that Carlotta was always taking her to psychiatrists, but that "it didn't do any good." The child had been irreparably shocked by the shooting of her mother. She lived in a fantasy world of ghosts and invisible companions. She could not be left unattended; she could not visit outside the house.

  Legal gossip indicates that the cousins frequently called Cortland Mayfair to beg him to look in on Antha, but that Cortland was no longer welcome at First Street. Neighbors report seeing him turned away several times.

  "He used to go up there every Christmas Eve," said one of the neighbors much later. "His car would pull up at the front gate, and his driver would hop out and open the door, and then take all the presents out of the trunk. Lots and lots of presents. Then Carlotta would come out and shake hands with him on the steps. He never got inside that house."

  The Talamasca has never found any record of doctors who saw Antha. It is doubtful Antha was ever taken outside the house except to go to Sunday Mass. Neighbors reported seeing her frequently in the garden at First Street.

  She read her books under the big oak at the rear of the property; she sat for hours on the side gallery, her elbows on her knees.

  A maid who worked across the street reported seeing her talking to "that man all the time, you know that browned-haired man, he is always up there to see her, must be one of the cousins, and he sure do dress nice."

  By the time Antha reached the age of fifteen, she sometimes went out the gate by herself. A mail carrier mentioned seeing her often, a thin girl with a dreamy expression walking alone and sometimes with a "good-looking young fella" through the streets. "The good-looking fella" had brown hair and brown eyes, and was always, dressed in a suitcoat and tie.

  "They liked to scare the hell out of me," said a local milkman. "One time I was just whistling to myself, coming out of the gate of Dr. Milton's house on Second Street, and there they were just right in front of me, under the magnolia tree, in the shadows, and she was real still, and he was standing beside her. I nearly ran into them. I think they were just sort of whispering together, and maybe I scared her as bad as she scared me."

  There are no photographs in our files from this period. But all these witnesses and others describe Antha as pretty.

  "She had a remote look to her," said a woman who used to see her at the chapel. "She wasn't vibrant like Stella; she always seemed wrapped in her dreams, and to tell you the truth, I felt sorry for her all alone in that house with those women. Don't quote me on this but that Carlotta is a mean person. She really is. My maid and my cook knew all about her. They said she would grab that girl by the wrist and dig her nails into her flesh."

  Irwin Dandrich reported that old friends of Stella's tried to call on the girl from time to time, only to be turned away. "No one gets past Nancy or the colored maid, Aunt Easter," Dandrich wrote to the London investigators. "And the talk is that Antha is a veritable prisoner in that house."

  Other than these few glimpses, we know virtually nothing of Antha during the years 1930 to 1938, and it seems nobody in the family knew much of her either. But we can safely conclude that all the references to the "brown-haired man" apply to Lasher; and if this is the case, we have more sightings of Lasher during this period than for all the decades before.

  Indeed, the sightings of Lasher are so numerous that our investigators got in the habit of merely jotting down notes such as "Maid working on Third Street says she saw Antha and the man walking together." Or "Woman on First and Prytania saw Antha standing under the oak tree talking to the man."

  The First Street house had now taken on an air of sinister mystery even for the descendants of Remy Mayfair and of Suzette's brothers and sisters, who had once been quite close.

  Then, in April of 1938, neighbors witnessed a violent family quarrel at First Street. Windows were broken, people heard screaming, and finally a distraught young woman, clutching only a shoulder bag of a purse, was seen running out the front gate and towards St. Charles Avenue. Without question it was Antha. Even the neighbors knew that much, and they watched from behind lace curtains as a police car pulled up only moments after and Carlotta went to the curb to confer with the two officers who drove off at once, siren screaming, apparently to catch the errant girl.

  That night Mayfairs in New York received phone calls from Carlotta, informing them that Antha had run away from home and was headed for Manhattan. Would they help with the search? It was these New York cousins who told the family in New Orleans. Cousins called cousins. Within days Irwin Dandrich wrote to London that "poor little Antha" had made her bid for freedom. She had run off to New York City. But how far would she ever get?

  As it turned out, Antha got quite far.

  For months no one knew the whereabouts of Antha Mayfair. Police, private investigators, and family members failed to find a clue to Antha's whereabouts. Carlotta made three separate train trips to New York during this period, and offered substantial rewards to anyone in the New York police department who could offer help in the search. She called on Amanda Grady Mayfair, who had only recently left her husband, Cortland, and actually threatened Amanda.

  As Amanda told our "undercover" society investigator later, "It was simply dreadful. She asked me to meet her for lunch at the Waldorf. Well, of course I didn't want to do it. Rather like going into a cage at the zoo to have lunch with a lion. But I knew she was all upset about Antha, and I suppose I wanted to give her a piece of my mind. I wanted to tell her that she had driven Antha away, that she never should have isolated that poor little girl from her uncles and aunts and cousins who loved her.

  "But, as soon as I sat down at the table, she started to threaten me. 'Let me tell you, Amanda, if you are harboring Antha I can make trouble for you that you won't believe.' I wanted to throw my drink in her face. I was furious. I said, 'Carlotta Mayfair, don't you ever talk to me again, don't you ever call me, or write to me, or come to my home. I had enough of you in New Orleans. I had enough of what your family did to Pierce and to Cortland. Don't you ever ever come near me again.' I tell you the smoke was coming out of my ears when I left the Waldorf. But you know, it is a regular technique with Carlotta. She makes an accusation as soon as she sees you. She's been doing it for years, really. That way, you don't have a chance to make
an accusation against her."

  In the winter of 1939, our investigators located Antha in a very simple way. Elaine Barrett, our witchcraft scholar, in a routine meeting with Evan Neville suggested that Antha must have financed her escape with the famous Mayfair jewels and gold coins. Why not try the shops in New York where such items could be sold for quick money? Antha was located within the month.

  Indeed, she had been selling rare and exquisite gold coins steadily to support herself since her arrival in 1939. Every coin dealer in New York knew her--the beautiful young woman with the fine manners and the cheerful smile who always brought in the rarest of merchandise, taken from a family collection in Virginia, she said.

  "At first I thought her stuff was stolen," said one coin dealer. "I mean these were three of the finest French coins I'd ever seen. I gave her a fraction of what they were worth and just waited. But absolutely nothing happened. When I made the sale, I saved her a percentage. And when she brought me some marvelous Roman coins, I paid her what they were worth. Now she's a regular. I'd rather deal with her than some of the other people who come in here. I'll tell you that much."

  It was a simple thing to follow Antha from one of these shops to a large apartment on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village where she had been living with Sean Lacy, a handsome young Irish-American painter who showed considerable promise and had already exhibited with some critical approval several pieces of his work. Antha herself had become a writer. Everyone in the building and on the block knew the young couple. Our investigators collected reams of information almost overnight.

  Antha was the sole support of Sean Lacy, friends said openly. She bought him anything he wanted, and he treated her like a queen. "He calls her his Southern Belle, actually, does everything for her. But then why shouldn't he?" The apartment was "a wonderful place," full of bookshelves to the ceiling, and big old comfortable overstuffed chairs.

  "Sean has never painted so well. He's done three portraits of her, all of them very interesting. And you can hear Antha's typewriter going constantly. She sold one story, I heard, to some little literary magazine in Ohio. They threw a party over that one. She was so happy. She really is a little on the naive side. But she's a swell kid."