The Witching Hour

  "Miss Belle was on the porch sobbing. And Miss Millie tried to tell me what was happening but she couldn't say a word. Then Miss Nancy came to the edge of the porch and shouted at me. 'You go on, Mr. Bordreaux. We've had a death here. You go on and get out of the rain.' "

  Mr. Bordreaux crossed the street and sought shelter on the porch of a neighboring house. The housekeeper told him through the screen door that it was Antha Mayfair who was dead. She'd apparently fallen from the third-floor porch roof.

  The storm was terrible, said the mailman, a regular hurricane. Yet he remained to watch as a body was put into the undertaker's wagon. Red Lonigan was there, with his cousin Leroy Lonigan. Then the wagon drove away. Finally Mr. Bordreaux went back to delivering the mail, and very soon, about the time he reached Prytania Street, the weather had cleared up. When he passed the next day the sidewalk was littered with leaves.

  Over the years, the Talamasca has collected numerous stories connected with Antha's death, but what actually happened on the afternoon of December 10, 1941, may never be known. Mr. Bordreaux was the last "outsider" ever to see or speak with Antha. The baby's nurse, an elderly woman named Alice Flanagan, had called in sick that day.

  What is known from the police records and from guarded talk emanating from the Lonigan family and the priests of the parish is that Antha jumped or fell from the porch roof outside the attic window of Julien's old room some time before three P.M.

  Carlotta's story, gleaned from these same sources, was as follows:

  She had been arguing with the girl about the baby, because Antha had deteriorated to such a point that she was not even feeding the child.

  "She was in no way prepared to be a mother," said Miss Carlotta to the police officer. Antha spent hours typing letters and stories and poetry, and Nancy and the others had to beat on the door of the room to make her realize that Deirdre was crying in the cradle and needed to be given a bottle or nursed.

  Antha became "hysterical" during this last argument. She ran up the two flights of steps to the attic, screaming to be left alone. Carlotta, fearing that Antha would hurt herself--which she often did, according to Carlotta--pursued her into Julien's old room. There Carlotta discovered that Antha had tried to scratch her own eyes out, and indeed had succeeded in drawing considerable blood.

  When Carlotta tried to control her, Antha broke away, falling backwards through the window, and onto the roof of the cast-iron porch. She apparently crawled to the edge of it, and then lost her balance or deliberately jumped. She died instantly when her head struck the flagstones three stories below.

  Cortland was beside himself when he learned of his niece's death. He went immediately to First Street. What he told his wife in New York later was that Carlotta was absolutely distraught. The priest was with her, a Father Kevin, from the Redemptorist Parish. Carlotta said over and over that nobody understood how fragile Antha had been. "I tried to stop her!" Carlotta said. "What in the name of God was I expected to do!" Millie Dear and Belle were too upset to talk about it. Belle seemed to be confusing it all with the death of Stella. Only Nancy had frankly disagreeable things to say, complaining that Antha had been spoiled and sheltered all her life, that her head was full of silly dreams.

  When Alice Flanagan, the nurse, was contacted by Cortland, she seemed afraid. She was elderly, and partially blind. She said she didn't know anything about Antha's ever hurting herself or becoming hysterical or anything like that. She took her orders from Miss Carlotta. Miss Carlotta had been good to her family. Miss Flanagan didn't want to lose her job. "I just want to take care of that darling baby," she told the police. "That darling baby needs me now."

  Indeed she took care of Deirdre Mayfair until the girl was five years old.

  Finally, Cortland told Beatrice and Amanda to leave Carlotta in peace. Carlotta was the only witness to what had happened. And whatever had gone on that afternoon, surely Antha's death had been a terrible accident. What could anyone do?

  No true investigation followed the death of Antha. There had been no autopsy. When the undertaker became suspicious after examining the corpse and concluding that Antha's facial scratches were not self-inflicted, he contacted the family doctor and was advised or told to let the matter drop. Antha was insane, that was the unofficial verdict. All her life she had been unstable. She had been committed to Bellevue and St. Ann's Asylum. She had depended upon others to care for her and her child.

  After Stella's death, the Mayfair emerald was never mentioned in connection with Antha. No relative or friend ever reported seeing it. Sean Lacy never painted Antha with it. No one in New York had ever heard of it.

  But when Antha died she had the emerald around her neck.

  The question is obvious. Why was Antha wearing the emerald on that day of all days? Was it the wearing of the emerald that precipitated the fatal argument? And if the scratch marks on Antha's face were not self-inflicted, did Carlotta try to scratch out Antha's eyes, and if so why?

  Whatever the case, the house on First Street was once again shrouded in secrecy. Antha's plans for a restoration were never carried out. After furious arguments in the offices of Mayfair and Mayfair--Carlotta stormed out once, actually breaking the glass on the door--Cortland went so far as to petition the court for custody of baby Deirdre. Clay Mayfair's grandson Alexander also came forward. He and his wife, Eileen, had a lovely mansion in Metairie. They could officially adopt the child or just take her informally, whatever Carlotta would allow.

  Amanda Grady Mayfair told our undercover society man, Allan Carver, "Cortland wants me to go home to take care of the baby. I tell you I feel so sorry for that baby. But I can't go back to New Orleans after all these years."

  Carlotta all but laughed in the face of these "do-gooders," as she called them. She told the judge and indeed anyone in the family who asked her that Antha had been gravely ill. It was a congenital insanity, without question, and might well surface in Antha's little girl. She had no intention of allowing anyone to take Deirdre out of her mother's house, or away from darling Miss Flanagan, or from dear sweet Belle, or darling Millie, all of whom adored the child, and had time on their hands to care for her day in and day out as no one else could.

  When Cortland refused to back down, Carlotta threatened him directly. His wife had left him, hadn't she? Wouldn't the family like to know after all these years just what sort of a man Cortland was? Cousins pondered her slurs and innuendoes. The judge in the case became "impatient." To his mind, Carlotta Mayfair was a woman of impeccable virtue and excellent judgment. Why couldn't this family accept the situation? Good Lord, if every orphan baby had aunts as sweet as Millie and Belle and Carlotta, this would be a better world.

  The legacy was left in the hands of Mayfair and Mayfair, and the child was left in the hands of Carlotta. And the matter was abruptly closed.

  Only one other assault on Carlotta's authority was ever attempted. It was in 1945.

  Cornell Mayfair, one of the New York cousins and a descendant of Lestan, had just finished his residency at Massachusetts General. He was training to be a psychiatrist. He had heard "incredible stories" about the First Street house from his cousin (by marriage) Amanda Grady Mayfair. And also from Louisa Ann Mayfair, Garland's eldest granddaughter who went to Radcliffe and had an affair with Cornell while she was there. What was all this talk of congenital insanity? Cornell was fascinated. Also he was still in love with Louisa Ann, who had gone back to New Orleans rather than marry him and live in Massachusetts, and he could not understand the girl's devotion to her home. He wanted to visit New Orleans and the family at First Street, and the New York cousins thought it was a good idea.

  "Who knows?" he told Amanda over lunch at the Waldorf. "Maybe I'll like the city, and maybe Louisa Ann and I can somehow work things out."

  On February 11, Cornell came to New Orleans, checking into a downtown hotel. He begged Carlotta to talk to him and she agreed to let him come uptown.

  As he later told Amanda by long distance, he remain
ed at the house for perhaps two hours, visiting with little four-year-old Deirdre alone for some of that time. "I can't tell you what I've found out," he said. "But that child has to be removed from this environment. And frankly I don't want Louisa Ann involved. I'll tell you the whole thing when I get back to New York."

  Amanda insisted that he call Cortland, that he tell Cortland all about his concerns. Cornell confessed that Louisa Ann had suggested the same thing.

  "I don't want to do that just now," said Cornell. "I've just had a bellyful of Carlotta. I don't want to meet any more of these people this afternoon."

  Trusting that Cortland could be of help, Amanda called him and told him what was going on. Cortland appreciated Dr. Mayfair's interest. He called Amanda later that afternoon to tell her he had made an appointment with Cornell for dinner at Kolb's downtown. He'd call her after they had talked together, but as things stood now, he liked the young doctor. He was eager to hear what he had to say.

  Cornell never kept the appointment for dinner. Cortland waited for an hour at Kolb's Restaurant and then rang Cornell's room. No answer. The following morning, the hotel maid found Cornell's dead body. He lay fully dressed on a rumpled bed, eyes half open, a half full glass of bourbon on the table at his side. No immediate cause of death could be found.

  When an autopsy was performed, at the behest of Cornell's mother as well as the New Orleans coroner, Cornell was found to have a small amount of a strong narcotic, mixed with alcohol, in his veins. It was ruled an accidental overdose and never investigated further. Amanda Grady Mayfair never forgave herself for sending young Dr. Cornell Mayfair to New Orleans. Louisa Ann "never recovered" and is to this day unmarried. A distraught Cortland accompanied the coffin back to New York.

  Was Cornell a casualty of the Mayfair Witches? Once more we are forced to say that we do not know. One detail, however, gives us some indication that Cornell did not die from the small amount of narcotic and alcohol in his blood. The coroner who examined Cornell's body before it was removed from the hotel room noted that Cornell's eyes were full of hemorrhaged blood vessels. We now know that this is a symptom of asphyxiation. It is possible that someone severely disabled Cornell by slipping a drug into his drink (bourbon was found in the glass on the table), and then smothered him with a pillow when he could not defend himself.

  By the time the Talamasca attempted to investigate this case (through a reputable private detective), the trail was cold. No one at the hotel could remember if Cornell Mayfair had had any callers that afternoon. Had he ordered his bourbon from room service? No one had ever asked these questions before. Fingerprints? None had been taken. After all, this wasn't a murder ...

  But it is now time to turn to Deirdre Mayfair, the present heiress of the Mayfair legacy, orphaned at the age of two months and left in the hands of her aging aunts.

  Deirdre Mayfair

  The First Street house continued to deteriorate after Antha's death. The swimming pool had by this time become a rank swamp pond of duckweed and wild irises, its rusted fountain jets spewing green water into the muck. Shutters were once again bolted on the windows of the northside master bedroom. The paint continued to peel from the violet-gray masonry walls.

  Elderly Miss Flanagan, almost completely blind in her last year, cared for little Deirdre until just before the child's fifth birthday. Now and then she took the baby walking around the block in a wicker buggy, but she never crossed the street.

  Cortland came on Christmas. He drank sherry in the long front parlor with Millie Dear and Belle and Nancy.

  "I told them I wasn't going to be turned away this time," he explained to his son Pierce, who later told his mother. "No, sir. I was going to see that child with my own eyes on her birthday and on Christmas. I was going to hold her in my arms." He made similar statements to his secretaries at Mayfair and Mayfair, who often bought the presents which Cortland took uptown.

  Years later, Cortland's grandson Ryan Mayfair talked about it to a sympathetic "acquaintance" at a wedding reception:

  "My grandfather hated to go up there. Our place in Metairie was always so cheerful. My father said that Grandfather would come home crying. When Deirdre was three years old, Grandfather made them get their first Christmas tree in all those years. He took a package of ornaments up there for it. He bought the lights at Katz and Bestoff and put them on himself. It's so hard to imagine people living in that sort of gloom. I wish I had really known my grandfather. He was born in that house. Think of it. And his father, Julien, had been born before the Civil War."

  Cortland, by this point in time, had become the image of his father, Julien. Pictures of him even as late as the mid-1950s show him as a tall, slender man with black hair, and gray only at the temples. His heavily lined face was remarkably like that of his father, except for the fact that his eyes were much larger, reminiscent of Stella's eyes, though he had Julien's agreeable expression, and frequently Julien's cheerful smile.

  By all accounts Cortland's family loved him; his employees veritably worshiped him; and though Amanda Grady Mayfair had left him years before, even she seems to have always loved him, or so she told Allan Carver in New York the year she died. Amanda cried on Allan's shoulder about the fact that her sons never understood why she had left their father, and she had no intention of telling them, either.

  Ryan Mayfair, who knew his grandfather Cortland only briefly, was absolutely devoted to him. To him and his father, Cortland was a hero. He could never understand how his grandmother could "defect" to New York.

  What was Deirdre like during this early period? We are unable to discover a single account of her in the first five years, except the legend in Cortland's family that she was a very pretty little girl.

  Her black hair was fine and wavy, like that of Stella. Her blue eyes were large and dark.

  But the First Street house was once more closed to the outside world. A generation of passersby had become accustomed to its hopelessly forbidding and neglected facade. Once again, workmen couldn't complete repairs on the premises. A roofer fell off his ladder twice and then refused to come back. Only the old gardener and his son came willingly to now and then cut the weed-infested grass.

  As people in the parish died, certain legends concerning the Mayfairs died with them. Other stories became so miserably transformed by time as to be unrecognizable. New investigators replaced old investigators. Soon no one questioned about the Mayfairs mentioned the names of Julien or Katherine or Remy or Suzette.

  Julien's son Barclay died in 1949, his brother Garland in 1951. Cortland's son Grady died the same year as Garland, after a fall from a horse in Audubon Park. His mother, Amanda Grady Mayfair, died only shortly after, as if the death of her beloved Grady was more than she could take. Of Pierce's two sons, only Ryan Mayfair "knows the family history" and regales the younger cousins--many of whom know nothing--with strange tales.

  Irwin Dandrich died in 1952. However, his role had been already filled by another "society investigator," a woman named Juliette Milton, who collected numerous stories over the years from Beatrice Mayfair and the other downtown cousins, many of whom lunched with Juliette regularly and did not seem to mind that she was a gossip who told them everything about everybody and told everybody everything about them. Like Dandrich, Juliette was not a particularly vicious person. Indeed, she doesn't even seem to have been unkind. She loved melodrama, however, and wrote incredibly long letters to our lawyers in London, who paid her an annual amount equal to the annuity which had once been her sole support.

  As was the case with Dandrich, Juliette never knew to whom she was supplying all this information about the Mayfairs. And though she broached the subject at least once a year, she never pressed.

  In 1953, as I began my full-time translation of Petyr van Abel's letters, I read the contemporary reports regarding twelve-year-old Deirdre as they poured in. I sent the investigators after every scrap of information. "Dig," I said. "Tell me all about her from the very beginning. There is nothing I do n
ot want to know." I called Juliette Milton personally. I told her I would pay well for anything extra she could turn up.

  *

  During the early years at least Deirdre had followed in the footsteps of her mother, being expelled from one school after another for her "antics" and "strange behavior," her disruption of the classes, and strange crying fits for which nothing could be done.

  Once more Sister Bridget Marie, then in her sixties, saw the "invisible friend" in action in the St. Alphonsus school yard, finding things for little Deirdre and making flowers fly through the air. Sacred Heart, Ursulines, St. Joseph's, Our Lady of the Angels--they all expelled little Deirdre within a couple of weeks. For months at a time, the child stayed home. Neighbors saw her "running wild" in the garden, or climbing the big oak tree on the back of the lot.

  There was no real staff anymore at First Street. Aunt Easter's daughter Irene did all the cooking and the cleaning thoroughly but steadily. Every morning she swept the pavements or the banquettes as they were called. Three o'clock saw her ringing out her mop at the tap by the rear garden gate.

  Nancy Mayfair was the actual housekeeper, managing things in a brusque and offensive manner, or so said deliverymen and priests who now and then came to call.

  Millie Dear and Belle, both picturesque if not beautiful old women, tended the few roses growing by the side porch which had been saved from the wilderness that now covered the property from the front fence to the back wall.

  All the family appeared for nine o'clock Mass on Sundays at the chapel, little Deirdre a picture in her navy blue sailor dress and straw hat with its ribbons, Carlotta in her dark business suit and high-necked blouse, and the old ladies, Millie Dear and Belle, exquisitely attired in their black high string shoes, gabardine dresses with lace, and dark gloves.