The Witching Hour (86 page)

Allow me to remind the reader that the file did not then include this narrative, as no such collation of materials had yet been done. It contained Petyr van Abel’s letters and diary and a giant compendium of witness testimony, as well as photographs, articles from newspapers, and the like. There was a running chronology, updated periodically by the archivists, but it was very sketchy, to say the least.

Stuart was at that time engaged in several other significant investigations, and it took him some three years to complete his
examination of the Mayfair material. We shall return to him and to Arthur Langtry at the appropriate time.

After Stella’s return, she began to live very much as she had before she ever went to Europe, that is, she frequented speakeasies, once again gave parties for her friends, was invited to numerous Mardi Gras balls where she created something of a sensation, and in general behaved as the ne’er-do-well femme fatale she had been before.

Our investigators had no trouble at all gathering information about her, because she was highly visible and the subject of gossip all over town. Indeed, Irwin Dandrich wrote to our detective agency connection in London (he never knew to whom his information was going or for what purpose) that all he had to do was step into a ballroom and he heard all about what Stella was up to. A few phone calls made on Saturday morning also provided reams of information.

(It is worth noting here that Dandrich, by all accounts, was not a malicious man. His information has proved to be ninety-nine percent accurate. He was our most voluminous and intimate witness regarding Stella, and though he never said so, one can easily infer from his reports that he went to bed with her numerous times. But he didn’t really know her; and she remains at a distance even at the most dramatic and tragic moments described in his reports.)

Thanks to Dandrich and others, the picture of Stella after her return from Europe took on greater and greater detail.

Family legend says that Carlotta severely disapproved of Stella during this period, and argued with Mary Beth about it, and demanded repeatedly and in vain that Stella settle down. Servant gossip (and Dandrich’s gossip) corroborated this, but said that Mary Beth paid very little attention to the matter, and thought Stella was a refreshingly carefree individual and should not be tied down.

Mary Beth is even quoted as saying to one society friend (who promptly passed it on to Dandrich), “Stella is what I would be if I had my life to live over again. I’ve worked too hard for too little. Let her have her fun.”

We must note that Mary Beth was already gravely ill and possibly very tired when she said this. Also she was far too clever a woman not to appreciate the various cultural revolutions of the 1920s, which may be hard for readers of this narrative to appreciate as the twentieth century draws to a close.

The true sexual revolution of the twentieth century began in its tumultuous third decade, with one of the most dramatic changes in female costume the world has ever witnessed. But
not only did women abandon their corsets and long skirts; they threw out old-fashioned mores with them, drinking and dancing in speakeasies in a manner which would have been unthinkable only ten years before. The universal adoption of the closed automobile gave everyone unprecedented privacy, as well as freedom of movement. Radio reached into private homes throughout rural as well as urban America. Motion pictures made images of “glamour and wickedness” available to people worldwide. Magazines, literature, drama were all radically transformed by a new frankness, freedom, tolerance, and self-expression.

Surely Mary Beth perceived all this on some level. We have absolutely no reports of her disapproval of the “changing times.” Though she never cut her long hair or gave up long skirts (when she wasn’t cross-dressing), she begrudged Stella nothing. And Stella was, more than any other member of the family, the absolute embodiment of her times.

In 1925 Mary Beth was diagnosed as having incurable cancer, after which she lived only five months, and most of them in such severe pain that she no longer went out of the house.

Retiring to the north bedroom over the library, she spent her last comfortable days reading the novels she had never got around to reading when she was a girl. Indeed, numerous Mayfair cousins called upon her, bringing her various copies of the classics. And Mary Beth expressed a special interest in the Brontë sisters, in Dickens, which Julien used to read to her when she was little, and in random other English classics, which she seemed determined to read before she died.

Daniel McIntyre was terrified at the prospect of his wife’s leaving him. When he was made to understand that Mary Beth wasn’t going to recover, he commenced his final binge, and according to the gossips and the later legends was never seen to be sober again.

Others have told the same story that Llewellyn told, of Daniel waking Mary Beth constantly in her final days, frantic to know whether or not she was still alive. Family legend confirms that Mary Beth was endlessly patient with him, inviting him to lie down beside her, and comforting him for hours on end.

During this time, Carlotta moved back into the house so that she could be close to her mother and, indeed, sat with her through many a long night. When Mary Beth was in too much pain to read, she asked Carlotta to read to her, and family legend says that Carlotta read all of
Wuthering Heights
to her, and some of
Jane Eyre.

Stella was also in constant attendance. She stopped her carousing altogether, and spent her time preparing meals for her
mother—who was frequently too sick to eat anything—and consulting doctors all over the world, by letter and phone, about cures.

A perusal of the scant medical records that exist on Mary Beth indicate her cancer had metastasized before it was ever discovered. She did not suffer until the last three months and then she suffered a great deal.

Finally on the afternoon of September 11, 1925, Mary Beth lost consciousness. The attending priest noted that there was an enormous clap of thunder. “Rain began to pour.” Stella left the room, went down to the library, and began to call the Mayfairs all over Louisiana, and even the relatives in New York.

According to the priest, the servant witnesses, and numerous neighbors, the Mayfairs started to arrive at four o’clock and continued to arrive for the next twelve hours. Cars lined First Sheet all the way to St. Charles Avenue, and Chestnut Street from Jackson to Washington.

The “cloudburst” continued, slacking off for a few hours to a drizzle and then resuming as a regular rain. Indeed it was raining all over the Garden District, though it was not raining in any other part of the city; however, no one took particular notice of that fact.

On the other hand, the majority of the New Orleans Mayfairs came equipped with umbrellas and raincoats, as though they fully expected some sort of storm.

Servants scurried about serving coffee and contraband European wine to the cousins, who filled the parlors, the library, the hallway, the dining room, and even sat on the stairs.

At midnight the wind began to howl. The enormous sentinel oaks before the house began to thrash so wildly some feared the branches would break loose. Leaves came down as thick as rain.

Mary Beth’s bedroom was apparently crowded to overflowing with her children and her nieces and nephews, yet a respectful silence was maintained. Carlotta and Stella sat on the far side of her bed, away from the door, as the cousins came and went on tiptoe.

Daniel McIntyre was nowhere to be seen, and family legend holds that he had “passed out” earlier, and was in bed in Carlotta’s apartment over the stables outside.

By one o’clock, there were solemn-faced Mayfairs standing on the front galleries, and even in the wind and rain, under their unsteady umbrellas, on the front walk. Many friends of the family had come merely to hover under the oak trees, with newspapers over their heads and their collars turned up against the
wind. Others remained in their cars double-parked along Chestnut and First.

At one thirty-five, the attending physician, Dr. Lyndon Hart, experienced some sort of disorientation. He confessed later to several of his colleagues that “something strange” happened in the room.

To Irwin Dandrich, he confided in 1929 the following account:

“I knew she was almost gone. I had stopped taking her pulse. It seemed so undignified, to get up over and over, only to nod to the others that she was still alive. And each time I made a move towards the bed, naturally the cousins noticed it, and you would hear the anxious whispers in the hall.

“So for the last hour or so I did nothing. I merely waited and watched. Only the immediate family was at the bedside, except for Cortland and his son Pierce. She lay there with her eyes half open, her head turned towards Stella and Carlotta. Carlotta was holding her hand She was breathing very irregularly. I had given her as much morphine as I dared.

“And then it happened. Perhaps I’d fallen asleep and was dreaming, but it seemed so real at the time—that a whole group of entirely different persons was there, an old woman, for example, whom I knew but didn’t know was bending over Mary Beth, and there was a very tall old gentleman in the room, who looked distinctly familiar. There were all sorts of persons, really. And then a young man, a pale young man who was very primly dressed in beautiful old-fashioned clothes, was bending over her. He kissed her lips, and then he closed her eyes.

“I was on my feet with a start. The cousins were crying in the hallway. Someone was sobbing. Cortland Mayfair was crying. And the rain had started to really pour again. Indeed the thunder was deafening. And in a sudden flash of lightning I saw Stella staring at me with the most listless and miserable expression. And Carlotta was crying. And I knew my patient was dead, without doubt, and indeed her eyes were closed.

“I have never explained it really. I examined Mary Beth at once, and confirmed that it was over. But they already knew. All of them knew. I looked about, trying desperately to conceal my momentary confusion, and I saw little Antha in the corner, a few feet behind her mother, and that tall young gentleman was with her, and then, quite suddenly, he was gone. In fact, he was gone so suddenly that I’m not sure I saw him at all.

“But I’ll tell you why I think he was really there. Someone else also saw him. It was Pierce Mayfair, Cortland’s son. I turned around right after the young man vanished, and I realized Pierce was staring at that very spot. He was staring at little Antha, and
then he looked at me. At once he tried to appear natural, as if nothing was the matter, but I know he saw that man.

“As to the rest of what I saw, there certainly wasn’t any old lady about, and the tall old gentleman was nowhere to be seen. But do you know who he was? I believe he was Julien Mayfair. I never knew Julien, but I saw a portrait of him later that very morning on the wall of the hallway, opposite the library door.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t think any of those in the sickroom paid me the slightest notice. The maids started to wipe Mary Beth’s face, and to get her ready for the cousins to come in and see her for the last time. Someone was lighting fresh candles. And the rain, the rain was dreadful. It was just flooding down the windows.

“The next thing I remember, I was pushing through a long line of the cousins, to get to the bottom of the stairs. Then I was in the library with Father McKenzie, and I was filling out the death certificate, and Father McKenzie was sitting on the leather couch with Belle and trying to comfort her, telling her all the usual things, that her mother had gone to heaven and she would see her mother again. Poor Belle. She kept saying, ‘I don’t want her to go away to heaven. I want to see her again right now.’ How do people like that ever come to understand?

“It was only when I was leaving that I saw the portrait of Julien Mayfair and realized with a shock that I had seen that man. In fact a rather curious thing happened. I was so startled when I saw the portrait that I blurted it aloud: ‘That’s the man.’

“And there was someone standing in the hallway, having a cigarette, I believe, and that person looked up, saw me, and saw the portrait to his left, on the wall, and then said with a little laugh, ‘Oh, no, that’s not the man. That’s Julien.’

“Of course I didn’t bother to argue. I can’t imagine what the person thought I meant. And I certainly don’t know what he meant by what he said, and I just left it at that. I don’t even know who the person was. A Mayfair, you can be sure of it, but other than that, I wouldn’t make a guess.

“I told Cortland about it all afterwards, when I thought an appropriate amount of time had passed. He wasn’t at all distressed. He listened to everything I said, and told me he was glad I’d told him. But he said he hadn’t seen anything particular in that room.

“Now, you mustn’t go telling everyone this story. Ghosts are fairly common in New Orleans, but doctors who see them are not! And I don’t think Cortland would appreciate me telling that story. And of course, I’ve never mentioned it to Pierce. As for
Stella, well, frankly I doubt Stella cares about such things at all. If Stella cares about anything, I’d like to know what it is.”

These apparitions undoubtedly included another appearance of Lasher, but we cannot leave this vivid and noteworthy story without discussing the strange exchange of words at the library door. What did the Mayfair cousin mean when he said, “Oh, no, that’s not the man”? Did he mistakenly think that the doctor was referring to Lasher? And did the little comment slip out before he realized that the doctor was a stranger? And if so, does this mean that members of the Mayfair family knew all about “the man” and were used to talking about him? Perhaps so.

Mary Beth’s funeral was enormous, just as her wedding had been some twenty-six years before. For a full account of it we are indebted to the undertaker, David O’Brien, who retired a year later, leaving his business to his nephew Red Lonigan, whose family has given us much testimony since.

We also have some family legends regarding the event, and considerable gossip from parish ladies who attended the funeral and had no compunction about discussing the Mayfairs critically at all.