The Witching Hour (88 page)

“And if you want to hear the worst part of it, some of the children saw him with their very eyes. I wouldn’t have believed it if it hadn’t been so many; but when four children all tell you the same story, and each of them is afraid, and worried, and the parents are worried, well, then what can you do but believe?

“It was in the school yard that they would see him. Now, I told you the girl was shy. Well, she’d go over to the far brick wall at the back, and there she’d sit and read her book in a little patch of sun coming through the trees. And soon he would be there with her. A man, they said he was, can you imagine? And you ask me do I know the meaning of the words, ‘the man’?

“Ah, you see, it was a shock to everyone when it came out that he was a full-grown man. For they thought he was a little child before that, or some sort of child spirit, if you follow me now. But then it was a man, a tall dark-haired man. And that really set everyone to talking. That it was a man.

“No, I never did see him. None of the sisters saw him. But the children saw him. And the children told Father Lafferty. I told Father Lafferty. And he was the one that called Carlotta Mayfair and said, ‘You have to take her out of school.’

“Now I don’t criticize the priests, no, never. But I will say this. Father Lafferty wasn’t a man you could buy with a big donation to the church, and he said, ‘Miss Carlotta, you’ve got to take her out of school.’

“No use calling up Stella by that time. Everyone knew Stella was practicing witchcraft. She went down to the French Quarter and bought the black candles for her voodoo, and do you know, she was bringing the other Mayfairs into it? Yes, she was doing it. I heard it a long time after, that she had gone to look for the other cousins who were witches and she had told them all to come up to the house.

“It was a séance they had in that house. They lighted black candles and they burned incense and they sang songs to the devil, and they asked that their ancestors appear. That’s what I heard happened. I can’t tell you where I heard it. But I heard it. And I believe it, too.”

In the summer of 1928, Pierce Mayfair, Cortland’s son, canceled his plans to go to Harvard, and decided to go to Tulane University, though his father and his uncles were dead against
it. Pierce had been to all of Stella’s secret parties, reported Dandrich, and the two were beginning to be linked by the gossips, and Pierce was not yet eighteen.

By the end of 1928, legal gossip indicated that Carlotta had declared that Stella was an unfit mother, and somebody ought to take her child away from her “in court.” Cortland denied such rumors to his friends. But everybody knew it was “coming to that,” said Dandrich. Legal gossip told of family meetings at which Carlotta demanded that the Mayfair brothers stand by her.

Meantime, Stella and Pierce were running around day and night together, with little Antha often in tow. Stella bought dolls for little Antha incessantly. She took her to breakfast every morning at a different hotel in the French Quarter. Pierce went with Stella to purchase a building on Decatur Street which Stella meant to turn into a studio where she could be alone.

“Let Millie Dear and Belle have that house and Carlotta,” Stella told the real estate agent. Pierce laughed at everything Stella said. Antha, a thin seven-year-old with porcelain skin and soft blue eyes, stood about clutching a giant teddy bear. They all went to lunch together, including the real estate agent, who told Dandrich later, “She is charming, absolutely charming. I think those people up on First Street are merely too gloomy for her.”

As for Nancy Mayfair, the dumpy little girl adopted at birth by Mary Beth and introduced to everyone as Antha’s sister, Stella paid no attention to her at all. One Mayfair descendant says bitterly that Nancy was no more than “a pet” to Stella. But there is no evidence of Stella’s ever being mean to Nancy. Indeed, she charged truckloads of clothes and toys for Nancy. But Nancy seems to have been a generally unresponsive and sullen little girl.

Meantime Carlotta alone took Antha and Nancy to Mass on Sundays, and it was Carlotta who saw that Nancy went to the Academy of the Sacred Heart.

In 1928, gossip had it that Carlotta Mayfair had taken the shocking legal step of trying to gain custody of Antha, with a view, apparently, to sending her away to school. Certain papers had been signed and filed.

Cortland was horrified that Carlotta would take things so far. At last Cortland, who had been on friendly terms with Carlotta until this juncture, threatened to oppose her legally if she did not drop the matter out of hand. Barclay, Garland, and young Sheffield and other members of the family agreed to go along with Cortland. Nobody was going to take Stella to court and take her child away from her while Cortland was alive.

Lionel too agreed to stand behind Cortland. He is described as being tortured by the whole incident. He even suggested that he and Stella go away to Europe together for a while and leave Antha in Carlotta’s hands.

Finally Carlotta withdrew her petition for custody.

But between her and Julien’s descendants, things were never the same. They began to fight over money and they have continued that fight to this day.

Sometime in 1927, Carlotta had persuaded Stella to sign a power of attorney so that Carlotta could handle certain matters for her about which Stella didn’t want to be concerned.

Carlotta attempted now to use this power of attorney to make sweeping decisions regarding the enormous Mayfair legacy which had since Mary Beth’s death been entirely in Cortland’s hands.

Family legend and contemporary legal gossip, as well as society gossip, all concur that the Mayfair brothers—Cortland, Garland, and Barclay, and later Pierce, Sheffield, and others—refused to honor this piece of paper. They refused to follow Carlotta’s orders to liquidate the hugely profitable and daring investments which they had been making with tremendous success on behalf of the legacy for years. They rushed Stella to their offices so that she might revoke the power of attorney and reaffirm that everything was to be handled by them.

Nevertheless endless squabbles resulted between the brothers and Carlotta, which have gone on into the present time. Carlotta seems never to have trusted Julien’s sons after the custody battle, and not even to have liked them. She made endless demands upon them for information, full disclosures, detailed accounts and explanations of what they were doing, constantly implying that if they did not give a good account of themselves she would take them to court on behalf of Stella (and later on behalf of Antha, and later on behalf of Deirdre unto the present time).

They were hurt and baffled by her distrust. By 1928 they had made near incalculable amounts of money on behalf of Stella, whose affairs of course were completely entangled with their own. They could not understand Carlotta’s attitude, and they seemed to have persisted in taking it literally over the years.

That is, they patiently answered all her questions, and again and again attempted to explain what they were doing, when of course Carlotta only asked them more questions and demanded more answers and brought up new topics for examination, and called for more meetings, and made more phone calls, and made more veiled threats.

It is interesting to note that almost every legal secretary or
clerk who ever worked for Mayfair and Mayfair seemed to understand this “game.” But Julien’s sons continued to be hurt and bitter about it always, as if they did not see through it to the core.

Only reluctantly did they allow themselves to be forced away from the house on First Street where all of them had been born.

By 1928, they were already being forced away but they didn’t know it. Twenty-five years later, when Pierce and Cortland Mayfair asked to examine some of Julien’s belonging in the attic, they were not allowed past the front door. But in 1928 such a thing would have been unimaginable.

Cortland Mayfair probably never guessed that the battle over Antha was the last personal battle with Carlotta that he would ever win.

Meantime, Pierce practically lived at First Street in the fall of 1928. Indeed by the spring of 1929, he was going everywhere with Stella, and had styled himself her “personal secretary, chauffeur, punching bag and crying pillow.” Cortland put up with it, but he didn’t like it. He told friends and family that Pierce was a fine boy, and he would tire of the whole thing and go east to school just as all the other boys had done.

As it turned out, Pierce never really had a chance to tire of Stella. But we have now come to the year 1929, and we should interrupt this story to include the strange case of Stuart Townsend, our brother in the Talamasca, who wanted so badly to make contact with Stella in the summer of that year.

THE FILE ON THE MAYFAIR WITCHES

PART VII

The Disappearance of Stuart Townsend

In 1929, Stuart Townsend, who had been studying the Mayfair materials for years, petitioned the council in London to allow him to attempt contact with the Mayfair family.

He felt strongly that Stella’s cryptic message to us on the back of the photograph meant that she wanted such contact.

And Stuart was also convinced that the last three Mayfair Witches—Julien, Mary Beth, and Stella—were not murderers or evildoers in any sense; that it would be entirely safe to contact them, and that, indeed, “wonderful things” might result.

This forced the council to take a hard look at the entire question, and also to reexamine, as it does constantly, the aims and standards of the Talamasca.

Though an immense body of written material exists in our archives as to our aims and standards, as to what we find acceptable and unacceptable, and though this is a constant topic of conversation at our council meetings worldwide, let me summarize
for the purposes of this narrative
the issues which are relevant here, all of which were raised by Stuart Townsend in 1929.

First and foremost: We had created in the File on the Mayfair Witches an impressive and valuable history of a psychic family. We had proved to ourselves beyond a doubt that the Mayfairs had contact with the realm of the invisible, and that they could manipulate unseen forces to their advantage. But there were still many things about what they did that we did not know.

What if they could be persuaded to talk to us, to share our secrets? What might we then learn?

Stella was not the secretive or guarded person that Mary Beth had been. Maybe, if she could be convinced of our discretion and our scholarly purpose, she would reveal things to us. Possibly Cortland Mayfair would talk to us too.

Second and perhaps less important: Certainly we had over the years violated the privacy of the Mayfair family with our vigilance. We had, according to Stuart, “snooped” into every aspect of their lives. Indeed we had studied these people as specimens, and again and again, we justify the lengths to which we go by arguing that we will, and do, make our records available to those we study.

Well, we had not done that with the Mayfairs ever. And perhaps there was no excuse for not trying now.

Third: We existed in an absolutely unique relationship to the Mayfairs because the blood of Petyr van Abel, our brother, ran in their veins. They were “related” to us, one might say. Should we not seek to make contact merely to tell them about this ancestor? And who knows what would follow from there?

Fourth: Could we do some real good by making contact? And here of course we come to one of our highest purposes. Could the reckless Stella benefit from knowing about other people like herself? Would she not enjoy knowing there were people who studied such persons, with a view to understanding the realm of the invisible? In other words, would Stella not like to talk to us, and not like to know what we knew about the psychic world at large?

Stuart argued vociferously that we were obligated to make contact. He also raised the pertinent question: what did Stella already know? He also insisted that Stella needed us, that the entire Mayfair clan needed us, that little Antha in particular needed us, and it was time that we introduced ourselves and offered what we knew.

The council considered everything that Stuart had to say; it considered what it knew of the Mayfair Witches, and it concluded that the good reasons for making contact far outweighed any bad reasons.
It dismissed out of hand the idea of danger.
And it told Stuart that he might go to America and he might make contact with Stella.

In a welter of excitement, Stuart sailed for New York the very next day. The Talamasca received two letters from him postmarked New York. He wrote again when he reached New Orleans, on stationery from the St. Charles Hotel, saying that he had contacted Stella and indeed had found her extremely receptive, and that he was going to meet her for lunch the next day.

Stuart Townsend was never seen or heard from again. We do not know where or when or even if his life ended. We simply know that sometime in June of 1929 he vanished without a trace.

When one looks back upon these council meetings, when one reads over the transcript, it is very easy to see that the Talamasca made a tragic mistake. Stuart was not really prepared for this mission. A narrative should have been written embracing all the materials, so that the Mayfair history could be seen as a whole. Also the question of danger should have been more carefully evaluated. Throughout the anecdotal history of the Mayfairs there are references to violence being done to the enemies of the Mayfair Witches.

But in all fairness, it must be admitted that there were no such stories associated with Stella or her generation. And certainly no such stories in relationship to other contemporary residents of the First Street house. (The exceptions, of course,
are the playground stories concerning Stella and Antha. They were accused of using their invisible friend to hurt other little children. But there is nothing comparable about Stella as an adult.)

Also the full story of Antha’s nurse who died of a fall in Rome was not then known to the Talamasca. And it is possible that Stuart knew nothing about this incident at all.