Reference Library at the Motherhouse, and though they never sought official membership in the order, they were in a very real sense a part of it all their lives. They did not object when they saw me drawn into it, only insisting that I complete my education, and not allow my “special powers” to draw me prematurely away from “the normal world.”
My telekinetic power never became very strong, but with the aid of my friends in the order, I became keenly aware that-under certain circumstances-I could read people’s thoughts. I also learned to veil my thoughts and feelings from others. I learned also how to introduce my powers to people when and where it was appropriate, and how to reserve them primarily for constructive use.
I have never been what anyone would call a powerful psychic. Indeed my limited mind-reading ability serves me best in my capacity as a field investigator for the Talamasca, particularly in situations which involve jeopardy. And my telekinetic ability is seldom called upon for anything of a practical nature.
By the time I was eighteen, I was devoted to the order’s way of life and its goals. I could not easily conceive of a world without the Talamasca. My interests were the interests of the order, and I was completely compatible with its spirit. No matter where I went to school, no matter how much I traveled with my parents or with school friends, the order had become my true home.
When I completed my studies at Oxford, I was received into full membership, but I was really a member long before then. The great witch families had always been my chosen field. I had read extensively in the history of the witchcraft persecutions. And those persons fitting our particular definition of witch were of great fascination to me.
My first fieldwork was done in connection with a witch family in Italy, under the guidance of Elaine Barrett, who was at that time, and for many years later, the most able witch investigator in the order.
It was she who first introduced me to the Mayfair Witches, in a casual conversation over dinner, telling me firsthand of what had happened to Petyr van Abel, Stuart Townsend, and Arthur Langtry, and inviting me to begin my reading of the Mayfair materials in my spare time. Many a night during the summer and winter of 1945 I fell asleep with the Mayfair papers all over the floor of my bedroom. I was already jotting down notes for a narrative in 1946.
The year 1947, however, took me completely away from the Motherhouse and the File on the Mayfair Witches for work in the field with Elaine. I did not realize until later that these years provided me with precisely the field record I would need for the romance with the Mayfair Witches which would become my life’s work.
I was given the assignment formally in 1953: begin the narrative; and when it is complete in acceptable form, we will discuss sending you to New Orleans to see the inhabitants of the First Street house for yourself.
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.
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
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.
