“restoration” of the First Street house. She expressed concern about the condition of the entire property.
Legal gossip says that Antha was stunned to discover that she owned the place. She had never had the slightest idea. She wanted to redecorate, paint, restore everything.
Carlotta was not at Antha’s meeting with her uncles. Carlotta had demanded of the law firm of Mayfair and Mayfair that they provide her with a complete audit on behalf of Antha of everything that had been done since Stella’s death, saying that the present records were inadequate, and she refused to participate in any sort of legal discussion until she received this audit “for review.”
Sheffield told his mother, Amanda, later, that Antha had been deliberately misled with regard to the legacy. She seemed hurt and even a little shocked as things were explained to her. And it was Carlotta who had hurt her. But all she would say was that Carlotta had probably had her good in mind all along.
The party went for a late lunch at Galatoire’s to celebrate. Antha was nervous about leaving the baby, but she seemed to have a good time. As they were leaving, Sheffield heard her ask his father the following question: “Then you mean she couldn’t have thrown me out of the house if she had wanted to? She couldn’t have put me on the street?”
“It’s your house,
Antha looked so sad. “She used to threaten me,” she said under her breath. “She used to say she’d put me in the street if I didn’t do what she said.”
Cortland then took Antha away from the party and drove her home alone.
Antha and the baby went to lunch a few days later with Beatrice Mayfair at another fashionable French Quarter restaurant. A nurse was on hand to take the baby walking in its beautiful white wicker buggy while the two women enjoyed their wine and fish. When Beatrice described it all to Amanda later she told her Antha had really become a young woman. Antha was writing again. She was working on a novel, and she was going to have the First Street house completely fixed up.
She wanted to repair the swimming pool. She talked about her mother a little, how her mother had loved to give big parties. She seemed full of life.
Indeed, several contractors were approached to give estimates for “a complete restoration, including painting, carpentry repairs and some masonry work.” Neighbors were delighted to hear this from the servants. Dandrich wrote that a distinguished architectural firm had been consulted about rebuilding the carriage house.
Antha wrote a brief letter to Amanda Grady Mayfair in mid-November, thanking her for her help in New York. She thanked her for forwarding the mail from Greenwich Village. She said that she was writing short stories, and working on her novel again.
When Mr. Bordreaux, the mailman, passed on his regular rounds at nine A.M. on December 10, Antha was waiting for him at the gate. She had several large manila envelopes ready to go to New York. Could she buy the postage from him? They made a guess at the weight-she said she couldn’t leave the baby to go to the post office- and he took the packages with him. Antha also gave him a bundle of regular mail for various New York addresses.
“She was all excited,” he said. “She was going to be a writer. Such a sweet girl. And I’ll never forget. I made some remark about the bombing of Pearl Harbor, that my son had enlisted the day before, and now we were in the war at last. And do you know? She’d never heard a thing about it. She didn’t even know about the bombing, or the war. Just like she was living in a dream.”
The “sweet girl” died that very afternoon. When the same postman came around with the afternoon mail at three-thirty, there was a cloudburst over that area of the Garden District. It was raining “cats and dogs.” Yet a crowd was assembled in the Mayfair garden, and the undertaker’s wagon was in the middle of the street. The wind was blowing “something fierce.” Mr. Bordreaux hung around in spite of the weather.
“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.
