credentials were never questioned. And indeed, those who had been most frightened by the deaths of Stuart Townsend and Arthur Langtry-and most likely to forbid my going to New Orleans-were no longer alive.
Twenty-three
I arrived in New Orleans in July of 1958, and immediately checked into a small, informal French Quarter hotel. I then proceeded to meet with our ablest professional investigators, and to consult some public records, and to satisfy myself upon other points.
Over the years we had acquired the names of several people close to the Mayfair family. I attempted contact. With Richard Llewellyn I was quite successful, as has already been described, and this report alone occupied me for days.
I also managed “to run into” a young lay teacher from St. Rose de Lima’s who had known Deirdre during her months there, and more or less clarified the reasons for the expulsion. Tragically this young woman believed Deirdre to have had an affair with “an older man” and to have been a vile and deceitful girl. Other girls had known of the Mayfair emerald. It was concluded that Deirdre had stolen it from her aunt. For why else would the child have had such a valuable jewel at school?
The more I talked with the woman the more I realized that Deirdre’s aura of sensuality had made an impression on those around her. “She was so … mature, you know. A young girl has no business really having enormous breasts like that at the age of sixteen.”
Poor Deirdre. I found myself on the verge of asking whether or not the teacher thought mutilation was appropriate in these circumstances, then terminated the interview. I went back to the hotel, drank a stiff brandy, and lectured myself on the dangers of becoming emotionally involved.
Unfortunately I was no less emotional when I visited the Garden District the following day, and the day after that, during which time I spent hours walking through the quiet streets and observing the First Street house from all angles. After years of reading of this place and its inhabitants, I found this extremely exciting. But if ever a house exuded an atmosphere of evil, it was this house.
Why? I asked myself.
By this time it was extremely neglected. The violet paint had faded from the masonry. Weeds and tiny ferns grew in crevices on the parapets. Flowering vines covered the side galleries so that the ornamental ironwork was scarcely visible, and the wild cherry laurels screened the garden from view.
Nevertheless it ought to have been romantic. Yet in the heavy summer heat, with the burnished sun shining drowsily and dustily through the trees, the place looked damp and dark and decidedly unpleasant. During the idle hours that I stood contemplating it, I noted that passersby invariably crossed the street when they approached it. And though its flagstone walk was slick with moss and cracked from the roots of the oak trees, so were other sidewalks in the area which people did not seek to avoid.
Something evil lived in this house, lived and breathed as it were, and waited, and perhaps mourned.
Accusing myself again, and with reason, of being overemotional, I defined my terms. This something was evil, because it was destructive. It “lived and breathed” in the sense that it influenced the environment and its presence could be felt. As for my belief that this “something” was in mourning, I needed only to remind myself that no workman had made any repairs on the place since Stella’s death. Since Stella’s death the decline had been steady and unbroken. Did not the thing want the house to rot even as Stella’s body decayed in the grave?
Ah, so many unanswered questions. I went to the Lafayette Cemetery and visited the Mayfair tomb. A kindly caretaker volunteered the information that there were always fresh flowers in the stone vases before the face of the crypt, though no one ever saw the person who put them there.
“Do you think it is some old lover of Stella Mayfair’s?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” said the elderly man, with a cracking laugh. “Good heavens, no. It’s him, that’s who it is, the Mayfair ghost. He’s the one that puts those flowers there. And you want to know something? Sometimes he takes them off the altar at the chapel. You know, the chapel, down there on Prytania and Third? Father Morgan came here one afternoon just steaming. Seems he had just put out the gladiolus, and there they were in the vases before the Mayfair grave. He went by and rang the bell over there on First Street. I heard Miss Carl told him to go to hell.” The man laughed and laughed at such an idea … somebody telling a priest to go to hell.
Renting a car, I drove down the river road to Riverbend and explored what was left of the plantation, and then I called our undercover society investigator, Juliette Milton, and invited her to lunch.
She was more than happy to provide me with an introduction to Beatrice Mayfair. Beatrice agreed to meet me for lunch, accepting without the slightest question my superficial explanation that I was interested in southern history and the history of the Mayfair family.
Beatrice Mayfair was thirty-five years old, an attractively dressed dark-haired woman with a charming blend of southern and New Orleans (Brooklyn, Boston) accent, and something of a “rebel” as far as the family was concerned.
For three hours she talked to me nonstop at Galatoire’s, pouring out all sorts of little stories about the Mayfair family, and verifying what I had already suspected, that little or nothing was known in the present time about the family’s remote past. It was the most vague sort of legend, in which names were confused, and scandal had become near preposterous.
Beatrice didn’t know who built Riverbend, or when. Or even who had built First Street. She thought Julien had built it. As for stories of ghosts and legends of purses full of coins, she had believed all that when she was young, but not now. Her mother had been born at First Street (this woman, Alice Mayfair, was the second to the last daughter of Remy Mayfair; Millie Dear, or Miss Millie as she was known, was Remy’s youngest child, and Beatrice’s aunt) and she had said some awfully strange things about that house. But she’d left it when she was only seventeen to marry Aldrich Mayfair, a great-grandson of Maurice Mayfair, and Aldrich didn’t like Beatrice’s mother to talk about that house.
“Both my parents are so secretive,” said Beatrice. “I don’t think my dad really remembers anything anymore. He’s past eighty, and my mother just won’t tell me things. I myself didn’t marry a Mayfair, you know. My husband knows nothing about the family, really.” (Note: Beatrice’s husband died of throat cancer in the seventies.) “I don’t remember Mary Beth. I was only two years old when she died. I have some pictures of myself at her feet at one of the reunions, you know, with all the other little Mayfair babies. But I remember Stella. Oh, I loved Stella. I loved her so.
“It kills me not to be able to go up there. Years ago I stopped visiting Aunt Millie Dear. She’s sweet, but she doesn’t really know who I am. Every time I have to say, I’m Alice’s daughter, Remy’s granddaughter. She remembers for a little while and then blanks out. And Carlotta doesn’t really want me there. She doesn’t want anyone there. She’s simply awful. She killed that house! She drove all the life out of it. I don’t care what anyone else says, she’s to blame.”
“Do you believe the house is haunted, that there’s something evil perhaps … ”
“Oh! Carlotta. She’s evil! But you know, if it’s that sort of thing you’re after, well, it’s too bad you couldn’t have talked to Amanda Grady Mayfair. She was Cortland’s wife. She’s been dead for years. She believed some fantastic things! But it was interesting actually … Well, in a way. They said that was why she left Cortland. She said Cortland knew the house was haunted. That he could see and talk to spirits. I was always shocked that a grown woman would believe things like that! But she became completely convinced of some sort of Satanic plot. I think Stella caused all that, inadvertently. I was too young then to really know. But Stella was no evil person! No voodoo queen. Stella went to bed with anybody and everybody, and if that’s witchcraft, well, half the city of New Orleans ought to be burnt at the stake.”
