The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,231

having been in the company of a strange dark-haired young man, with whom he conversed at length.

It is difficult to know how to interpret these statements. But more analysis of Lasher and Lasher’s powers is contained in the later chapters of these files. It is sufficient to say that others saw Lasher with Petyr, and believed Lasher to be a human being.

Via Jan van Clausen, Stefan Franck wrote to Charlotte Fontenay a letter which could not have been understood by anyone else, explaining what Petyr had written in his last hours, and imploring her to take heed of whatever Petyr had told her.

No response to this was ever received.

The desecration of the cemetery, along with Petyr’s murder, led to its abandonment. No further burials were made there, and some bodies were moved elsewhere. Even one hundred years later it was still regarded as a “haunted place.”

Before Petyr’s last letters reached Amsterdam, Alexander announced to the other members in the Motherhouse that Petyr was dead. He asked that the portrait of Deborah Mayfair by Rembrandt be taken down from the wall.

Stefan Franck complied, and the painting was stored in the vaults.

Alexander laid hands upon the piece of paper on which Lasher had written the words “Petyr will die,” and said only that the words were true, but the spirit was “a liar.”

He could ascertain nothing more. He warned Stefan Franck to abide by Petyr’s wishes that no one be sent to Port-au-Prince to speak further with Charlotte as such a person would be going to his most certain death.

Stefan Franck frequently attempted to make contact with the spirit of Petyr van Abel. With relief he reported again and again in notes to the file that his attempts had been a failure and he was confident that Petyr’s spirit had “moved, on to a higher plane.”

Ghost stories regarding the stretch of road where Petyr died were copied into the files as late as 1956. However none of them pertain to any recognizable figures in this tale.

This brings to a conclusion the story of Petyr’s investigation of the Mayfair Witches, who can reliably be considered Petyr’s descendants on the basis of his reports. The story continues … Please go to Part V.

Seventeen

THE FILE ON THE MAYFAIR WITCHES

PART V

The Mayfair Family from 1689 to 1900

Narrative Abstract by Aaron Lightner

After Petyr’s death, it was the decision of Stefan Franck that no further direct contact with the Mayfair Witches would be attempted in his lifetime. This judgment was upheld by his successors, Martin Geller and Richard Kramer, respectively.

Though numerous members petitioned the order to allow them to attempt contact, the decision of the governing board was always unanimously against it, and the cautionary ban remained in effect into the twentieth century.

However, the order continued its investigation of the Mayfair Witches from afar. Information was frequently sought from people in the colony who never knew the reason for the inquiry, or the meaning of the information which they sent on.

RESEARCH METHODS

The Talamasca, during these centuries, was developing an entire network of “observers” worldwide who forwarded newspaper clippings and gossip back to the Motherhouse. And in Saint-Domingue several people were relied upon for such information, including Dutch merchants who thought the inquiries of a strictly financial nature, and various persons in the colony who were told only that people in Europe would pay dearly for information regarding the Mayfair family. No professional investigators, comparable to the twentieth century “private eye,” existed at this time. Yet an amazing amount of information was gathered.

Notes to the archives were brief and often hurried, sometimes no more than a small introduction to the material being transcribed.

Information about the Mayfair legacy was obtained surreptitiously and probably illegally through people in the banks involved who were bribed into revealing it. The Talamasca has always used such means to acquire information and was only a little less unscrupulous than it is now in years past. The standard excuse was then, and is today, that the records obtained in this manner are usually seen by scores of people in various capacities. Never were private letters purloined, or persons’ homes or businesses violated in criminal fashion.

Paintings of the plantation house and of various members of the family were obtained through various means. One portrait of Jeanne Louise Mayfair was obtained from a disgruntled painter after the lady had rejected the work. A daguerreotype of Katherine and her husband, Darcy Monahan, was obtained in similar fashion, as the family bought only five of the ten different pictures attempted