The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,328

from time to time, only to be turned away. “No one gets past Nancy or the colored maid, Aunt Easter,” Dandrich wrote to the London investigators. “And the talk is that Antha is a veritable prisoner in that house.”

Other than these few glimpses, we know virtually nothing of Antha during the years 1930 to 1938, and it seems nobody in the family knew much of her either. But we can safely conclude that all the references to the “brown-haired man” apply to Lasher; and if this is the case, we have more sightings of Lasher during this period than for all the decades before.

Indeed, the sightings of Lasher are so numerous that our investigators got in the habit of merely jotting down notes such as “Maid working on Third Street says she saw Antha and the man walking together.” Or “Woman on First and Prytania saw Antha standing under the oak tree talking to the man.”

The First Street house had now taken on an air of sinister mystery even for the descendants of Rémy Mayfair and of Suzette’s brothers and sisters, who had once been quite close.

Then, in April of 1938, neighbors witnessed a violent family quarrel at First Street. Windows were broken, people heard screaming, and finally a distraught young woman, clutching only a shoulder bag of a purse, was seen running out the front gate and towards St. Charles Avenue. Without question it was Antha. Even the neighbors knew that much, and they watched from behind lace curtains as a police car pulled up only moments after and Carlotta went to the curb to confer with the two officers who drove off at once, siren screaming, apparently to catch the errant girl.

That night Mayfairs in New York received phone calls from Carlotta, informing them that Antha had run away from home and was headed for Manhattan. Would they help with the search? It was these New York cousins who told the family in New Orleans. Cousins called cousins. Within days Irwin Dandrich wrote to London that “poor little Antha” had made her bid for freedom. She had run off to New York City. But how far would she ever get?

As it turned out, Antha got quite far.

For months no one knew the whereabouts of Antha Mayfair. Police, private investigators, and family members failed to find a clue to Antha’s whereabouts. Carlotta made three separate train trips to New York during this period, and offered substantial rewards to anyone in the New York police department who could offer help in the search. She called on Amanda Grady Mayfair, who had only recently left her husband, Cortland, and actually threatened Amanda.

As Amanda told our “undercover” society investigator later, “It was simply dreadful. She asked me to meet her for lunch at the Waldorf. Well, of course I didn’t want to do it. Rather like going into a cage at the zoo to have lunch with a lion. But I knew she was all upset about Antha, and I suppose I wanted to give her a piece of my mind. I wanted to tell her that she had driven Antha away, that she never should have isolated that poor little girl from her uncles and aunts and cousins who loved her.

“But, as soon as I sat down at the table, she started to threaten me. ‘Let me tell you, Amanda, if you are harboring Antha I can make trouble for you that you won’t believe.’ I wanted to throw my drink in her face. I was furious. I said, ‘Carlotta Mayfair, don’t you ever talk to me again, don’t you ever call me, or write to me, or come to my home. I had enough of you in New Orleans. I had enough of what your family did to Pierce and to Cortland. Don’t you ever ever come near me again.’ I tell you the smoke was coming out of my ears when I left the Waldorf. But you know, it is a regular technique with Carlotta. She makes an accusation as soon as she sees you. She’s been doing it for years, really. That way, you don’t have a chance to make an accusation against her.”

In the winter of 1939, our investigators located Antha in a very simple way. Elaine Barrett, our witchcraft scholar, in a routine meeting with Evan Neville suggested that Antha must have financed her escape with the famous Mayfair jewels and gold coins. Why not try the shops in New York where such items could be