The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,361

a new life. All of Cortland’s grandchildren approved of the decision. It was only Cortland who was carrying on. “That girl can’t keep that baby. She’s crazy,” said the old priest. He sat at his sister’s kitchen table, eating his red beans and rice and drinking his small glass of beer. “I mean it, she’s crazy. It’s just got to be done.”

“It won’t work,” the old woman later told our representative. “You can’t escape a family curse by moving away.”

Miss Millie and Miss Belle bought beautiful bed jackets and nightgowns for Deirdre at Gus Mayer. The salesgirls asked about “poor Deirdre.”

“Oh, she is doing the best she can,” said Miss Millie. “It was a terrible, terrible thing.” Miss Belle told a woman at the chapel that Deirdre was having those “bad spells again.”

“She doesn’t even know where she is half the time!” said a grumpy Nancy, who was sweeping the walk when one of the Garden District matrons passed the gate.

What did happen behind the scenes all those months at First Street? We pressed our investigators to find out everything that they could. Only one person of whom we know saw Deirdre during the last months of her “confinement”—to use the old-fashioned term for it, which in this instance may be the correct one—but we did not interview that person until 1988.

At the time, the attending physician came and went in silence. So did the nurse who assisted Deirdre for eight hours each day.

Father Lafferty said the girl was resigned to the adoption. Beatrice Mayfair was told she couldn’t see Deirdre when she came to call, but she had a glass of wine with Millie Dear, who said the whole thing was heartbreaking indeed.

But by October 1, Cortland was desperate with worry over the situation. His secretaries report that he made continuous calls to Carlotta, that he took a taxi to First Street and was turned away over and over again. Finally on the afternoon of October 20, he told his secretary he would get into that house and see his niece even if he had to break down the door.

At five o’clock that afternoon a neighbor spotted Cortland sitting on the curbstone at First and Chestnut Streets, his clothes disheveled and blood flowing from a cut on his head.

“Get me an ambulance,” he said. “He pushed me down the stairs!”

Though the neighbor woman sat with him until the ambulance arrived, he would say nothing more. He was rushed from First Street to nearby Touro Infirmary. The intern on duty quickly ascertained that Cortland was covered with severe bruises, that his wrist was broken, and that he was bleeding from the mouth. “This man has internal injuries,” he said. He called for immediate assistance.

Cortland then grabbed the intern’s hand and told him to listen, that it was very important that he help Deirdre Mayfair, who was being held prisoner in her own home. “They’re taking her baby away from her against her will. Help her!” Then Cortland died.

A superficial postmortem indicated massive internal bleeding and severe blows to the head. When the young intern pressed for some sort of police investigation, Cortland’s sons immediately quieted him. They had talked to their cousin Carlotta Mayfair. Their father fell down the steps and then refused medical assistance, leaving the house on his own. Carlotta had never dreamed he was so badly hurt. She had not known he was sitting on the curb. She was beside herself with grief. The neighbor should have rung the bell.

At Cortland’s funeral—a huge affair out in Metairie—the family was told the same story. While Miss Belle and Miss Millie sat quietly in the background, Cortland’s son, Pierce, told everyone that Cortland had been confused when he made some vague statement to the neighbor about a man pushing him down the steps. In fact there had been no man in the First Street house who could have done such a thing. Carlotta herself saw him fall. So did Nancy, who rushed to try to catch him, but failed.

As for the adoption, Pierce was firmly behind it. His niece Ellie would give the baby exactly the environment it needed to have every chance. It was tragic that Cortland had been against the adoption, but Cortland had been eighty years old. His judgment had been impaired for some time.

The funeral proceeded, grandly and without incident, though the undertaker remembered years later that several of the cousins, older men, standing in the very rear of the room during Pierce’s “little speech”