Did an even more scandalous and tragic story lie behind this fabrication? We were slow in putting the pieces together. Indeed, by the time we learned of the River Road car accident, the adoption of Deirdre's baby was already being legally arranged. By the time we learned that there had been no river road accident, the adoption was a fait accompli.
Later court records indicate that some time during August, Ellie Mayfair flew to New Orleans to sign adoption papers in the office of Carlotta Mayfair, though no one in the family seems to have known at the time that Ellie was there.
Graham Franklin, Ellie's husband, told one of his business associates years later that the adoption had been a real kettle of fish. "My wife stopped speaking to her grandfather altogether. He didn't want us to adopt Rowan. Fortunately the old bastard died before the baby was even born."
Father Lafferty told his aging sister in the Irish Channel that the whole thing was a nightmare, but that Ellie Mayfair was a good woman and she would take the child to California where it would have a chance at 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" had joked bitterly and sarcastically amongst themselves. "Sure, there's no man in that house," one of them said. "Nooooo, no man at all. Just those nice ladies."
"I've never seen a man there, have you?" And so on it went.
"Nope, no man at First Street. No sir!"
When cousins came to call on Deirdre, they were told pretty much the same story that Pierce had told at the funeral. Deirdre was too sick to see them. She hadn't even wanted to see Cortland, she was so sick. And she didn't know and mustn't know that Cortland was dead.
"And look at that dark stairs," said Millie Dear to Beatrice. "Cortland should have used the elevator. But he never would use the elevator. If he had just used the elevator, he would never have taken such a fall."
Family legend today indicates that everyone agreed the adoption was for the best. Cortland should have stayed out of it. As Ryan Mayfair, Cortland's grandson, said, "Poor Deirdre was no more fit to be a mother than the Madwoman of Chaillot. But I think my grandfather felt responsible. He had taken Deirdre to Texas. I think he blamed himself. He wanted to be sure she wanted to give up the baby. But maybe what Deirdre wanted wasn't the important thing."
At the time, I dreaded each new piece of news from Louisiana. I lay in bed at night in the Motherhouse thinking ceaselessly of Deirdre, wondering if there were not some way that we could discover what she truly wanted or felt. Scott Reynolds was more adamant than ever that we could not intervene further. Deirdre knew how to reach us. So did Cortland. So did Carlotta Mayfair, for what that was worth. There was nothing further that we could do.
Only in January of 1988, nearly thirty years later, did I learn in an interview with Deirdre's old school friend Rita Mae Dwyer Lonigan that Deirdre had tried desperately to reach me, and failed.
In 1959, Rita Mae had only just married Jerry Lonigan of Lonigan and Sons funeral home, and when she heard that Deirdre was at home, pregnant, and had already lost the father of her baby, Rita Mae screwed up her courage and went to call. As so many others have been, she was turned away at the door, but not before she saw Deirdre at the top of the stairs. Deirdre called out to Rita Mae desperately:
"Rita Mae, they're going to take my baby! Rita Mae, help me." As Miss Nancy sought to force Deirdre back up to the second floor, Deirdre threw a small white card down to Rita Mae. "Contact this man. Get him to help me. Tell him they're going to take my baby away."
Carlotta Mayfair physically attacked Rita Mae and tried to get the card away from her, but Rita, even though her hair was being pulled and her face scratched, held it tight as she ran through a hail of leaves out the gate.
When she got home she discovered the card was almost unreadable. Carlotta had torn part of it; and Rita had inadvertently clenched the little card in the moist palm of her hand. Only the word
Talamasca, and my name, handwritten on the back, could be made out.
Only in 1988, when I encountered Rita Mae at the funeral of Nancy Mayfair--and gave her a card identical to the one destroyed in 1959--did she recognize the names and call me at my hotel to report what she remembered from that long ago day.
It was heartbreaking to this investigator to learn of Deirdre's vain plea for help. It was heartbreaking to remember those nights thirty years before when I lay in bed in London thinking, "I cannot help her, but I have to try to help her. But how do I dare to do it? And how could I possibly succeed?"
The fact is I probably could not have done anything to help Deirdre, no matter how hard I might have tried. If Cortland couldn't stop the adoption, it is sensible to assume that I couldn't have stopped it either. Yet in my dreams I see myself taking Deirdre out of the First Street house to London. I see her a healthy normal woman today.
The reality is utterly different.