The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

Through the veil of small talk, he studied these women, trying to fathom what lay behind their restrained smiles. Nancy was the drudge, Millie the scatterbrain, old Miss Belle almost senile. And Carl? Carl was everything they said she was--the clever one, the business lady, the lawyer. They talked of politics, corruption in the city, of rising prices and changing times. But not on that visit or any other did she speak the names Antha, Stella, Mary Beth, Lionel. In fact there was no talk anymore of history, and he could not bring himself to broach the subject, not even to ask a simple question about a single object in the room.

Leaving the house, he glanced at the flagstone patio overgrown with weeds. Head split open like a watermelon. Going down the street he looked back at the attic windows. All covered with the vines, they were now, shutters askew.

That was his last visit, he told himself. Let Father Lafferty take care of it. Let no one take care of it.

But his sense of failure deepened as the years passed.

When she was ten years old Deirdre Mayfair ran away from home and was found two days later walking along the Bayou St. John in the rain, her clothes soaking wet. Then it was another boarding school somewhere--County Cork, Ireland, and then she was home again. The sisters said she'd had nightmares, walked in her sleep, said strange things.

Then came word that Deirdre was in California. The Mayfairs had cousins out there to look after her. Maybe the change of climate would do some good.

Father Mattingly knew now that he would never get the sound of that child's crying out of his head. Why in God's name had he not tried another tack with her? He prayed she told some wise teacher or doctor the things she'd told him, that somebody somewhere would help her as Father Mattingly had failed to do.

He could never recall hearing when Deirdre came back from California. Only some time in '56, he knew she was in boarding school downtown at St. Rose de Lima's. Then came the gossip she'd been expelled and run away to New York.

Miss Kellerman told Father Lafferty everything on the church steps one afternoon. She'd heard it from her maid who knew the "colored girl" that sometimes helped in that house. Deirdre had found her mother's short stories in a trunk in the attic, "all that nonsense about Greenwich Village." Deirdre had run off to find her father, though nobody knew if the man was alive or dead.

It had ended with her commitment to Bellevue, and Miss Carlotta had flown to New York to bring Deirdre back.

Then one afternoon in the summer of 1959, over a kitchen table, Father Mattingly heard of the "scandal." Deirdre Mayfair was pregnant at eighteen. She had dropped out of classes at a college in Texas. And the father? One of her own professors, would you believe, and a married man and a Protestant too. And he was getting a divorce from his wife of ten years to marry Deirdre!

It seemed the whole parish was talking about it. Miss Carlotta had washed her hands of the whole thing, they said, but Miss Nancy had taken Deirdre to Gus Mayer to buy her a nice pretty dress for the city hall wedding. Deirdre was a beautiful girl now, beautiful as Antha and Stella had been. Beautiful they said as Miss Mary Beth.

Father Mattingly remembered only that frightened, white-faced child. Flowers crushed under foot.

The marriage was never to take place.

When Deirdre was in her fifth month, the father was killed on his way to New Orleans. Car crash on the river road. The tie rod had broken on his old '52 Ford, the car had gone out of control and hit an oak, exploding instantly.

Then wandering through the crowds of the church bazaar on a hot July evening, Father Mattingly was to hear the strangest story of the Mayfairs yet, one that would haunt him in years to come as did the confession.

Lights were strung across the asphalt yard. Parishioners in shirtsleeves and cotton dresses strolled from one wooden booth to another, playing the games of chance. Win a chocolate cake on a nickel bet when the wheel spins. Win a teddy bear. The asphalt was soft in the heat. The beer flowed at the makeshift bar of boards set upon barrels. And it seemed that everywhere Father Mattingly turned he caught some whisper of the goings-on at the Mayfair house.

Gray-headed Red Lonigan, the senior member of the undertaker family, was listening to Dave Collins tell him that they had Deirdre locked up in her room. Father Lafferty sat there staring sullenly over his beer at Dave. Dave said he'd known the Mayfairs longer than anybody, even longer than Red.

Father Mattingly got a cold bottle of Jax from the bar and took his place on the bench at the end.

Dave Collins was now in his glory with two priests in the audience.

"I was born in 1901, Father!" he declared, though Father Mattingly did not even look up. "Same year as Stella Mayfair, and I remember when they kicked Stella out of the Ursuline Academy uptown and Miss Mary Beth sent her to school down here."

"Too much gossip about that family," Red said gloomily.

"Stella was a voodoo queen, all right," Dave said. "Everybody knew it. But you can forget about the penny-ante charms and spells. They wasn't for Stella. Stella had a purse of gold coins that was never empty."

Red laughed sadly under his breath. "All she ever had in the end was bad luck."

"Well, she crammed in a lot of living before Lionel shot her," Dave said, narrowing his eyes and leaning forward on his right arm, his left hand locked to the beer bottle. "And no sooner was she dead and gone than that purse turned up right beside Antha's bed and no matter where they hid it, it always came back again."

"In a pig's eye," said Red.

"There was coins from all over the world in that purse--Italian coins and French coins and Spanish coins."

"And how would you know?" Red asked.

"Father Lafferty's seen it, ain't you, Father? You've seen them coins. Miss Mary Beth used to throw them in the collection basket every Sunday, you know she done it. And you knew what she always said. 'Spend them fast, Father, get them out of your hands before sundown, because they always come back.' "

"What are you talking about!" Red scoffed.

Father Lafferty said nothing. His small black eyes moved from Dave to Red. Then he glanced at Father Mattingly, who sat opposite him.

"What do you mean, they came back?" Father Mattingly asked.

"Back to her purse is what she meant!" Dave said arching his eyebrows. He took a long pull off his bottle. Nothing but foam left. "She could give them away forever, and they always came back." He laughed hoarsely. There was the sound of phlegm in his voice. "She said the same thing to my mother fifty years ago when she paid her for doing the washing, that's right, the washing--my mother did the washing in a lot of them big houses, and she was never ashamed of it neither, and Miss Mary Beth always paid her in them coins."

"In a pig's eye," Red said.

"And I'll tell you something else too," Dave said, leaning forward on his elbow, his eyes narrow as he peered at Red Lonigan. "The house, the jewels, the purse, it's all connected. Same with the name Mayfair and the way they always keep it, no matter who they marry. Always Mayfair in the end. And you want to know the reason? They're witches, those women! Every one."

Red shook his head. He pushed his full beer bottle towards Dave and watched as Dave wrapped his fingers around it.

"It's the God's truth, I'm telling you. It come down to them through the generations, the power of witchcraft, and back in them days there was plenty talk of it. Miss Mary Beth, she was more powerful than Stella." He took a big swallow of Red's beer. "And smart enough to keep her mouth shut which Stella was not."

"Then how did you hear about it?" Red asked.

Dave took out his little white sack of Bull Durham tobacco and pressed it flat between fingers and thumb.

"You wouldn't have a ready-made, would you, Father?" he asked Father Mattingly.

Red sneered. Father Mattingly gave Dave his pack of Pall Malls.