Rice, Anne - The Witching Hour

by Greyspid

  ‘Oh, excuse me,’ he said with a sudden look of surprise as though he had just remembered something. ‘A medicine I have to take, that is, if I can find it.’ He felt of his pockets, then drew something out of his coat. A small bottle of tablets. ‘What a nuisance,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Have you enjoyed your stay in New Orleans?’ He turned and asked for a glass of water. ‘Of course you’ve been to Texas to see my niece, I know that. But you’ve been touring the city as well, no doubt. What do you think of this garden here?’ He pointed to the courtyard behind him. ‘Quite a story about that garden. Did they tell you?’

  I turned in my chair and glanced over my shoulder at the garden. I saw the uneven flagstones, a weathered fountain, and beyond, in the shadows, a man standing before the fanlight door. Tall thin man, with the light behind him. Faceless. Motionless. The chill which ran down my back was almost delicious. I continued to look at the man, and slowly the figure melted completely away.

  I waited for a draft of warm air, but I felt nothing. Perhaps I was too far from the being. Or perhaps I was altogether wrong about who or what it had been.

  It seemed an age passed. Then, as I turned around, Cortland said, ‘A woman committed suicide in that little garden. They say that the fountain turns red with her blood once a year.’

  ‘Charming,’ I said under my breath. I watched him lift his glass of water and drink half the contents. Was he swallowing his tablets? The little bottle had disappeared. I glanced at my bourbon and water. I would not have touched it for anything in this world. I looked absently at my pen, lying there beside my diary, and then placed it in my pocket. I was so utterly absorbed in everything that I saw and heard that I felt not the slightest urge to speak a word.

  ‘Well, then, Mr Lightner, let’s get to the point.’ Again that smile, that radiant smile.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. What was I feeling? I was curiously excited. I was sitting here with Julien’s son, Cortland, and he had just slipped a drug, no doubt lethal, into my drink. He thought he was going to get away with this. The whole dark history glittered suddenly in my mind. I was in it. I wasn’t reading about it in England. I was here.

  Perhaps I smiled at him. I knew that a crushing misery would follow this curious peak of emotion. The damned son of a bitch was trying to kill me.

  ‘I’ve looked into this matter, the Talamasca, etcetera,’ he said in a bright, artificial voice. ‘There’s nothing we can do about you people. We can’t force you to disclose your information about our family because apparently it’s entirely private, and not intended for publication or for any malicious use. We can’t force you to stop collecting it either as long as you break no laws.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose that’s all true.’

  ‘However we can make you and your representatives uncomfortable, very uncomfortable; and we can make it legally impossible for you to come within so many feet of us and our property. But that would be costly to us, and wouldn’t really stop you, at least not if you are what you say you are.’

  He paused, took a draw off his thin dark cigarette, and glanced at the bourbon and water. ‘Did I order the wrong drink for you, Mr Lightner:

  ‘You didn’t order any drink,’ I said. ‘The waiter brought another of what I had been drinking all afternoon. I should have stopped you. I’ve had quite enough.’

  His eyes hardened for a moment as he looked at me. In fact, his mask of a smile vanished completely. And in a moment of blankness and lack of contrivance he looked almost young.

  ‘You shouldn’t have made that trip to Texas, Mr Lightner,’ he said coldly. ‘You should never have upset my niece.’

  ‘I agree with you. I shouldn’t have upset her. I was concerned about her. I wanted to offer my help.’

  ‘That’s very presumptuous of you, you and your London friends.’ Touch of anger. Or was it simply annoyance that I wasn’t going to drink the bourbon. I looked at him for a long moment, my mind emptying itself until there was no sound intruding, no movement, no color — only his face there, and a small voice in my head telling me what I wanted to know.

  ‘Yes, it is presumptuous, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘But you see, it was our representative Petyr van Abel who was the father of Charlotte May-fair, born in France in 1664. When he later journeyed to Saint-Domingue to see his daughter, he was imprisoned by her. And before your spirit, Lasher, drove him to his death on a lonely road outside of Port-au-Prince, he coupled with his own daughter Charlotte, and thereby became the father of her daughter, Jeanne Louise. That means he was grandfather of Angelique and the great-grandfather of Marie Claudette, who built Riverbend, and created the legacy which you administer for Deirdre now. Do you follow my tale?’

  Clearly he was utterly incapable of a response. He sat still looking at me, the cigarette smoking in his hand. I caught no emanation of malice or anger. Watching him keenly, I went on:

  ‘Your ancestors are the descendants of our representative, Petyr van Abel. We are linked, the Mayfair Witches and the Talamasca. And then there are other matters which bring us together after all these years. Stuart Townsend, our representative who disappeared here in New Orleans after he visited Stella in 1929. Do you remember Stuart Townsend? The case of his disappearance was never solved.’

  ‘You are mad, Mr Lightner,’ he said with no perceptible change of expression. He drew on his cigarette and crushed it out though it was not half spent.

  ‘That spirit of yours, Lasher — he killed Petyr van Abel,’ I said calmly. ‘Was it Lasher whom I saw only a moment ago? Over there?’ I gestured to the distant garden. ‘He is driving your niece out of her mind, isn’t he?’ I asked.

  A remarkable change had now come over Cortland. His face, beautifully framed by his dark hair, looked totally innocent in its bewilderment.

  ‘You’re perfectly serious, aren’t you?’ he asked. These were the first honest words he’d spoken since he came into the bar.

  ‘Of course I am,’ I said. ‘Why would I try to deceive people who can read other people’s thoughts? That would be stupid, wouldn’t it?’ I looked at the glass. ‘Rather like you expecting me to drink this bourbon and succumb to the drug you put into it, the way Stuart Townsend did, or Cornell Mayfair after that.’

  He tried to shroud his shock behind a blank, dull look. ‘You are making a very serious accusation,’ he said under his breath.

  ‘All this time, I thought it was Carlotta. It was never Carlotta, was it? It was you.’

  ‘Who cares what you think!’ he whispered. ‘How dare you say such things to me.’ Then he checked his anger. He shifted slightly in his chair, his eyes holding me as he opened the cigarette case and withdrew another cigarette. His whole demeanor changed suddenly to one of honest inquiry. ‘What the hell do you want, Mr Lightner!’ he asked, dropping his voice earnestly. ‘Seriously now, sir, what do you want?’

  I reflected for a moment. I had been asking myself this very question for weeks on end. What did I mean to accomplish when I went to New Orleans? What did we, and what did I really want?

  ‘We want to know you!’ I said, rather surprised myself to hear it come out. ‘To know you because we know so much about you and yet we don’t know anything at all. We want to tell you what we know about you - all the bits and pieces of information we’ve collected, what we know about the deep past! We want to tell you all we know about the whole mystery of who you are and what he is. And we wish you would talk to us. We wish you would trust us and let us in! And lastly, we want to reach out to Deirdre Mayfair and say, "There are others like you, others who see spirits. We know you’re suffering, and we can help you. You aren’t alone."’

  He studied me, eyes seemingly open, his face quite beyond dissembling. Then pulling back and glancing away, he tapped off the ash of his cigarette and motioned for another drink.

  ‘Why don’t you drink the bourbon?’ I asked. T haven’t touched it.’ Again, I had surprised myself. But I let the question stand.

  He looked at me. ‘I don’t like bourbon,�
� he said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What did you put in it?’ I asked.

  He shrank back into his thoughts. He appeared just a little miserable. He watched as the boy set down his drink. Sherry as before, in a crystal glass.

  ‘This is true,’ he asked, looking up at me, ’what you wrote in your letter, about the portrait of Deborah Mayfair in Amsterdam?’

  I nodded. ‘We have portraits of Charlotte, Jeanne Louise, An-gelique, Marie Claudette, Marguerite, Katherine, Mary Beth, Julien, Stella, Antha, and Deirdre…’

  He made a sudden impatient motion for me to stop.

  ‘Look, I came here because of Deirdre,’ I said. ‘I came because she’s going mad. The girl I spoke to in Texas is on the edge of breakdown.’

  ‘Do you think you helped her?’

  ‘No, and I deeply regret that I didn’t. If you don’t want contact with us, I understand. Why the hell should you? But we can help Deirdre. We really can.’

  No answer. He drank the sherry. I tried to see this from his point of view. I couldn’t. I’d never tried to poison someone. I didn’t have the faintest idea of who he really was. The man I’d known in the history wasn’t this man.

  ‘Would your father, Julien, have spoken to me?’ I asked.

  ‘Not a chance of it,’ he said, looking up as though awakening from his thoughts. For a moment he looked deeply distressed. ‘But don’t you know from all your observations,’ he asked, ‘that he was one of them!’ Again, he seemed completely earnest, his eyes searching my face as if to assure himself that I was earnest too

  ‘And you’re not one of them?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he said with great quiet emphasis, slowly shaking his head. ‘Not really. Not ever!’ He looked sad suddenly, and when he did he looked old. ‘Look, spy on us if you wish. Treat us as if we were a royal family…’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘You’re historians, that’s what my contacts in London tell me. Historians, scholars, utterly harmless, completely respectable…"

  ‘I’m honored.’

  ‘But leave my niece alone. My niece has a chance for happiness now. And this thing must come to an end, you see. It must. And perhaps she can see to it that it does.’

  ‘Is she one of them ?!’ I asked, echoing his early intonation.

  ‘Of course she isn’t!’ he said ‘That’s just the point! There is no one of them now! Don’t you see that? What’s been the theme of your study of us? Haven’t you seen the disintegration of the power? Stella wasn’t one of them either! The last one was Mary Beth. Julien - my father, that is — and then Mary Beth.’

  ‘I’ve seen it. But what about your spectral friend? Will he allow it to come to a finish?’

  ‘You believe in him?’ He cocked his head with a faint smile, his dark eyes creasing at the edges with silent laughter. ‘Really, now, Mr Lightner? Do you believe in Lasher yourself!’

  ‘I saw him,’ I said simply

  ‘Imagination, sir. My niece told me it was a very dark garden.’

  ‘Oh, please. Have we come this far to say such things to each other? I saw him, Cortland. He smiled when I saw him. He made himself very substantial and vivid indeed.’

  Cortland’s smile became smaller, more ironic. He raised his eyebrows and gave a little sigh. ‘Oh, he would like your choice of words, Mr Lightner.’

  ‘Can Deirdre make him go away and leave her alone?’

  ‘Of course she can’t. But she can ignore him She can live her life as if he weren’t there. Antha couldn’t Stella didn’t want to But Deirdre’s stronger than Antha, and stronger than Stella too. Deirdre has a lot of Mary Beth in her. That’s what the others often don’t realize —’ He appeared to catch himself suddenly in the act of saying more than he had ever intended to say

  He stared at me for a long moment, and then he gathered up his cigarette case and his lighter and slowly rose to his feet.

  ‘Don’t go yet,’ I said, imploringly

  ‘Send me your history. Send it to me and I’ll read it. And then maybe we can talk again. But don’t ever approach my niece again, Mr Lightner. Understand that I would do anything to protect her from those who mean to exploit her or hurt her Anything at all!’

  He turned to go.

  ‘What about the drink?’ I asked, rising. I gestured to the bourbon. ‘Suppose I call the police and I offer the contaminated drink in evidence?’

  ‘Mr Lightner. This is New Orleans!’ He smiled and winked at me in the most charming fashion. ‘Now please, go home to your watchtower and your telescope and gaze at us from afar!’

  I watched him leave. He walked gracefully with very long, easy steps. He glanced back when he reached the doorway and gave me a quick, agreeable wave of his hand.

  I sat down, ignoring the drugged bourbon, and wrote an account of the whole affair in my diary. I then took a small bottle of aspirin out of my pocket, emptied out the tablets, and poured some of the drugged bourbon into it, and capped it and put it away.

  I was about to collect my diary and pen and make for the stairs when I looked up and saw the bellhop standing in the lobby just beyond the door. He came forward. ‘Your bags are ready, Mr Lightner Your car is here ’ Bright, agreeable face. Nobody had told him he was personally throwing me out of town.

  ‘Is that so?’ I said. ‘Well, and you packed everything?’ I surveyed the two bags. My diary I had with me, of course. I went into the lobby. I could see a large old black limousine stopping up the narrow French Quarter street like a giant cork. ‘That’s my car?’

  ‘Yes sir, Mr Cortland said to see you made the ten o’clock flight to New York. Said he’d have someone meet you at the airport with the ticket. You ought to have plenty of time.’

  ‘Isn’t that thoughtful?’ I fished into my pocket for a couple of bills, but the boy refused them.

  ‘Mr Cortland’s taken care of everything, sir. You’d better hurry. You don’t want to miss your plane.’

  ‘That’s true. But I have a superstition about big black cars. Get me a taxi, and do take this for it, please.’

  The taxi took me not to the airport but to the train. I managed to get a sleeper for St Louis, and went on to New York from there. When I spoke to Scott he was adamant. This data required a reevalu-ation. Don’t do any more research in New York. Come home.

  Halfway across the Atlantic, I became ill. By the time I reached London I was running a high fever. An ambulance was waiting to take me to hospital, and Scott was there to ride with me. I was going in and out of consciousness. ‘Look for poison,’ I said.

  Those were my last words for eight hours. When I finally came around, I was still feverish and uncomfortable, but much reassured to be alive and to discover Scott and two other good friends in the room.

  ‘You’ve been poisoned all right, but the worst is over. Can you remember your last drink before you boarded the plane?’

  ‘That woman,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I was in the bar at the New York airport, had a Scotch and soda. She was stumbling alone with an impossible bag, then asked me if I’d fetch the skycap for her. She was coughing as if she were tubercular. Very unhealthy-looking creature. She sat at my table while I went for the skycap. Probably a hireling, off the streets.’

  ‘She slipped you a poison called ricin; it’s from the castor bean. Very powerful, and extremely common. Same thing Cortland put in your bourbon. You’re out of the woods, but you’re going to be sick for two more days.’

  ‘Good Lord.’ My stomach was cramping again.

  ‘They aren’t ever going to talk to us, Aaron,’ Scott said. ‘How could they? They kill people. It’s over. At least for now.’

  ‘They always killed people, Scott,’ I said weakly. ‘But Deirdre Mayfair doesn’t kill people. I want my diary." The cramps became unbearable. The doctor came in and started to prepare me for an injection. I refused.

  ‘Aaron, he’s the head of toxicology here, impeccable reputation. We’ve checked out the nurses. Our p
eople are here in the room.’

  It was the end of the week before I could return to the Motherhouse. I could scarcely bring myself to take any nourishment. I was convinced the entire Motherhouse might soon be poisoned. What was to stop them from hiring people to put commonplace toxins in our food? The food might be poisoned before it even reached our kitchen.

  And though no such thing happened, it was a year before such thoughts left me, so shaken was I by what had occurred.

  A great deal of shocking news came to us from New Orleans during that year…

  During my convalescence I reviewed the entire Mayfair history. I revised some of it, including the testimony of Richard Llewellyn, and a few other persons I’d seen before I went to Texas to see Deirdre.

  I concluded that Cortland had done away with Stuart, and probably with Cornell. It all made sense. Yet so many mysteries remained. What was Cortland protecting when he committed these crimes? And why was he engaged in constant battle with Carlotta?

  We had in the meantime heard from Carlotta Mayfair - a barrage of threatening legal letters from her law firm to ours in London, demanding that we ’cease and desist’ with our ’invasion’ of her privacy, that we make ’full disclosure’ of any personal information we had obtained about her and her family,’that we restrict ourselves to a safe distance of one hundred yards from any person in her family, and any piece of family property, and that we make no effort whatsoever to contact in any way shape or form, Deirdre Mayfair,’ et cetera, and so forth and so on ad nauseam, none of these legal threats or demands having the slightest validity.

  Our legal representatives were instructed to make no response.

  We discussed the matter with the full council.

  Once again, we had tried to make contact and we had been pushed back. We would continue to investigate, and for this purpose I might have a carte blanche, but no one was going near the family in the foreseeable future. ‘If ever again,’ Reynolds added with great emphasis.