THE FILE ON THE MAYFAIR WITCHES

PART VII

The Disappearance of Stuart Townsend

In 1929, Stuart Townsend, who had been studying the Mayfair materials for years, petitioned the council in London to allow him to attempt contact with the Mayfair family.

He felt strongly that Stella’s cryptic message to us on the back of the photograph meant that she wanted such contact.

And Stuart was also convinced that the last three Mayfair Witches—Julien, Mary Beth, and Stella—were not murderers or evildoers in any sense; that it would be entirely safe to contact them, and that, indeed, “wonderful things” might result.

This forced the council to take a hard look at the entire question, and also to reexamine, as it does constantly, the aims and standards of the Talamasca.

Though an immense body of written material exists in our archives as to our aims and standards, as to what we find acceptable and unacceptable, and though this is a constant topic of conversation at our council meetings worldwide, let me summarize for the purposes of this narrative the issues which are relevant here, all of which were raised by Stuart Townsend in 1929.

First and foremost: We had created in the File on the Mayfair Witches an impressive and valuable history of a psychic family. We had proved to ourselves beyond a doubt that the Mayfairs had contact with the realm of the invisible, and that they could manipulate unseen forces to their advantage. But there were still many things about what they did that we did not know.

What if they could be persuaded to talk to us, to share our secrets? What might we then learn?

Stella was not the secretive or guarded person that Mary Beth had been. Maybe, if she could be convinced of our discretion and our scholarly purpose, she would reveal things to us. Possibly Cortland Mayfair would talk to us too.

Second and perhaps less important: Certainly we had over the years violated the privacy of the Mayfair family with our vigilance. We had, according to Stuart, “snooped” into every aspect of their lives. Indeed we had studied these people as specimens, and again and again, we justify the lengths to which we go by arguing that we will, and do, make our records available to those we study.

Well, we had not done that with the Mayfairs ever. And perhaps there was no excuse for not trying now.

Third: We existed in an absolutely unique relationship to the Mayfairs because the blood of Petyr van Abel, our brother, ran in their veins. They were “related” to us, one might say. Should we not seek to make contact merely to tell them about this ancestor? And who knows what would follow from there?

Fourth: Could we do some real good by making contact? And here of course we come to one of our highest purposes. Could the reckless Stella benefit from knowing about other people like herself? Would she not enjoy knowing there were people who studied such persons, with a view to understanding the realm of the invisible? In other words, would Stella not like to talk to us, and not like to know what we knew about the psychic world at large?

Stuart argued vociferously that we were obligated to make contact. He also raised the pertinent question: what did Stella already know? He also insisted that Stella needed us, that the entire Mayfair clan needed us, that little Antha in particular needed us, and it was time that we introduced ourselves and offered what we knew.

The council considered everything that Stuart had to say; it considered what it knew of the Mayfair Witches, and it concluded that the good reasons for making contact far outweighed any bad reasons. It dismissed out of hand the idea of danger. And it told Stuart that he might go to America and he might make contact with Stella.

In a welter of excitement, Stuart sailed for New York the very next day. The Talamasca received two letters from him postmarked New York. He wrote again when he reached New Orleans, on stationery from the St. Charles Hotel, saying that he had contacted Stella and indeed had found her extremely receptive, and that he was going to meet her for lunch the next day.

Stuart Townsend was never seen or heard from again. We do not know where or when or even if his life ended. We simply know that sometime in June of 1929 he vanished without a trace.

When one looks back upon these council meetings, when one reads over the transcript, it is very easy to see that the Talamasca made a tragic mistake. Stuart was not really prepared for this mission. A narrative should have been written embracing all the materials, so that the Mayfair history could be seen as a whole. Also the question of danger should have been more carefully evaluated. Throughout the anecdotal history of the Mayfairs there are references to violence being done to the enemies of the Mayfair Witches.

But in all fairness, it must be admitted that there were no such stories associated with Stella or her generation. And certainly no such stories in relationship to other contemporary residents of the First Street house. (The exceptions, of course, are the playground stories concerning Stella and Antha. They were accused of using their invisible friend to hurt other little children. But there is nothing comparable about Stella as an adult.)

Also the full story of Antha’s nurse who died of a fall in Rome was not then known to the Talamasca. And it is possible that Stuart knew nothing about this incident at all.

Nevertheless Stuart was not fully prepared for such a mission. And when one reviews his comments to the council and to other members it becomes obvious that Stuart had fallen in love with Stella Mayfair. He had fallen in love with her under the very worst circumstances—that is, he had fallen in love with her image in her photographs, and with the Stella who emerged from people’s descriptions of her. She had become a myth to him. And so, full of zeal and romance, he went to meet her, dazzled not only by her powers but by her proverbial charms.

It is also obvious to anyone who considers this case dispassionately that Stuart was not the best person for this mission, for a number of reasons.

And before we go with Stuart to New Orleans, allow us to explain briefly who Stuart was. A full file on Stuart exists in the archives, and it is certainly worth reading in its own right. For some twenty-five years, he was a devoted and conscientious member of the order and his investigations of cases of possession cover some one hundred and fourteen different files.

THE LIFE OF STUART TOWNSEND How much of Stuart’s life is relevant to what happened to him, or to the story of the Mayfair Witches, I cannot say. I know that I am including more of it here than I need to include. And especially in view of what little I say of Arthur Langtry, I must explain.

I think I have included this material here as some sort of memorial to Stuart, and as some sort of warning. Be that as it may .…

Stuart came to the attention of the order when he was twenty-two years old. Our offices in London received from one of its many investigators in America a small newspaper article about Stuart Townsend, or “The Boy Who Had Been Somebody Else for Ten Years.”

Stuart had been born in a small town in Texas in the year 1895. His father was the local doctor, a deeply intellectual and widely respected man. Stuart’s mother was from a well-to-do family, and engaged in charity work of the fashionable sort for a lady of her position, having two nurses for her seven children, of which Stuart was the firstborn. They lived in a large white Victorian house with a widow’s walk, on the town’s one and only fashionable street.

Stuart went to boarding school in New England when he was six years old. He was from the beginning an exceptional student, and during his summer vacations home, he was something of a recluse, reading in his attic bedroom until late in the night. He did have a number of friends, however, among the town’s small but vigorous aristocracy—sons and daughters of city officials, lawyers, and well-to-do ranchers; and he seems to have been well liked.

When he was ten years old Stuart came down with a serious fever which could not be diagnosed. His father concluded finally that it was of infectious origin, but no real explanation was ever found. Stuart went into a crisis during which he was delirious for two days.

When he recovered, he wasn’t Stuart. He was somebody else. This somebody else claimed to be a young woman named Antoinette Fielding who spoke with a French accent and played the piano beautifully, and seemed generally confused about how old she was, where she lived, or what she was doing in Stuart’s house.

Stuart himself did know some French; but he did not know how to play the piano. And when he sat down at the dusty grand in the parlor and began to play Chopin the family thought they were losing their minds.

As for his believing he was a girl, and crying miserably when he saw his reflection in a mirror, his mother could not endure this and actually ran from the room. After about a week of hysterical and melancholic behavior, Stuart-Antoinette was persuaded to stop asking for dresses, to accept the fact that she had a boy’s body now, and to believe that she was Stuart Townsend, and get back to doing what Stuart was expected to do.

However, any return to school was out of the question. And Stuart-Antoinette, who became known to the family as Tony for the sake of simplicity, spent his or her days playing the piano endlessly and scribbling out memories in a huge diary as she-he tried to solve the mystery of who she was.

As Dr. Townsend perused these scribbled recollections he perceived that the French in which they were written was far beyond the level of expertise which ten-year-old Stuart had attained. He also began to realize that the child’s memories were all of Paris, and of Paris in the 1840s, as direct references to operas and plays and modes of transportation clearly showed.

It emerged from these written documents that Antoinette Fielding had been of English-French parentage, that her Frenchman father had not married her English mother—Louisa Fielding—and that she had lived a strange and reclusive life in Paris, the pampered daughter of a high-class prostitute who sought to protect her only child from the filth of the streets. Her great gift and consolation was her music.

Dr. Townsend, enthralled, and reassuring his wife that they would get to the bottom of this mystery, began an investigation by mail with a view to discovering whether or not this person Antoinette Fielding had ever existed in Paris.

This occupied him for some five years.

During that time, “Antoinette” remained in Stuart’s body, playing the piano obsessively, venturing out only to get lost or into some dreadful scrape with the local toughs. At last Antoinette never left the house, and became something of a hysterical invalid, demanding that meals be left at her door, and going down to play the piano only at night.

Finally, through a private detective in Paris, Dr. Townsend ascertained that a certain Louisa Fielding had been murdered in Paris in 1865. She was indeed a prostitute, but there was no record whatsoever of her having a child. And at last Dr. Townsend came to a dead end. He was by this time weary of trying to solve the mystery. And he came to terms with the situation as best he could.

His handsome young son Stuart was gone forever, and in his place was a wasted, warped invalid, a white-faced boy with burning eyes and a strange sexless voice, who lived now entirely behind closed blinds. The doctor and his wife grew used to hearing the nocturnal concerts. Every now and then the doctor went up to speak to the pale-faced “feminine” creature who lived in the attic. He could not help but note a mental deterioration. The creature could no longer remember much of “her past.” Nevertheless they conversed pleasantly in French or in English for a little while; then the emaciated and distracted young person would turn to his books as if the father weren’t there, and the father would go away.

It is interesting to note that no one ever discussed the possibility that Stuart was “possessed.” The doctor was an atheist; the children were taken to the Methodist church. The family knew nothing of Catholics or Catholic rites of exorcism, or the Catholic belief in demons or possession. And as far as we know the local minister, whom the family did not like, was never personally consulted as to the case.

This situation continued until Stuart was twenty years old. Then one night he fell down the steps, suffering a severe concussion. The doctor, half awake and waiting for the inevitable music to rise from the parlor, discovered his son unconscious in the hallway and rushed him to the local hospital, where Stuart lay in a coma for two weeks.

When he woke up, he was Stuart. He had absolutely no recollection of ever having been anyone else. Indeed, he believed he was ten years old, and when he heard a manly voice issuing from his own throat, he was horrified. When he discovered he had a grown man’s body, he was speechless with shock.

Dumbfounded he sat in his hospital bed listening to stories of what had been happening to him for the last ten years. Of course he did not understand French. He’d had a terrible time with it in school. And of course he couldn’t play the piano. Why, everybody knew he had no musical ability. He could not even carry a tune.

In the next few weeks, he sat staring at the dinner table at his “enormous” brothers and sisters, at his now gray-haired father, and at his mother, who could not look at him without bursting into tears. Telephones and automobiles—which had hardly existed in 1905 when he had ceased to be Stuart—startled him endlessly. Electric lights filled him with insecurity. But the keenest source of agony was his own adult body. And the ever deepening realization that his childhood and adolescence were now gone without a trace.

Then he began to confront the inevitable problems. He was twenty with the emotions and education of a ten-year-old boy. He began to gain weight; his color improved; he went riding on the nearby ranches with his old friends. Tutors were hired to educate him; he read the newspapers and the national magazines by the hour. He took long walks during which he practiced moving and thinking like an adult.

But he lived in a perpetual state of anxiety. He was passionately attracted to women, but did not know how to deal with this attraction. His feelings were easily hurt. As a man he felt hopelessly inadequate. At last he began to quarrel with everyone, and discovering that he could drink with impunity, he began to “hit the bottle” in the local saloons.

Soon the whole town knew the story. Some people remembered the first “go round” when Antoinette had been born. Others only heard the whole tale in retrospect. Whatever the case, there was ceaseless talk. And though the local paper never, out of deference to the doctor, made mention of this bizarre story, a reporter from Dallas, Texas, got wind of it from several sources, and without the family’s cooperation, wrote a long article on it which appeared in the Sunday edition of a Dallas paper in 1915. Other papers picked up this story. It was eventually forwarded to us in London about two months after it appeared.

Meantime curiosity seekers descended upon Stuart. A local author wanted to write a novel about him. Representatives from national magazines rang the front door bell. The family was up in arms. Stuart was once again driven indoors, and sat brooding in the attic room, staring at the treasured possessions of this strange person Antoinette, and feeling that ten years of his life had been stolen from him, and he was now a hopeless misfit, driven to antagonizing everyone he knew.

No doubt the family received a great deal of unwelcome mail. On the other hand, communication in that day and age was not what it is now. Whatever the case, a package from the Talamasca reached Stuart in late 1916, containing two well-known books about such cases of “possession,” along with a letter from us informing him that we had a good deal of knowledge about such things and would be very glad to talk to him about it, and about others who had experienced the same thing.

Stuart at once fired off a reply. He met with our representative Louis Daly in Dallas in the summer of 1917, and gratefully agreed to go with us to London. Dr. Townsend, at first deeply concerned, was finally won over by Louis, who assured him that our approach to such things was entirely scholarly, and at last Stuart came to us on September 1, 1917.

He was received into the order as a novice the following year, and he remained with us from then on.

His first project of course was a thorough study of his own case, and a study of every other known case of possession on record. His conclusion finally, and that of the other Talamasca scholars assigned to this area of research, was that he indeed had been possessed by the spirit of a dead woman.

He believed then and ever after that the spirit of Antoinette Fielding could have been driven out of him, if anyone knowledgeable had been consulted, even a Catholic priest. For though the Catholic Church holds that such cases are purely demonic—which we do not—there is no doubt that their techniques for exorcising such alien presences do work.

For the next five years Stuart did nothing but investigate past cases of possession the world over. He interviewed victims by the dozens, taking voluminous notes.

He came to the conclusion long held by the Talamasca that there are a great variety of entities who engage in possession. Some may be ghosts; some may be entities who were never human; some may be “other personalities” within the host. But he remained convinced that Antoinette Fielding had been a real human being, and that like many such ghosts, she had not known or understood that she was dead.

In 1920 he went to Paris to find evidence of Antoinette Fielding. He was unable to discover anything at all. But the few bits of information about the dead Louisa Fielding did fit with what Antoinette had written about her mother. Time, however, had long ago erased any real trace of these persons. And Stuart remained forever dissatisfied on this account.

In late 1920 he resigned himself to the fact that he might never know who Antoinette was, and then he turned to active fieldwork on behalf of the Talamasca. He went out with Louis Daly to intervene in cases of possession, carrying out with Daly a form of exorcism which Daly used very effectively to drive such alien presences out of the victim-host.

Daly was very impressed with Stuart Townsend. He became Stuart’s mentor, and Stuart was throughout these years noted for his compassion, patience, and effectiveness in this field. Not even Daly could comfort the victims afterwards the way Stuart could do it. After all, Stuart had been there. Stuart knew.

Stuart worked in this field tirelessly until 1929, reading the File on the Mayfair Witches only when a busy schedule allowed. Then he made his plea to the council and won.

At that point in time, Stuart was thirty-five. He stood six feet tall, had ash-blond hair and dark gray eyes. He was lean of build and had a light complexion. He tended to dress elegantly, and was one of those Americans who deeply admires English manners and ways of doing things, and aspires to imitate them. He was an attractive young man. But his greatest appeal to friends and acquaintances was a sort of boyish spontaneity and innocence. Stuart was really missing ten years of his life, and he never got them back.

He was capable at times of impetuousness, and of flying off the handle, of getting furious when he encountered even small obstacles to his plans. But he controlled this very well when he was in the field; and when he threw a tantrum in the Motherhouse he could always be brought round.

He was also capable of falling deeply and passionately in love, which he did with Helen Kreis, a member of the Talamasca who died in an auto accident in 1924. He grieved excessively and even dangerously for Helen for two years after her death.

What happened between him and Stella Mayfair we may never know. But it is possible to conjecture that she was the only other love of his life.

I should like to add my personal opinion here that Stuart Townsend never should have been sent to New Orleans. It was not only that he was too emotionally involved with Stella; it was that he lacked experience in this particular field.

In his novitiate, he had dealt with various kinds of psychic phenomena; and undoubtedly he read widely in the occult all his life. He discussed a great variety of cases with other members of the order. And he did spend some time with Arthur Langtry.

But he did not really know anything about witches, per se. And like so many of our members who have dealt only with hauntings, possessions, or reincarnation, he simply did not know what witches can do.

He did not understand that the strongest manifestations of discarnate entities come through mortal witches. There are even some suggestions that he thought the Talamasca was being archaic and silly in calling these women witches. And it is very likely that though he accepted the seventeenth-century descriptions of Deborah Mayfair and her daughter Charlotte, he could not “relate” this material to a clever, fashionable twentieth-century “jazz baby” like Stella, who seemed to be beckoning to him across the Atlantic with a smile and a wink.

Of course the Talamasca encounters a certain amount of incredulity in all new workers in the witchcraft field. The same holds true for the investigation of vampires. More than one member of the order has had to see these creatures in action before he or she could believe in them. But the solution to that problem is to introduce our members to fieldwork under the guidance of experienced persons, and in cases which do not involve direct contact.

To send an inexperienced man like Townsend to make contact with the Mayfair Witches is like sending a little child directly to hell to interview the devil.

In sum Stuart Townsend went off to New Orleans unprepared and unwarned. And with all due respect to those who governed the order in 1929, I do not believe that such a thing would happen today.

Lastly, let me add that Stuart Townsend, to the best of our knowledge, possessed no extraordinary powers. He wasn’t “psychic,” as they say. So he had no extrasensory weapons at his command when he confronted the foe, whom he did not even perceive to be a foe.

Stuart’s disappearance was reported to the New Orleans police on July 25, 1929. This was a full month after his arrival in New Orleans. The Talamasca had tried to reach him by telegram and by phone. Irwin Dandrich had tried to find him but in vain. The St. Charles Hotel, from which Stuart claimed to have written his only letter from New Orleans, denied ever having such a person registered. No one remembered such a person ever having been there.

Our private investigators could discover nothing to prove Townsend had ever reached New Orleans. And the police soon came to doubt that he had.

On July 28, the authorities told our local investigators that there was nothing further that they could do. But under severe pressure both from Dandrich and from the Talamasca the police finally agreed to go to the Mayfair house and ask Stella if she had ever seen or spoken to the young man. The Talamasca held out no hope at this point, but Stella surprised everyone by recalling Stuart at once.

Yes indeed, she had met Stuart, she said, the tall Texan from England, how could she ever forget such an interesting person? They had had lunch together and later dinner, and spent an entire night in talk.

No, she couldn’t imagine what had happened to him. In fact, she became quite instantly and visibly distressed at the possibility that he had met with foul play.

Yes, he was staying at the St. Charles Hotel, he mentioned that to her, and why on earth would he lie about such a thing? She began to cry. Oh, she hoped nothing had happened to him. In fact, she became so upset that the police almost terminated the interview. But she held them there asking questions. Had they talked to the people at the Court of Two Sisters? She’d taken Stuart there, and he’d liked it. Maybe he had been back. And there was a speakeasy on Bourbon Street where they had talked early the following morning, after some more respectable place—dreadful hole!—had kicked them out.

The police covered these establishments. Everyone knew Stella. Yes, Stella could have been there with a man. Stella was always there with a man. But nobody had any particular recollection of Stuart Townsend.

Other hotels in town were canvassed. No belongings of Stuart Townsend were found. Cabbies were questioned but with the same dismal lack of result.

At last the Talamasca decided to take the investigation into its own hands. Arthur Langtry sailed from London to discover what had happened to Stuart. He was conscience-stricken that he had ever agreed to let Stuart undertake this assignment alone.

THE STORY OF STELLA CONTINUESArthur Langtry’s Report Arthur Langtry was certainly one of the most able investigators whom the Talamasca ever produced. The study of several great “witch families” was his lifelong work. The story of his fifty-year career with the Talamasca is one of the most interesting and amazing histories contained in our archives, and his detailed studies of the witch families with whom he became involved are some of the most valuable documents we possess.

It is a great sadness to those of us who have been obsessed all our lives with the Mayfair Witches that Langtry was never able to devote his time to their history. And in the years before Stuart Townsend became involved, Langtry expressed his own regrets regarding the whole affair.

But Langtry owed no one an apology for not having time or life enough for every witch family in our files.

Nevertheless, when Stuart Townsend disappeared, Langtry felt responsible, and nothing could have kept him from sailing to Louisiana in August Of 1929. As already mentioned, he blamed himself for Stuart’s disappearance, because he had not opposed Stuart’s assignment; and he had known in his heart that Stuart should not go.

“I was so eager for someone to go there,” he confessed before he left London. “I was so eager for something to happen. And of course I felt I couldn’t go. And so I thought, well, maybe that strange young Texan will crack through that wall.”

Langtry was nearing seventy-four years of age at this time, a tall, gaunt man with iron gray hair, a rectangular face, and sunken eyes. He had an extremely pleasant speaking voice and meticulous manners. He had the usual minor infirmities of old age, but, all things considered, he was in good health.

He had seen “everything” during his years of service. He was a powerful psychic or medium; and he was absolutely fearless when it came to any manifestation of the supernatural. But he was never rash or careless. He never underestimated any sort of phenomena. He was, as his own investigations show, extremely confident and extremely strong.

As soon as he heard of Stuart’s disappearance, he became convinced that Stuart was dead. Quickly rereading the Mayfair material, he saw the error which the order had made.

He arrived in New Orleans on August 28, 1929, at once registering at the St. Charles Hotel and dispatching a letter home as Stuart had done. He gave his name, address, and London phone number to several people at the hotel desk so that there could be no question later that he had been there. He made a long distance call to the Motherhouse from his room, reporting the room number and several other particulars about his arrival.

Then he met with one of our investigators—the most competent of the private detectives—in the hotel bar, charging all of the drinks to the room.

He confirmed for himself everything that the order had already been told. He was also informed that Stella was no longer cooperating with the investigation, such as it was. Insisting that she didn’t know anything and couldn’t help anyone, she had at last become impatient and refused to talk to the investigators anymore.

“As I said good-bye to this gentleman,” he wrote in his report, “I knew for certain that I was being watched. It was no more than a feeling, yet it was a profound one. And I sensed that it was connected to Stuart’s disappearance, though I myself had made no inquiry regarding Stuart of any person at the hotel.

“At this point I was sorely tempted to roam the premises, seeking to detect some latent indication of Stuart’s having been in this or that room. But I was also deeply convinced that Stuart had not met with foul play in this hotel. On the contrary, the people who were watching me, indeed, taking note of my movements and what I did, were doing so only because someone had paid them to do it. I decided to contact Stella Mayfair at once.”

Langtry rang Stella from his room. Though it was past four o’clock, she had obviously only just awakened when she answered her private phone. Only reluctantly did she allow the subject to be reopened. And it soon became obvious that she was genuinely upset.

“Look, I don’t know what happened to him!” she said, and again began to cry. “I liked him. I really did. He was such a strange man. We went to bed, you know.”

Langtry couldn’t think of a thing to say to such a frank admission. Even her disembodied voice proved somewhat charming. And he was convinced that her tears were real.

“Well, we did,” she continued, undaunted. “I took him to some awful little place in the Quarter. I told the police about it. Anyway, I liked him, very very much! I told him not to come around this family. I told him! He had the most peculiar ideas about things. He didn’t know anything. I told him to go away. Maybe he did go away. That is what I thought happened, you know, that he simply took my advice and went away.”

Langtry implored her to help him discover what had happened. He explained that he was a colleague of Townsend’s, that they had known each other very well.

“Colleague? You mean you’re part of that group.”

“Yes, if you mean the Talamasca … ”

“Shhh, listen to me. Whoever you are, you can come on up here if you like. But do it tomorrow night. I’m giving a party, you see. You can just well, sort of blend in. If anyone asks you who you are, which they probably won’t, just say Stella invited you. Ask to speak to me. But for God’s sakes don’t say anything about Townsend and don’t say the name of your … whatever you call it … ”

“Talamasca … ”

“Yes! Now please listen to what I’m saying. There’ll be hundreds of people there, white tie to rags, you know, and do be discreet. Just come up to me, and when you kiss me, whisper your name in my ear. What is it again?”

“Langtry. Arthur.”

“Hmmmm. Unhuh. Right. That’s simple enough to remember, isn’t it? Now, do be careful. I can’t stay on any longer. You will come, won’t you? Look, you must come!”

Langtry averred that nothing could keep him away. He asked her if she remembered the photograph on which she’d written “To the Talamasca, with love, Stella! P.S. There are others who watch, too.”

“Of course I remember it. Look, I can’t talk to you about this right now. It was years and years ago, when I wrote that note. My mother was alive then. Look, you can’t imagine how bad things are for me now. I’ve never been in a worse jam. And I don’t know what happened to Stuart, really I don’t. Look, will you please come tomorrow night?”

“Yes, I shall,” said Langtry, struggling silently to determine whether or not he was being lured into some sort of trap. “But why must we be so circumspect about the whole arrangement, I don’t … ”

“Darling, look,” she said, dropping her voice, “it’s all very nice about your organization, and your library and all your marvelous psychic investigations. But don’t be a perfect fool. Ours is not a world of séances and mediums and dead relatives telling you to look between the pages of the Bible for the deed to the property on Eighth Street or whatever. As for the voodoo nonsense, that was a perfect scream. And by the way, we do not have any Scottish ancestors. We were all French. My Uncle Julien made up something about a Scottish castle he bought when he went to Europe. So do forget about all that, if you please. But there are things I can tell you! That’s just the point. Look, come early. Come around eight o’clock, will you? But whatever you do, don’t be the first one to arrive. Now, I’ve got to get off, you really cannot imagine how dreadful everything is just now. I’ll tell you frankly. I never asked to be born into this mad family! Really! There are three hundred people invited tomorrow night, and I haven’t a single friend in the world.”

She rang off.

Langtry, who had taken down the entire conversation in shorthand, immediately copied it out in longhand, with a carbon, and posted one copy to London, going directly to the post office to do it, for he no longer trusted the situation at the hotel.

Then he went to rent a tailcoat and boiled shirt for the party the following night.

“I am thoroughly confused,” he had written in his letter. “I had been certain she had a hand in getting rid of poor Stuart. Now I don’t know what to think. She wasn’t lying to me, I am sure of it. But why is she frightened? Of course I cannot make an intelligent appraisal of her until I see her.”

Late that afternoon, he called Irwin Dandrich, the socialite spy for hire, and asked him to have dinner at a fashionable French Quarter restaurant blocks from the hotel.

Though Dandrich had nothing to say about Townsend’s disappearance, he appeared to enjoy the meal thoroughly, gossiping nonstop about Stella. People said Stella was burning out.

“You can’t drink a fifth of French brandy every day of your life and live forever,” said Dandrich with weary, mocking gestures, as if to suggest the subject bored him, when in fact, he loved it. “And the affair with Pierce is outrageous. Why, the boy is scarcely eighteen. It really is so perfectly stupid of Stella to do this. Why, Cortland was her chief ally against Carlotta, and now she’s gone and seduced Cortland’s favorite son! I don’t think Barclay or Garland much approves of the situation either. And God only knows how Lionel stands it. Lionel is a monomaniac and the name of his monomania is Stella, of course.”

Was Dandrich going to the party?

“Wouldn’t miss it for anything in this world. Bound to be some interesting pyrotechnics. Stella’s forbidden Carlotta to take Antha out of the house during these affairs. Carlotta is simmering. Threatening to call the police if the rowdies get out of hand.”

“What is Carlotta like?” asked Langtry.

“She’s Mary Beth with vinegar in her veins instead of vintage wine. She’s brilliant but she has no imagination. She’s rich but there’s nothing she wants. She’s endlessly practical and meticulous and hardworking, and an absolutely insufferable bore. Of course she does take care of absolutely everything. Millie Dear, Belle, little Nancy, and Antha. And they have a couple of old servants up there who don’t know who they are or what they’re doing anymore, and she takes care of them, right along with everyone else. Stella has herself to blame for all this, really. She always did let Carlotta do the hiring and the firing, the check writing, and the shouting. And what with Lionel and Cortland turning against her, well, what can she do? No, I wouldn’t miss this party, if I were you. It may be the last one for quite some time.”

Langtry spent the following day exploring the speakeasies and the small French Quarter hotel (a dump) where Stella had taken Stuart. He was plagued continuously with the strong feeling that Stuart had been in these places, that Stella’s account of their wanderings had been the complete truth.

At seven o’clock, dressed and ready for the evening, he wrote another very short letter to the Motherhouse, which he mailed on the way to the party from the post office at Lafayette Square:

“The more I think about our phone conversation, the more I’m troubled. Of what is this lady so afraid? I find it hard to believe that her sister Carlotta can really inflict harm upon her. Why can’t someone hire a nurse for the troubled child? I tell you, I find myself being drawn into this head over heels. Surely that is how Stuart felt.”

Langtry had the cab drop him at Jackson and Chestnut so that he might walk the remaining two blocks to the house, approaching it from the rear.

“The streets were completely blocked with automobiles. People were piling in through the back garden gate, and every window in the place was lighted. I could hear the shrill screams of the saxophone long before I reached the front steps.

“There was no one on the front door, as far as I ever saw, and I simply went in, pushing through a regular jam of young persons in the hallway, who were all smoking and laughing and greeting each other, and took no notice of me at all.”

The party did include every manner of dress, exactly as Stella had promised. There were even quite a few elderly people there. And Langtry found himself comfortably anonymous as he made his way to the bar in the living room where he was served a glass of extremely good champagne.

“There were more and more people streaming in every minute. A crowd was dancing in the front portion of the room. In fact, there were so many persons everywhere I looked, all chattering and laughing and drinking amid a thick bluish cloud of cigarette smoke, that I could hardly gain a fair impression of the furnishings of the room. Rather lavish, I suppose, and rather like the salon of a great liner, actually, with the potted palms, and the tortured art deco lamps, and the delicate, vaguely Grecian chairs.

“The band, stationed on the side porch just behind a pair of floor-length windows, was deafening. How people managed to talk over it, I cannot imagine. I could not sustain a coherent train of thought.

“I was about to make my way out of all this when my eyes fastened on the dancers before the front windows, and I soon realized I was gazing directly at Stella—far more dramatic than any picture of her could possibly be. She was clad in gold silk—a skimpy little dress, no more than a remnant of a chemise layered with fringe, it seemed, and barely covering her shapely knees. Tiny gold sequins covered her gossamer stockings, and indeed the dress itself, and there was a gold satin band of yellow flowers in her short wavy black hair. Around her wrists were delicate glittering gold bracelets, and at her throat the Mayfair emerald, looking quite absurdly old-fashioned, yet stunning in its old filigree, as it rested against her naked flesh.

“A child-woman, she appeared, slim, breastless, yet entirely feminine, her lips brazenly rouged, and her enormous black eyes literally flashing like gems as she took in the crowd gazing at her in adoration, without ever missing a beat of dance. Her little feet in their flimsy high-heel shoes came down mercilessly on the polished floor, and throwing back her head, she laughed delightedly as she made a little circle, swishing her tiny hips, her arms flung out.

“ ‘That’s it, Stella!’ someone roared, and yet another, ‘Yeeeah, Stella!’ and all of this with the rhythm, if you can imagine, and Stella managing somehow to be lovingly responsive to her worshipers, while at the same time giving herself over, limply and exquisitely, to the dance.

“If I have ever seen a person enjoy music and attention with such innocent abandon. I did not recall it then and I do not recall now. There was nothing cynical or vain in her exhibition. On the contrary, she seemed to have soared past all such self-conscious nonsense, and to belong both to those who admired her, and to her self.

“As for her partner, I only came to see him by and by, though in any other setting I’m sure I would have noticed him immediately, given that he was very young and indeed resembled her remarkably, having the same fair skin, black eyes, and black hair. But he was scarcely more than a boy. And his face still had a porcelain purity to it, and his height seemed to have gotten the better of his weight.

“He was bursting with the same careless vitality as Stella. And as the dance came to a finish, she threw up her hands, and let herself fall, with perfect trust, straight backwards into his waiting arms. He embraced her with shameless intimacy, letting his hands run over her boyish little torso and then kissing her tenderly on the mouth. But this was done without a particle of theatricality. Indeed, I don’t think he saw anyone in the room save for her.

“The crowd closed about them. Someone was pouring champagne into Stella’s mouth, and she was draping herself over the boy, as it were, and the music was starting up again. Other couples—all quite modern and very gay—began to dance.

“This was no time to approach her, I reasoned. It was only ten past eight, and I wanted to take a few moments to look about. Also I was for the moment entirely disarmed by her appearance. A great blank had been filled in. I felt certain she had not harmed Stuart. And so, hearing her laughter ringing over the fresh onslaught of the band, I resumed my journey towards the hall doors.

“Now, let me say here that this house is possessed of an exceptionally long hallway and a particularly long and straight stairs. I would say, offhand, there were some thirty steps to it. (There are in fact twenty-seven.) The second floor appeared to be completely dark and the staircase was deserted, but dozens of people were squeezing past this stairway towards a brightly lighted room at the end of the first-floor hall.

“I meant to follow suit, and thereby make a little exploration of the place, but as I placed my hand on the newel post I saw someone at the top of the stairs. Quite suddenly I realized it was Stuart. My shock was so great I almost called out to him. But then I realized that something was very wrong.

“He appeared absolutely real, you must understand. Indeed the way that the light struck him from below was altogether realistic. But his expression alerted me at once to the fact that I was seeing something that couldn’t be real. For though he was looking straight at me and obviously knew me, there was no urgency in his face, only a profound sadness, a great and weary distress.

“It seemed he took his time even acknowledging that I had seen him, and then he gave a very weary and forbidding shake of his head. I continued to stare at him, pushed and shoved by God knows how many individuals, the noise a perfect din around me, and once again, he shook his head in this forbidding way. Then he lifted his right hand and made a definite gesture for me to go away.

“I didn’t dare move. I remained absolutely calm as I always do at such moments, resisting the inevitable delirium, concentrating upon the noise, the press of the crowd, even the thin scream of the music. And very carefully I memorized what I saw. His clothes were dirty and disheveled. The right side of his face was bruised or at least discolored.

“Finally I came round to the foot of the steps and started up. Only then did the phantom wake from its seeming languor. Once again, he shook his head and gestured for me to go away.

“ ‘Stuart!’ I whispered. ‘Talk to me, man, if you can!’

“I continued upwards, my eyes fixed upon him, as his expression grew ever more fearful; and I saw that he was covered with dust; that his body, even as he stared back at me, showed the first signs of decay. Nay, I could smell it! Then the inevitable happened; the image begin to fade. ‘Stuart!’ I appealed to him desperately. But the figure darkened, and through it, quite unconscious of it, stepped a flesh and blood woman of extraordinary beauty, who hurried down the stairs towards me and then past me, in a flurry of peach-colored silk and clattering jewelry, carrying with her a cloud of sweet perfume.

“Stuart was gone. The smell of human decay was gone. The woman murmured an apology as she brushed by me. Seems she was shouting to any number of people in the lower hall.

“Then she turned, and as I stood staring upwards still, quite oblivious to her, and gazing at nothing but empty shadows, I felt her hand grip my arm.

“ ‘Oh, but the party’s down here,’ she said. And gave me a little tug.

“ ‘I’m looking for the lavatory,’ I said, for at that moment, I could think of nothing else.

“ ‘Down here, ducky,’ she said. ‘It’s off the library. I’ll show you, right around in back of the stairs.’

“Clumsily, I followed her down around the staircase and into a very large but dimly lighted northside room. The library, yes, most certainly, with bookshelves to the ceiling and dark leather furnishings, and only one lamp lighted, in a far corner, beside a blood red drape. A great dark mirror hung over the marble fireplace, reflecting the one lamp as if it were a sanctuary light.

“ ‘There you go,’ she said, pointing to a closed door, and quickly made her exit. I was suddenly conscious of a man and woman huddled together on the leather couch who rose and hurried away. It seemed the party with its continued merriment bypassed this room. Everything here was dust and silence. One could smell moldering leather and paper. And I was immensely relieved to be alone.

“I sank down into the wing chair facing the fireplace, with my back to the crowd passing in the hallway, glancing up at the reflection of it in the mirror, and feeling quite safe from it for the moment, and praying that no other loving couple would seek this shadowy retreat.

“I took out my handkerchief and wiped my face. I was sweating miserably, and I struggled to remember every detail of what I’d seen.

“Now, you know we all have our theories regarding apparitions—as to why they appear in this or that guise, or why they do what they do. And my theories probably don’t agree with those of anyone else. But I was certain of one thing as I sat there. Stuart had chosen to show himself to me in decayed and disheveled form for one very good reason—his remains were in this house! Yet he was imploring me to leave here! He was warning me to get out.

“Was this warning intended for the entire Talamasca? Or merely for Arthur Langtry? I sat brooding, feeling my pulse return to normal, and feeling as I always do in the aftermath of such experiences, a rush of adrenaline, a zeal to discover all that lies behind the faint shimmer of the supernatural which I had only just glimpsed.

“I was also enraged, deeply and bitterly, at whoever or whatever had brought Stuart’s life to a close.

“How to proceed, that was the vital question. Of course I should speak to Stella. But how much of the house might I explore before I made myself known to her? And what of Stuart’s warning? Precisely what was the danger for which I must be prepared?

“I was considering all this, aware of no perceptible change in the racket from the hallway behind me, when there suddenly came over me the realization that something in my immediate environment had undergone a radical and significant change. Slowly I looked up. There was someone reflected in the mirror—a lone figure, it seemed. With a start I looked over my shoulder. No one there. And then back again to the dim and shadowy glass.

“A man was gazing out from the immaterial realm beyond it, and as I studied him, the adrenaline pumping and my senses sharpening, his image grew brighter and clearer, until he was vividly and undeniably a young man of pale complexion and dark brown eyes, staring angrily and malevolently and unmistakably down at me.

“At last the image reached its fullest potency. And so vital was it, that it seemed a mortal man had secreted himself in a chamber behind the mirror, and having removed the glass was peering at me from the empty frame.

“Never in all my years with the Talamasca had I seen an apparition so exquisitely realized. The man appeared to be perhaps thirty years of age; his skin was deliberately flawless, yet carefully colored, with a blush to the cheeks and a faint paling beneath the eyes. His clothing was extremely old-fashioned, with an upturned white collar and a rich silk tie. As for the hair, it was wavy and ever so slightly unkempt, as if he had only just run his fingers through it. The mouth appeared soft, youthful, and slightly ruddy. I could see the fine lines in the lips. Indeed I could see the barest shadow of a shaven beard on his chin.

“But the effect was horrible, for it was not a human being, or a painting, or a reflection. But something infinitely more brilliant than any of these; and yet silently alive.

“The brown eyes were full of hatred, and as I looked at the creature, his mouth quivered ever so slightly with anger, and finally rage.

“Quite slowly and deliberately, I raised my handkerchief to my lips. ‘Did you kill my friend, spirit?’ I whispered. Seldom have I felt so enlivened, so heated for adversity. ‘Well, spirit?’ I whispered again.

“I saw it weakening. I saw it lose its solidity, indeed, its very animation. The face, so beautifully modeled and expressive of negative emotion, was slowly going blank.

“ ‘I’m not so easily dispatched, spirit,’ I said under my breath. ‘Now we have two accounts to settle, do we not! Petyr van Abel and Stuart Townsend, are we agreed on that much?’

“The illusion seemed powerless to answer me. And quite suddenly the entire mirror shivered, becoming merely a dark glass again as the door to the hallway was slammed shut.

“Footsteps sounded on the bare floor beyond the edge of the Chinese carpet. The mirror was definitely empty, reflecting no more than woodwork and books.

“I turned and saw a young woman advancing across the carpet, her eyes fixed on the mirror, her whole demeanor one of anger, confusion, distress. It was Stella. She stood before the mirror, with her back to me, gazing into it, and then turned round.

“ ‘Well, you can describe that to your friends in London, can’t you?’ she said. She seemed on the edge of hysteria. ‘You can tell them you saw that!’

“I realized she was shaking all over. The flimsy gold dress with its layers of fringe was shivering. And anxiously she clutched the monstrous emerald at her throat.

“I struggled to rise, but she told me to sit down, and immediately took a place on the couch to my left, her hand laid firmly on my knee. She leant over very close to me, so close that I could see the mascara on her long lashes, and the powder on her cheeks. She was like a great kewpie doll looking at me, a cinema goddess, naked in her gossamer silk.

“ ‘Listen, can you take me with you?’ she said. ‘Back to England, to these people, this Talamasca? Stuart said you could!’

“ ‘You tell me what happened to Stuart and I’ll take you anywhere you like.’

“ ‘I don’t know!’ she said, and at once her eyes watered. ‘Listen, I have to get out of here. I didn’t hurt him. I don’t do things like that to people. I never have! God, don’t you believe me? Can’t you tell that I’m speaking the truth?’

“ ‘All right. What do you want me to do?’

“ ‘Just help me! Take me with you, back to England. Look, I’ve got my passport, I’ve got plenty of money—’ At this point she broke off, and pulled open a drawer in the couchside table and took out of it a veritable sheaf of twenty-dollar bills. ‘Here, you can buy the tickets. I can meet you. Tonight.’

“Before I could answer, she looked up with a start. The door had opened, and in came the young boy with whom she’d been dancing earlier, quite flushed, and full of concern.

“ ‘Stella, I’ve been looking for you … ’

“ ‘Oh, sweetheart, I’m coming,’ she said, rising at once, and glancing at me meaningfully over her shoulder. ‘Now, go back out and get me a drink, will you, sweetheart?’ She straightened his tie as she spoke to him, and then turned him around with quick little gestures and actually shoved him towards the door.

“He was highly suspicious, but very obviously well bred. He did as he was told. As soon as she had shut the door, she came back to me. She was flushed, and almost feverish, and absolutely convincing. In fact, my impression of her was that she was a somewhat innocent person, that she believed all the optimism and rebellion of the ‘jazz babies.’ She seemed authentic, if you know what I mean.

“ ‘Go to the station,’ she implored me. ‘Get the tickets. I’ll meet you at the train.’

“ ‘But which train, what time?’

“ ‘I don’t know what train!’ She wrung her hands. ‘I don’t know what time! I have to get out of here. Look, I’ll come with you.’

“ ‘That certainly seems to be a better plan. You could wait for me in the taxi while I get my things from the hotel.’

“ ‘Yes, that’s a fine idea!’ she whispered. And we’ll get out of here on any train that’s leaving, we can always change our destination further on.’

“ ‘And what about him?’

“ ‘Who! Him!’ she demanded crossly. ‘You mean Pierce? Pierce isn’t going to be any trouble! Pierce is a perfect darling. I can handle Pierce.’

“ ‘You know I don’t mean Pierce,’ I said. ‘I mean the man I saw a moment ago in that mirror, the man you forced to disappear.’

“She looked absolutely desperate. She was the cornered animal, but I don’t believe I was the one cornering her. I couldn’t figure it out.

“ ‘Look, I didn’t make him disappear,’ she said under her breath. ‘You did!’ She made a conscious effort to calm herself, her hand resting for a moment on her heaving breast. ‘He won’t stop us,’ she said. ‘Please trust me that he won’t.’

“At this moment, Pierce returned, pushing open the door once more and letting in the great cacophony from outside. She took the glass of champagne from him gratefully and drank down half of it.

“ ‘I’ll talk to you in a few minutes,’ she said to me with deliberate sweetness. ‘In just a few minutes. You’ll be right here, won’t you? No, as a matter of fact, why don’t you get some air? Go out on the front porch, ducky, and I’ll come talk to you there.’

“Pierce knew she was up to something. He looked from her to me, but obviously he felt quite helpless. She took him by the arm and led him out with her ahead of me. I glanced down at the carpet. The twenty-dollar bills had fallen and were scattered everywhere. Hastily, I gathered them up, put them back into the drawer, and went into the hall.

“Just opposite the library door, I caught a glimpse of a portrait of Julien Mayfair, a very well-done canvas in heavy dark Rembrandt-style oils. I wished I had time to examine it.

“But I hurried around the back of the staircase and started pushing and shoving as gently as I could towards the front door.

“Three minutes must have passed, and I had made it only so far as the newel post, when I saw him again, or thought I did for one terrible instant—the brown-haired man I had seen in the mirror. This time he was gazing at me over someone’s shoulder, as he stood in the front corner of the hall.

“I tried to pick him out again. But I couldn’t. People crushed against me as if they were deliberately trying to block me, but of course they weren’t.

“Then I realized someone ahead of me was pointing to the stairs. I was now past it, and within only a few feet of the door. I turned round, and saw a child on the stairway, a very pretty little blond-haired girl. No doubt it was Antha, though she looked rather small for eight years. She was dressed in a flannel nightgown and barefoot, and she was crying, and looking over the railing into the doors of the front room.

“I too turned and looked into the front room, at which point someone gasped aloud, and the crowd parted, people falling to the left and the right of the door, in apparent fear. A red-haired man stood in the doorway, slightly to my left, facing into the room. And as I watched with sickening horror, he lifted a pistol with his right hand and fired it. The deafening report shook the house. Panic ensued. The air was filled with screams. Someone had fallen by the front door, and the others simply ran over the poor devil. People were struggling to escape back through the hall.

“I saw Stella lying on the floor in the middle of the front room. She was on her back, with her head turned to the side, staring towards the hall. I raced forward, but not in time to stop the red-haired man from standing over her and firing the pistol again. Her body convulsed as blood exploded from the side of her head.

“I grabbed for the bastard’s arm, and he fired again as my hand tightened on his wrist. But this bullet missed her and went through the floor. It seemed the screams were redoubled. Glass was breaking. Indeed, the windows were shattering. Someone attempted to grab the man from behind, and I managed somehow to get the gun away from him, though I was accidentally stepping on Stella, indeed, tripping over her feet.

“I fell to my knees with the gun, and then pushed it quite deliberately away across the floor. The murderer was struggling vainly against a half-dozen men now. Glass from the windows blew inward all over us; I saw it rain down upon Stella. Blood was running down her neck, and over the Mayfair emerald which lay askew on her breast.

“Next thing I knew a monstrous clap of thunder obliterated the deafening screams and shrieks still coming from all quarters. And I felt the rain gusting in; then I heard it coming down on the porches all around, and then the lights went out.

“In repeated flashes of lightning I saw the men dragging the murderer from the room. A woman knelt at Stella’s side, and lifted her lifeless wrist, and then let out an agonizing scream.

“As for the child, she had come into the room, and stood barefoot staring at her mother. And then she too began to scream. Her voice rose high and piercing over the others. ‘Mama, Mama, Mama,’ as though with each new burst her realization of what had happened deepened helplessly.

“ ‘Someone take her out!’ I cried. And indeed, others had gathered around her, and were attempting to draw her away. I moved out of their path, only climbing to my feet when I reached the side porch window. In another crackle of white light, I saw someone pick up the gun. It was then handed to another person, and then to another, who held it as if it were alive. Fingerprints were no longer of consequence, if ever they were, and there had been countless witnesses. There was no reason for me not to get out while I could. And turning, I made my way out onto the side porch and into the downpour, as I stepped onto the lawn.

“Dozens of people were huddled there, the women crying, the men doing what they could to cover the women’s heads with their jackets, everyone soaked and shivering and quite at a loss. The lights flickered on for a second, but another violent slash of lightning signaled their final failure. When an upstairs window suddenly burst in a shower of glittering shards, panic broke out once more.

“I hurried towards the back of the property, thinking to leave unobserved through a back way. This meant a short rush along a flagstone path, a climb of two steps to the patio around the swimming pool, and then I spied the side alley to the gate.

“Even through the dense rain I could see that it was open, and see beyond it the wet gleaming cobblestones of the street. The thunder rolled over the rooftops, and the lightning laid bare the whole garden hideously in an instant, with its balustrades and towering camellias, and beach towels draped over so many skeletal black iron chairs. Everything was helplessly thrashing in the wind.

“I heard sirens suddenly. And as I rushed towards the waiting sidewalk, I glimpsed a man standing motionless and stiff, as it were, in a great clump of banana trees to the right of the gate.

“As I drew closer, I glanced to the right, and into the man’s face. It was the spirit, visible to me once more, though for what reason under God I had no idea. My heart raced dangerously, and I felt a momentary dizziness and tightening in my temples as if the circulation of my blood were being choked off.

“He presented the same figure he had before; I saw the unmistakable glint of brown hair and brown eyes, and dim unremarkable clothing save for its primness and a certain vagueness about the whole. Yet the raindrops glistened as they struck his shoulders and his lapels. They glistened in his hair.

“But it was the face of the being which held me enthralled. It was monstrously transfigured by anguish, and his cheeks were wet with soundless crying as he looked into my eyes.

“ ‘God in heaven, speak if you can,’ I said, almost the same words I’d spoken to the poor desperate spirit of Stuart. And so crazed was I by all I had seen that I lunged at him, seeking to grab hold of him by the shoulders and make him answer if I could.

“He vanished. Only this time I felt him vanish. I felt the warmth and the sudden movement in the air. It was as if something had been sucked away, and the bananas swayed violently. But then the wind and the rain were knocking them about. And suddenly I did not know what I had seen, or what I had felt. My heart was skipping dangerously. I felt another wave of dizziness. Time to get out.

“I hurried up Chestnut Street past scores of wandering, weeping, dazed individuals and then down Jackson Avenue out of the wind and the rain, into a fairly clear and mild stretch where the traffic swept by without the slightest knowledge, apparently, of what had happened only blocks away. Within a matter of seconds, I caught a taxi for the hotel.

“As soon as I reached it, I gathered up my belongings, lugging them downstairs myself without the aid of a bellboy, and immediately checked out. I had the cab take me to the train station, where I caught the midnight train for New York, and I am in my sleeping car now.

“I shall post this as soon as I possibly can. And until such time, I shall carry the letter with me, on my person, hoping for what it’s worth that if anything happens to me the letter will be found.

“But as I write this I do not think anything will happen to me! It is over, this chapter! It has come to a ghastly and bloody end. Stuart was part of it. And God only knows what role the spirit played in it. But I shall not tempt the demon further by turning back. Every impulse in my being tells me to get away from here. And if I forget this for a moment, I have the haunting memory of Stuart to guide me, Stuart gesturing to me from the top of the stairs to go away.

“If we never talk in London, please pay heed to the advice I give you now. Send no one else to this place. At least not now. Watch, wait, as is our motto. Consider the evidence. Try to draw some lesson from what has taken place. And above all, study the Mayfair record. Study it deeply and put its various materials in order.

“My belief, for what it is worth at such a moment, is that neither Lasher nor Stella had a hand in the death of Stuart. Yet his remains are under that roof.

“But the council may consider the evidence at its leisure. Send no one here again.

“We cannot hope for public justice with regard to Stuart. We cannot hope for legal resolutions. Even in the investigation that will inevitably follow tonight’s horrors, there will be no search of the Mayfair house and its grounds. And how could we ever demand such a step be taken?

“But Stuart will never be forgotten. And I am man enough, even in my twilight years, to believe that there must be a

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 626