“ ‘She was adorable,’ Julien said, ‘you should have seen her. Then that Darcy Monahan destroyed her. She sold her soul to him. I tell you, Richard, if you ever get ready to sell your soul, don’t bother to sell it to another human being. It’s bad business to even consider such a thing.’
“Julien said so many strange things. Of course by the time I came along, Katherine was a burnt-out, crazy old woman. Just crazy, I tell you, the stubborn repetitious kind of crazy that gets on people’s nerves.
“She would sit on a bench in the back garden talking to her dead husband, Darcy. It disgusted Julien. So did her religion. And I think she had some influence on Carlotta, little as she was. Though I was never sure of it. Carlotta used to go to Mass at the Cathedral with Katherine.
“I recall once later on Carlotta had a terrible fight with Julien, but I never knew what it was about. Julien was such an ingratiating man; he was so easy to like. But that child couldn’t stand him. She couldn’t stand to be near him. And then they were shouting at each other behind closed doors in the library. They were shouting in French, and I couldn’t understand a word. Finally Julien came out and went upstairs. There were tears in his eyes. And there was a cut on his face, and he was holding his handkerchief to it. I think that little beast actually struck him. That’s the only time I ever saw him cry.
“And that awful Carlotta, she was such a cold mean little person. She just stood there watching him go upstairs, and then she said she was going out on the front steps to wait for her daddy to come home.
“Mary Beth was there, and she said, ‘Well you are going to be waiting a very long time, because your father is drunk right now at the club, and they won’t load him into a carriage till about ten o’clock. So you had better wear a coat when you go outside.’
“This wasn’t said in a mean way, really, just matter-of-fact, the way she said everything, but you should have seen the way that girl looked at her mother. I think she blamed her mother for her father’s drinking, and if she did what a little fool of a child she was. A man like Daniel McIntyre would have been a drunk if he had married the Virgin Mary or the Whore of Babylon. Didn’t matter a particle at all. He told me himself how his father had died of drink, and his father before him. And both of them at the age of forty-eight, no less. And he was afraid he’d die at forty-eight. I don’t know whether he made it past forty-eight or not. And you know his family had money. Plenty of money. You ask me, Mary Beth kept Judge McIntyre up and running a bit longer than anyone else might have been able to do.
“But Carlotta never understood. Never for a moment. I think Lionel understood, and Stella too. They loved both their parents, at least it always seemed that way to me. Maybe Lionel was a little embarrassed by the Judge from time to time, but he was a good boy, a devoted boy. And Stella, why, Stella adored her mother and father.
“Ah, that Julien. I can remember that last year, he did the damnedest thing. He took Lionel and Stella both with him down to the French Quarter to see the unseemly sights, so to speak, when they were no more than ten and eleven years old, I kid you not! And you know, I don’t think it was the first time either. I think it was just the first time that he couldn’t keep it from me, the mischief he was up to. And you know he had Stella dressed as a little sailor boy and did she ever look cute. And they had driven around all evening down there, with him pointing out the fancy clubs to them, though of course he didn’t take them in, not even Julien could have pulled that off, I suppose, but they’d been drinking, I can tell you.
“I was awake when they came home. Lionel was quiet, he was always quiet. But Stella was all fired up with everything she’d seen down there in those cribs, you know, with the women right on the street. And we sat on the steps together, Stella and I, talking about it in whispers long after Lionel had helped Julien up to the third floor and put him to bed.
“Stella and I went out and opened up a bottle of champagne in the kitchen. She said she was old enough to have a few drinks, and of course she didn’t listen to me, and who was I to stop her. And she and Lionel and I ended up dancing out on the back patio as the sun came up. Stella was doing some ragtime dance she’d seen down there. She said Julien was going to take them to Europe, and to see the whole world, but of course that never happened. I don’t think they really knew how old Julien was, any more than I did. When I saw the year 1828 written on that stone, I was shocked, I tell you. But then so much about Julien made sense to me. No wonder he had such a peculiar perspective. He had seen an entire century pass, he really had.
“Stella should have lived so long, really she should have. I remember she said something to me I never forgot. It was long after Julien died. We had lunch down here together at the Court of Two Sisters. She had already had Antha by then, and of course she hadn’t bothered to marry or even identify the father. Now, that’s a story, let me tell you. She just about turned society on its ear with that one. But what am I trying to say? We had lunch, and she told me she was going to live to be as old as Julien. She said Julien had looked into her palm and told her so. A long life, she would have.
“And think of it, shot dead like that by Lionel when she wasn’t even thirty years old. Good God! But you know it was Carlotta all along, don’t you?”
Llewellyn was by this time almost incoherent. I pressed on the matter of Carlotta and the shooting, but he would say no more about it. The whole subject began to frighten him. He returned to the subject of Julien’s “autobiography” and how much he wanted it. And what he wouldn’t give to get into that house some day and lay hands on those pages if they were still in that upstairs room. But then so long as Carlotta was there, he didn’t have a chance of it.
“You know there were storage rooms up there, right along the front of the house under the roof. You can’t see the roof slope from the street, but they’re there. Julien had trunks in there. I’ll bet that’s where she put the autobiography. She didn’t bother to burn it. Not Mary Beth. She just didn’t want it to fall into my hands. But then that beast Carlotta, who knows what she’s done with all those things?”
Not wanting to miss an opportunity, I pressed as to whether there was ever anything strange in the house, anything supernatural. (That is, other than Julien’s power to cause apparitions.) This was of course the kind of leading question that I try not to ask, but I had been with him for hours and he had volunteered nothing on this score other than his strange experiences with Julien. I was searching for something more.
His reaction to my question about a ghost was very strong. “Oh, that,” he said. “That was awful, just awful. I can’t tell anyone about that. Besides, it must have been my imagination.” He all but passed out.
I helped him back to his flat above the bookstore on Chartres Street. Over and over, he mentioned that Julien had left him the money for the building, and for the opening of a shop. Julien knew Llewellyn loved poetry and music and really despised his work as a clerk. Julien sought to set him free, and he had done it. But the one book he wished he had was Julien’s life story.
I was never able to obtain another interview of similar depth and length.
When I tried to talk to Llewellyn again a few days later, he was very polite but cautious. He apologized for having gotten so drunk and talked so much, though he said he had enjoyed it. And I could never persuade him to lunch with me again or to speak again at any length about Julien Mayfair.
Several times after that, I stopped in his shop. I asked him many questions about the family and its various members. But I could never regain his trust. Once I asked again if that house on First Street was haunted as people said. There were so many stories.