One of these photographers, Nathan Brand, who had a fashionable studio on St. Charles Avenue, was called to the First Street house for this big homecoming party, and there took a whole series of pictures of Mary Beth, Stella, and Antha, as well as pictures of other Mayfairs throughout the afternoon as a wedding photographer might do.
A week later when he brought the pictures to the house for Mary Beth and Stella to choose what it was they wanted, the women picked out a fair number and laid the discards aside.
But then Stella retrieved one of the discards-a group shot of her with her mother and her daughter in which Mary Beth was holding a big emerald necklace around little Antha’s neck. On the back of it, Stella wrote:
“To the Talamasca, with love, Stella! P.S. There are others who watch, too,” and then, giving it back to the photographer, she went into peels of laughter, explaining that his investigator friend would know what the writing meant.
The photographer was embarrassed; he claimed innocence, then made excuses for his arrangement with the investigator, but no matter what he said, Stella only laughed. Then Stella said to him in a very charming and reassuring manner, “Mr. Brand, you’re working yourself into a fit. Just give the picture to the investigator.” And that is what Mr. Brand did.
It reached us about a month later. And was to have a decisive effect upon our approach to the Mayfair family.
At this time the Talamasca had no specific member assigned to the Mayfair investigation, and information was being added to the file by several archivists as it came in. Arthur Langtry-an outstanding scholar and a brilliant student of witchcraft-was familiar with the entire record, but he had been busy all of his adult life with three other cases, which were to obsess him till the day he died.
Nevertheless, the whole family history had been discussed numerous times by the grand council, but the judgment not to make contact had never been lifted. And indeed, it is doubtful that anyone among us at that time knew the full story.
This photograph, with its obvious message, caused quite a stir. A young member of the order, an American from Texas named Stuart Townsend (who had been Anglicized by years of living in London), asked to make a study of the Mayfair Witches with a view to direct investigation, and after careful consideration the entire file was placed in his hands.
Arthur Langtry agreed to reread all the material, but pressing matters kept him from ever doing it, though he was responsible for increasing the number of investigators in New Orleans from three professional private eyes to four and of discovering another excellent contact-a man named Irwin Dandrich, the penniless son of a fabulously rich family, who moved in the highest circles while selling information secretly to anyone who wanted it, including detectives, divorce lawyers, insurance investigators, and even scandal sheets.
Allow me to remind the reader that the file did not then include this narrative, as no such collation of materials had yet been done. It contained Petyr van Abel’s letters and diary and a giant compendium of witness testimony, as well as photographs, articles from newspapers, and the like. There was a running chronology, updated periodically by the archivists, but it was very sketchy, to say the least.
Stuart was at that time engaged in several other significant investigations, and it took him some three years to complete his examination of the Mayfair material. We shall return to him and to Arthur Langtry at the appropriate time.
After Stella’s return, she began to live very much as she had before she ever went to Europe, that is, she frequented speakeasies, once again gave parties for her friends, was invited to numerous Mardi Gras balls where she created something of a sensation, and in general behaved as the ne’er-do-well femme fatale she had been before.
Our investigators had no trouble at all gathering information about her, because she was highly visible and the subject of gossip all over town. Indeed, Irwin Dandrich wrote to our detective agency connection in London (he never knew to whom his information was going or for what purpose) that all he had to do was step into a ballroom and he heard all about what Stella was up to. A few phone calls made on Saturday morning also provided reams of information.
(It is worth noting here that Dandrich, by all accounts, was not a malicious man. His information has proved to be ninety-nine percent accurate. He was our most voluminous and intimate witness regarding Stella, and though he never said so, one can easily infer from his reports that he went to bed with her numerous times. But he didn’t really know her; and she remains at a distance even at the most dramatic and tragic moments described in his reports.)
Thanks to Dandrich and others, the picture of Stella after her return from Europe took on greater and greater detail.
Family legend says that Carlotta severely disapproved of Stella during this period, and argued with Mary Beth about it, and demanded repeatedly and in vain that Stella settle down. Servant gossip (and Dandrich’s gossip) corroborated this, but said that Mary Beth paid very little attention to the matter, and thought Stella was a refreshingly carefree individual and should not be tied down.
Mary Beth is even quoted as saying to one society friend (who promptly passed it on to Dandrich), “Stella is what I would be if I had my life to live over again. I’ve worked too hard for too little. Let her have her fun.”
We must note that Mary Beth was already gravely ill and possibly very tired when she said this. Also she was far too clever a woman not to appreciate the various cultural revolutions of the 1920s, which may be hard for readers of this narrative to appreciate as the twentieth century draws to a close.
The true sexual revolution of the twentieth century began in its tumultuous third decade, with one of the most dramatic changes in female costume the world has ever witnessed. But not only did women abandon their corsets and long skirts; they threw out old-fashioned mores with them, drinking and dancing in speakeasies in a manner which would have been unthinkable only ten years before. The universal adoption of the closed automobile gave everyone unprecedented privacy, as well as freedom of movement. Radio reached into private homes throughout rural as well as urban America. Motion pictures made images of “glamour and wickedness” available to people worldwide. Magazines, literature, drama were all radically transformed by a new frankness, freedom, tolerance, and self-expression.
Surely Mary Beth perceived all this on some level. We have absolutely no reports of her disapproval of the “changing times.” Though she never cut her long hair or gave up long skirts (when she wasn’t cross-dressing), she begrudged Stella nothing. And Stella was, more than any other member of the family, the absolute embodiment of her times.
In 1925 Mary Beth was diagnosed as having incurable cancer, after which she lived only five months, and most of them in such severe pain that she no longer went out of the house.
Retiring to the north bedroom over the library, she spent her last comfortable days reading the novels she had never got around to reading when she was a girl. Indeed, numerous Mayfair cousins called upon her, bringing her various copies of the classics. And Mary Beth expressed a special interest in the Brontë sisters, in Dickens, which Julien used to read to her when she was little, and in random other English classics, which she seemed determined to read before she died.
Daniel McIntyre was terrified at the prospect of his wife’s leaving him. When he was made to understand that Mary Beth wasn’t going to recover, he commenced his final binge, and according to the gossips and the later legends was never seen to be sober again.
Others have told the same story that Llewellyn told, of Daniel waking Mary Beth constantly in her final days, frantic to know whether or not she was still alive. Family legend confirms that Mary Beth was endlessly patient with him, inviting him to lie down beside her, and comforting him for hours on end.