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distance from Dirksen Road to the mansion in my car yesterday morning: two-thirds of a mile. About twelve hundred paces for me, but I lost count after six hundred something, and the dark distorted my sense of distance. The night creatures, moving about on their own errands, began to loom large in my mind.
    I froze at a rustling in the underbrush. It stopped when I stopped, but started again after a few minutes. My palms grew wet on the flashlight as the rustling came closer. I gripped the stock so I could use it as a weapon and switched the beam on at its narrowest focus. A raccoon halted at the light, stared at me for a full minute, then sauntered back into the bushes with what seemed an insolent shrug of furry shoulders.
    A few paces later, Larchmont Hall suddenly appeared, its pale brick making it loom like a ghostly galleon in the moonlight. I used my own nightvision binoculars now, but didn’t see anyone in front of me. I circled the outbuildings cautiously, disturbing more raccoons and a fox, but didn’t see any people.
    I picked my way to the edge of the garden, where I could get a bit of a vantage point for the back of the house. The attic windows were dark. I perched on a bench to wait.
    I’d been curious enough about Darraugh’s family history to do a little research, spending the afternoon in the Chicago Historical Society’s library, where I pored over old society columns and news stories. It felt soothing to be in a library, handling actual pieces of paper with people around me, instead of perching alone in front of a blinking cursor. I’d learned a lot of local history, but I wasn’t sure how much of it illuminated Darraugh’s life.
    Geraldine Graham’s grandfather had started a paper mill on the Illinois River in 1877, which he’d turned into a fortune before the century ended. The Drummond mills in Georgia and South Carolina once employed nine thousand people. They’d shut most of those plants in the downturn of the last decade, but still had one major mill going in Georgia. In fact, I had once done some work down there for Darraugh, but he hadn’t mentioned its ties to his mother’s family. Drummond Paper had merged with Continental Industries in 1940; the Drummond name remained only on the paper division.
    Geraldine’s father had built Larchmont for his wife in 1903; Geraldine, her brother Stuart, and a sister who died young, had been born there. The Chicago American had reported on the gala around the housewarming, where the Taverners, the McCormicks, Armors and other Chicago luminaries had spent a festive evening. The whole story was like one of those period pieces on public television.
    Your roving correspondent had to rove with a vengeance to get to the opening of Larchmont Hall, riding the tram to the train and the train to its farthest reaches, where a charabanc obligingly scooped her up along with the men delivering plants, lobsters and all manner else of delightful edibles to adorn the fete. She arrived perforce in advance of the more regal guests and had plenty of time to scope the grounds, where tables and chairs were set up for taking tea alfresco. Dinner, of course, was served in the grand dining room, whose carved walnut table seats thirty.
    The tessellated entrance floor took the Italian workers eight months to complete, but it is worth the effort, the green and sienna and palest ecru of the tiles forming a rich yet unobtrusive foretaste of the splendors within. Your correspondent peeped into Mr. Drummond’s study, a most masculine sanctum, redolent of leather, with deep red curtains drawn across the mullioned windows so that the great man isn’t tempted by the beauties of nature to abandon his important tasks.
    Of course, the greatest beauty of all is within. Mrs. Matthew Drummond, nee Miss Laura Taverner, was the cynosure of all eyes when she appeared in her embroidered tulle over pale cornflower satin, the gold chiffon tunic edged with rhinestones (from Worth’s own hands, my