Dirksen Road didn’t have any sidewalks, the idea of people on foot apparently being beyond New Solway’s budget, or maybe their imagination. I kept having to duck into a ditch to get out of the way of traffic. When I finally reached the entrance to Coverdale Lane, I was out of breath, and peevish. I leaned against one of the pervasive stone pillars to pick burrs out of my jeans.
Once I left Dirksen Road, I was enveloped in night. The lights of the suburbs-the houses, the streetlamps, the relentless traffic-faded. Coverdale Lane was far enough from the hedge that guarded New Solway to block out both the streetlamps and the traffic beyond.
The dark silence made me feel untethered from the world. The moon provided some light, but clouds shrouded it, making it hard to stay on the asphalt. I kept veering into the weeds growing alongside the road. I’d measured the 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 dears, as Mrs. Drummond’s maid whispered, arrived last week from Paris), with a display of ostrich plumes and diamonds that were the envy of every other lady. Mrs. Michael Taverner, Mrs. Drummond’s sister-in-law, seemed almost to faint with misery when she saw how commonplace her rose charmeuse appeared. Of course, Mrs. Edwards Bayard has a mind above dress, as everyone who has seen that mauve bombazine a thousand times or so could testify-or perhaps her husband’s extra-domestic activities are funded from her clothes budget!
The coy correspondent recounted with a wealth of description the thirteen bedrooms, the billiard room, the music room where Mrs. Drummond’s spectacular performance on the piano held dinner guests spellbound, the ornamental pool lined with blue clay and the three motorcars which Mr. Drummond had installed in the new “garage, as we hear the English are calling the structure for housing these modern conveyances.”
How very modern of old Matthew Drummond. The garage, which loomed to my right, could hold six modern motorcars with room for a machine shop to repair them. Then, as now, vast wealth needed flaunting. How else did others know you had it?
After reading about Larchmont’s wonders, I’d searched various indices, looking for news of Geraldine. I wanted actually to see who Darraugh’s father had been, or what had happened to engender the contempt in Geraldine’s voice when she mentioned him. It was more than idle curiosity: I wanted to know what currents lay beneath my client’s surface so I could avoid falling in them and getting swept away.
I found Geraldine’s birth in 1912-a “happy event,” as the language of a century ago put it, a baby sister to keep little Stuart Drummond company. The next report was of her coming-out party in 1929 with other girls from the Vina Fields Academy. Her Poiret tulle gown was described in detail, including the diamond chips bordering the front drapery. Apparently the crash in the market hadn’t kept the family from pulling out all the stops. After all, some people did make money from the disaster-maybe Matthew Drummond had been among them.
The next family news was a clip welcoming Geraldine home from Switzerland in the spring of 1931, this time in a white Balenciaga suit, “looking interestingly thin after her recent illness.” I raised my brows at
this: was it TB, or had Laura Taverner Drummond hustled her daughter to Europe to deal with an unwelcome pregnancy?
There’d been a major depression on in the thirties, but you wouldn’t know that from the society pages. Descriptions of gowns costing five or even ten thousand dollars dotted the gossip columns. Money like that would have supported my father’s family in comfort for a year. He’d been nine in 1931, delivering coal in the mornings before school to help the family eke out a living after his father got laid off. I’d never met my grandfather, whose health deteriorated under the strain of not being able to support his family. He’d died in 1946, right after my parents were married.
No considerations like that marred Geraldine Drummond’s 1940 wedding to MacKenzie Graham. The ceremony was a no-holds-barred affair at Fourth Presbyterian Church on North Michigan Avenue-eight attendants, two young ring bearers, followed by a reception at the Larchmont estate so lavish that I was surpised the mansion hadn’t collapsed from the weight of the caviar. The happy couple left for two months in South America-the European war precluded a French destination.
Reading between the lines, it sounded as though Geraldine had been forcefed to the son of some business crony of her father’s. Her one brother, Stuart, had died in a car wreck wit
hout leaving any children, so Geraldine was presumably the heir to all the Drummond enterprises. Maybe Matthew and Laura Drummond chose a son-in-law they thought could manage the family holdings. Or maybe Laura had chosen someone she could control herself-in the wedding photos, the bridegroom looked hunted and unhappy.
MacKenzie Graham stayed at Larchmont Hall until his death in 1957. Tidy obituaries in all the papers, death at home of natural causes. Which could mean anything from cancer to bleeding to death from a shooting accident. Maybe that was what had turned Darraugh against Larchmont, seeing his father die here.
Cold was seeping through my layers of jacket and sweatshirt. Despite the unsettling mildness of the weather-here it was, early March, with no snow, and no hard freeze all winter-it was still too cold to sit for long. I got up from the bench and backed up to the meadow so I could see the upper windows. Nothing.
I made another circuit of the building, stubbing my toe on the same loose brick I’d hit the previous two times. Cursing, I sat on a step by the pool and listened to the night around me. For a time, I heard only the skittering of night creatures in the underbrush beyond Larchmont’s perimeter. Every now and then, a car would drive down Coverdale Lane, but no one stopped. A deer tiptoed across the lawn. When it saw me move in the moonlight, it bolted back across the meadow.
Suddenly, over the wind, I heard a louder crashing in the undergrowth beyond the garage. That wasn’t a fox or raccoon. Adrenaline rushed through my body. I jumped to my feet. The crashing stopped. Had the newcomer seen me? I tried to melt into the shrubbery lining the ornamental garden, tried not to breathe. After a moment, I heard the whicking of feet on brick: the newcomer had moved from dead leaves to walkway. Two feet, not four. A person who knew his way, coming purposefully forward.
I dropped to my belly and slithered around the pool toward the house, sticking to the paths so I wouldn’t announce myself on dead leaves. When I reached the shelter of a great beech, I cautiously lifted my head, straining at the shadows of the trees and bushes. All at once, a darker shadow appeared, ectoplasmic limbs floating and wavering in the moonlight. A slight figure, with a backpack making a hump in the silhouette, moving with the ease of youth.
I put my face back down in the turf so that moonlight wouldn’t glint from the white of my nose. The figure passed a couple of yards from my head, but didn’t pause. When I heard him at the north wall of the house, I got up and tiptoed after him. He must have seen the movement reflected in the French doors, because he whirled on his heel. Before he could bolt, I was running full tilt, tackling him around the knees. He cried out and fell underneath my weight.
It wasn’t a youth at all but a girl, with a pale narrow face and dark hair pulled back into a long braid. Her skin gave off the sour sweat of fear. I rolled away from her, but kept a strong grip on her shoulder. When she tried to break away, I tightened my hold.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed, terrified but fierce. Our breath made little white puffs in the night air.
“I’m a detective. I’m following up a report of housebreakers.” “Oh, I see: you work for the pigs.” Fear muted her scorn.
“That insult was old when I was your age. Are you Patty Hearst, stealing from your fellow robber barons to give to the terrorists, or Joan of Arc, rescuing the nation?”
The moon was riding high in the sky now; its cold light shone on the girl, turning her soft young face to marble. She scowled at my mockery but didn’t rise to the bait.
“I’m minding my own business. Why don’t you mind yours?”
“Are you the person who’s flashing a light in this house in the middle of the night?”
It’s hard to read expressions in the moonlight, but I thought she looked startled, even afraid, and she said quickly, “I came here on a dare. The other kids thought I was too chicken to go through this big deserted place at night.”
“And they’re lurking on the perimeter to see you make good on your word. Try another story.”
“You don’t have any right to question me. I’m not breaking any law” “That’s true, not yet, anyway, although it looked as though breaking and entering was going to be your next step. Is this where you and your boyfriend come to make out?”
Her eyes squinched shut in disgust. “Are you with the sex police? If I want to fuck my boyfriend, I’ll do it in comfort at home, not squirreling around in some abandoned attic.”
“So you know that the light is coming from the attic. That’s interesting.” She gasped but rallied. “You said it was the attic.”
“No. I said the house. But you and I both know you know what’s going on in here, so let’s not dance that dance.”
Her soft mouth puckered into a scowl. “I’m not breaking any laws, so let me go. Then I won’t sue you for assaulting me.”
“You’re too young to sue me yourself, but I suppose your parents will do it for you. Since you came on foot, you’re probably from one of these mansions. I suppose you’re like all the other rich kids I’ve ever met, so overindulged you never have to take responsibility for anything you do.”
That did rouse her. “I am responsible!” she shouted.
She wriggled out of my slackened grasp and rolled over. I grabbed at her arm, but only got her backpack. A furry wad came loose in my hands as she wrenched herself free. She sprinted through the opening to the gardens. I jumped up after her, stuffing the furry thing into my jeans as I ran.
As I crashed through the garden, she disappeared around the pond, heading for the woods behind the outbuildings. I charged up the path and tripped again on the loose brick. I was going too fast to catch my balance. I flapped my arms desperately, trying to keep upright, but tumbled sideways into the water.
Weeds and leaves clogged the surface. The water was only five feet deep, but I panicked, terrified that I wouldn’t be able to push my head through the tangled roots. When I finally broke through the rotting mass, I was several yards from the edge. I was freezing, my clothes so heavy with the brackish water that they pinned me like an iron shroud. My feet slipped on the clay bottom and I grabbed at the plants to stay upright. Instead my numb fingers closed around clammy flesh. One of the dead carp. I backed away in disgust so fast I fell over again. As I righted myself, I realized it wasn’t a fish I’d seized but a human hand.
CHAPTER 4
Once More Unto the Pokey, Dear Friends
I worked my way around to the head. It was a man, weighted down by his clothes, kept on the surface only by the tangle of weeds underneath him. I thrust my arm under his armpits and started dragging him, holding his head out of the water in case he wasn’t really dead. My feet kept slipping on the clay bottom. Pulling his waterlogged weight through that muck made my heart hammer. After some enormity of time, I managed to haul him to the pool’s edge. The water was half a foot below the pool’s perimeter. I took a deep breath, squatted in the rank plants, and did a dead lift to get him out.
My arm and leg muscles burned with fatigue. My own legs weighed about a ton each now. I lay my torso across the marble tiles surrounding the pool and managed to swing my legs over the side. My teeth were chattering so violently that my whole body shook. I lay on the sharp stone for a minute, but I couldn’t afford to stay here. I was remote from help; I’d die of cold if I didn’t move.
I got to my hands and knees and crawled to the man. I rolled him onto his back and cleaned the weeds out of his mouth and undid his tie and pushed on his chest and blew cold trembly gusts into his mouth, and, after five minutes, he was still as dead as he’d been when I’d clutched his hand in the water.
By now I was so cold I felt as though someone was slicing my skull with
knives. I pried the zipper of my windbreaker open and dug my cell phone out of one of the pockets. I couldn’t believe my luck: the little screen blinked its green lights at me and I was able to connect to the emergency network.
The dispatcher had trouble understanding me, my
teeth were chattering so loudly. Larchmont Hall, could I identify that? The first house you came to off the Dirksen Road entrance to Coverdale Lane? Could I turn on my car lights or the house lights so the emergency crew could find me? I’d come on foot? Just what was I doing there?
“Just tell the New Solway cops to come to Larchmont Hall,” I croaked. “They’ll find it.”
I severed the connection and looked wistfully at the house behind me. Maybe the dot-com millionaires had forgotten a bathrobe, or even a kitchen towel, when they left. I was halfway to the house when I realized that this would be my one chance alone with the dead man. Larchmont Hall was sealed like Fortress America. Without tools, with my hands frozen, I’d be lucky to have a door open before the cops arrived, but I’d have enough time to look for some ID on the body.
I found my flashlight near the French doors where I’d wrestled with the girl. I took it back with me to the dead man.
Was this my teenager’s boyfriend? Despite her smart remark about the sex police, were they meeting in the abandoned house-somehow bypassing the security system? Maybe he hadn’t made tonight’s rendezvous because he’d tripped over the same brick I’d stumbled on, fallen into the pond and hadn’t been able to fight free of the weeds. He hadn’t tried to take off his shoes or his clothes: I’d undone his tie and unbuttoned his shirt to give him CPR, but he had on a suit; belt, fly button and zipper were all tidily done up. The suit looked as though it had been a good one, a brown wool basket weave. He’d been wearing wing tips, not an outfit for the woods at night.
I moved my flashlight along the length of his body. He was about six feet tall, lean, not particularly athletic looking. His skin was a nut-brown, his hair African, which might explain the need for secret meetings in an abandoned house. Or maybe it was his age-he looked to be in his thirties. I could picture the girl attracted to an affair with an African-American:
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