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 without 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?”