For tonight’s trip, I parked on one of the residential streets on the northeast corner of the New Solway township. I walked the two miles south along Dirksen, the road that divided New Solway from a golf course on its eastern boundary.

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.