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.