In fact, the arrival of a mystery man like Hasslebrook had whetted her appetite for the chase, and she used the same tactic as she had in discovering that Reverend Quade was an author. One morning the postman arrived earlier than usual, and the Duchess, from her vantage point in ground-level front, saw him wheel into the oval, park his postal van in the space reserved and hurry into the lobby, where he distributed the letters in the boxes and then stacked the half-dozen larger packages in the customary space outside the locked area. As soon as he had gone the Duchess swept out of her apartment wearing a French-style lace peignoir over her nightgown, hurried to the stack of packages and rummaged through them, taking note of who was receiving what, and after finding little but the regular sort of thing arriving for the regular sort of recipient—L.L. Bean catalogs for the men, Neiman Marcus for their wives—she struck what she recognized as a gold mine. It was the first package ever received for newcomer Hasslebrook, and it was the kind that looked as though it contained either a pair of oversized books or a collection of papers that should not be folded.
