Can this be achieved with DIVs?

I’ve been pulling my hair out over this one. I prefer not to use tables where possible (and so far this has been easy), but this particular effect seems impossible without the use of tables.

I have a main white cell (I’m using the word cell loosely here) that starts from the top of the page, but won’t necessarily go all the way down to the bottom. I don’t want to use fixed heights. This cell is then surrounded by a three directional shadow (left, right and downwards). To get the shadow right, there are images in both the bottom left and right corners, and to the top and right (or to the left for the right corner).

Sheesh it’s harder to word than I thought. Here is the page, in tabled ruins.

http://student.cgc.com.au/~s11958/peteal/test.html

If anyone can help me erradicate the tables and use only DIVs, I’d be very appreciative.