Chapter 4 #3
noisy talk she’d heard from the corridor stopped as soon as she stepped inside. The servants were seated around the shorter
of the two tables. Head servant Chin wasn’t there, and neither was Yao. An older man with a kerchief tied over his bald head
bustled up to her and began making introductions.
Old Zhao, the senior cook, lost no time informing Lisan that he had cooked for the cream of Shanghai society, having trained in the kitchens of the Astor House Hotel, where the chef had been brought over especially from France.
“That’s my son and assistant—just call him Young Zhao.” His son was lanky and pimpled, busy at the stove adding some final
seasonings to a pot of spicy pork stew. He nodded in Lisan’s direction as his father continued with introductions to the four
house servants.
“Liao is Number Two Boy,” he said as a middle-aged man bobbed his head and grinned at her. “His brother, Little Liao, is Number
Three Boy. Then there’s Da Wu, Number Four Boy. And his baby brother, Xiao Wu, Number Five. I call them by number, who can
remember these idiots’ names?”
The house servants laughed good-naturedly, not at all offended. From Little Liao on down, they were all young men in their
twenties. Xiao Wu, the youngest, looked no more than twelve. “Old Zhao, you can call us anything as long as you feed us,”
said Da Wu. “Xiao Wu, a chair for Miss Liu.”
The boy stood up with a shy smile and moved a chair into place for her. “What about you, Miss Liu?” his brother, Da Wu, asked.
“Where did you work before this?”
“At a foreign school, St. Clare’s Hall,” she said, and they all nodded at the mention of the famous school. “But what can
you tell me about our employers?”
“The owner of this house is Mason Burnett,” said Liao. “The new arrivals are his nephew Thomas Stanton and wife, Missy Caroline,
your boss. The nephew is already very rich, a millionaire who made his fortune in mining, and now he’s here to get into railways.
That’s the gossip I’ve heard, anyway.”
“But we really don’t know much,” Da Wu chimed in, “because except for Chin, we’re all new. We were hired only a couple of
weeks before the Stantons came.”
“So Master Mason lived here alone, without any other staff?” Lisan asked, confused. “For how long?” The name Mason Burnett started niggling at her. There was something about that name. A troubling something that crept along the edges of her mind.
“Chin has been here the longest,” Little Liao offered. “He’s been with Master Mason the whole time. You should ask him. We’ve
tried but he just ignores us and makes it clear he doesn’t want to chat. He’s a good house manager but not very friendly.”
“This has not been a happy house,” said Zhao the cook, “and there’s a strange feel about the place. But it’s livelier since
the young couple arrived. A dinner party the other night. Excellent menu. Soon there will be loud music and dancing, as is
the way of foreigners.”
“Not a happy house?” she prompted.
“You know this house is cursed, don’t you?” said Da Wu, leaning forward eagerly. “My auntie warned me against working here,
but how does one turn down steady employment?”
“Cursed how?” Lisan smiled. She prided herself on her St. Clare’s education, one that disparaged superstition. “Tell me what
you know.”
The servants talked over each other in their impatience to repeat the gossip and rumors they’d heard about the house. It had
acquired a reputation years ago from its first owner, the man who built Lennox Manor. He was a Scottish opium trader who hired
an architect to design a stately mansion enhanced with Chinese flourishes. But Shanghai’s high life trapped him in its decadent
whirl and gambling debts eventually forced him to sell Lennox Manor ten years later. He died shortly after, penniless and
friendless.
Mason Burnett then bought the house for a pittance and lived there for a time.
When his son, Charles, came of age, he gave him Lennox Manor along with a large sum of money to start his own business.
He wanted Charles to prove himself and to marry well.
But Charles went bankrupt, his businesses failed, and his debts dragged him down.
Then his wife left and he took his own life.
People said he had been madly in love with her and couldn’t take the loss.
After this tragedy, only three years ago, Mason Burnett moved into Lennox Manor and had lived here alone since.
“This house is badly designed, that’s why it’s unlucky,” said Liao. “Look at the main staircase, directly facing the front
entrance, allowing luck and wealth to pour downstairs and out the door.” There were murmurs of agreement, heads shaking at
such disregard for basic feng shui.
“Imagine, a foreigner committed suicide right here in this house!” Little Liao said, his bright eyes agog at the thought.
“Miss Liu, do you think his ghost follows Chinese rules or foreign ones?”
There followed a spirited argument about whether the souls of foreign people who died in China returned to their native land
or remained here until the body was sent home. If Charles Burnett’s ghost was bound to the laws of the Chinese afterlife,
then everyone living at Lennox Manor was in peril, since death by suicide created the most dangerous kind of ghost. Only by
getting another soul to replace it in the afterlife could such a ghost move on to reincarnation; thus it was compelled to
drive another victim to self-destruction through madness or despair. It begat a never-ending cycle of death.
“If Mason Burnett is so rich,” Lisan said, changing the subject, “why did he let his son go bankrupt? Why didn’t he help?
With money, advice, connections?”
“Father and son were estranged,” Old Zhao said. “Master Mason didn’t approve of the woman his son married. She was a nightclub
singer, not a real lady. They say she only married him for money, and when that was gone . . .” He shrugged.
“The son hanged himself,” said Young Zhao, bringing a vat of pork stew to the table. “Tied the rope to a post on the third-floor mezzanine and jumped. They say he dangled there all night until the last remaining servant found him.”
Lisan shuddered at the thought. To walk in and find a corpse hanging in the foyer. The uneasy sensation when she’d heard the
name Burnett now made sense. “I remember now,” she said, “the story was in the newspapers, did you say three years ago?”
“We shouldn’t talk about him,” Xiao Wu said. His small face was serious and concerned. “It’s been very quiet but we don’t
want to wake up bad spirits by talking about them. You should paste a pair of fu scrolls to either side of your bedroom door to ward off ghosts, Miss Liu. Just in case the ghost follows Chinese rules. You
should put a vase of willow branches in your room too.”
“I don’t think Missy Caroline would approve of Chinese good luck scrolls glued to her wallpaper,” Lisan said to the boy, “but
I’ll consider the willow branches.”
“There’s a willow tree by the lake. I’ll cut some branches for you in the morning,” Xiao Wu said. Then he pulled a wooden
bangle from his wrist and handed it to her solemnly. “Peach wood, carved with amulets to fend off evil spirits. I have another
one for myself. My auntie gave me all sorts of good luck charms and amulets when she learned I would be working here.”
She smiled at the boy and slipped the bangle onto her wrist. “I promise to wear this at all times. Thank you, Xiao Wu.”
“Now, where is Chin,” Old Zhou said, “and that new gardener, Yao? Number Three, stop being such a glutton, leave some rice
for them. Ah, here they come.” The tall head servant entered, a young man following behind.
Lisan’s heart skipped a beat, as it always did when she saw him.
Yao had a square and pleasant face. Like the others, he wore servant’s garb, a blue tunic with a high collar over loose black trousers.
Unexpectedly and unlike the others, his hair was cut short in the Western style instead of long and pulled back in a queue.
But his good looks were not what flustered her, because she knew him, though not very well.
Each time she saw him, Lisan was flooded with a sensation of familiarity, of instant trust and security. Yet at the same time,
his presence filled her with dread, a premonition or a memory, something intangibly disturbing. She had so many questions
for Yao, but the conflicting emotions assailed her so forcefully that she didn’t know where to begin. He was also an orphan,
another stray picked up by Master Liu, who then sent Yao to be trained as a gardener in Soochow, a city famous for its exquisite
classical gardens. She wasn’t quite sure exactly when she’d first met Yao; she had the impression that he had joined the Liu
household before her. Yao visited Shanghai every so often, and although he and Lisan exchanged friendly greetings, he mostly
spent his time with Master Liu, talking about landscaping and penjing.
The gardener nodded at the diners and filled his bowl with rice and stew. His eyes lingered on her as Zhao made the introductions,
but he didn’t volunteer that he already knew her so Lisan took her cue from him. For the servants at Lennox Manor, the knowledge
that Lisan and Yao knew each other might spur inquisitive questions, and at least for now, she didn’t want to fend off their
curiosity. She sensed that Yao felt the same; he’d always been friendly but kept his distance, and not just from her.
She concentrated on her lunch, barely listening to the lively voices around her, trying to decipher the odd feeling that came
over her whenever she saw the gardener. She chanced a quick look at the end of the table where Yao sat eating. He was listening
to Young Zhao, the assistant cook. He took his eyes away from Young Zhao for a moment and smiled at her.