Chapter 28
Lisan and Chin settled in the privacy of the butler’s pantry, the head servant’s domain, where Chin told her everything about
Rosalie.
“My wife—that was how we thought of each other, husband and wife—was half-Italian,” he said. “I was cleaning rooms in the
same hotel where she worked as a laundress. After Rosalie was born, we decided we could do better working for a foreign family.”
Having learned some English and French at the hotel, Chin was able to find a housekeeping position at the home of a young
French bank clerk; Chin’s wife worked as their laundress. The clerk’s wife allowed them—Chin, his wife, and baby Rosalie—to
live in the servants’ quarters at the back of the house. The French couple had a daughter the same age as Rosalie. But Chin’s
wife died during a cholera epidemic and so did the banker’s little girl. The grieving Frenchwoman offered to look after Rosalie
for a few days until Chin found an amah, and became so fond of Rosalie that even after Chin hired an amah, she continued to
spoil the child.
“She had been a music teacher in France and she taught Rosalie to sing and play a little bit of piano,” Chin said, “to speak
French, read and write a little bit. And also some English.”
When the clerk left Shanghai for another posting, the wife wept over Rosalie, who was seventeen at the time.
She gave Rosalie some small bits of jewelry and money, told her to take voice lessons.
This, even though there was no respectable future for a girl onstage.
It would be even worse for Rosalie, being of mixed race.
The foreign woman knew no better and Rosalie was too young to fully understand.
Yet a career in opera was Rosalie’s greatest desire and Chin could not dissuade her.
Chin went to work for Mason Burnett at Lennox Manor. He gave Rosalie part of his wages to help her rent a cheap room in the
city and take voice lessons. When Mason gave the house to his son, Charles, Chin stayed on as Number One Boy. The only work
Rosalie could find was as a nightclub singer, work she had to take if she wanted to stay in her rented room. She had come
to realize there was no future for her in opera and that in Chinese society, actresses and singers were no better than prostitutes.
“I didn’t like what she was doing, ” Chin said. “I begged her to find work as a lady’s maid, an amah, something respectable.
Then one day the nightclub’s owner threatened to fire Rosalie unless she brought in more customers.”
Chin worried she would end up someplace worse than the Golden Rooster. When he realized Charles Burnett fancied himself a
patron of the arts, he gave Charles the nightclub’s card. He hoped Charles might patronize the Golden Rooster regularly.
“You know the rest,” he said. “I had promised her no one would know she was my daughter so that she could concoct a more glamorous
story for her stage career. She used the French clerk’s last name for her stage name: Rosalie Roussel.”
“But you don’t know where Rosalie went when she ran away from Charles?” Lisan said. “No letters, not even one?”
“No. We had argued,” Chin said. “She refused to leave Charles even though he had turned into a brute. I threatened to tell
Charles the truth if she didn’t leave him. I thought he’d divorce her if he knew she was merely a servant’s child.”
By then Chin was the only servant remaining at Lennox Manor.
The others had left, their wages unpaid.
Chin only stayed because of Rosalie, and now after their fight he left too.
He went to see Mason Burnett and reported on the situation, and Mason went to see Charles.
When he came back, he told Chin to go to Lennox Manor.
Father and son had reconciled, and he told Chin to bring some food to the house and tidy things up.
But when Chin arrived, he found Charles’s body hanging in the foyer. There was no sign of Rosalie.
“Master Mason blames Rosalie for running off and breaking her husband’s heart. That’s what all Shanghai believes. She may
never come back, but if she does, I hope she’ll come looking for me here. Or she may write to me at this address.” Chin’s
voice was forlorn.
“She will come back, Chin,” Lisan said, “a daughter always needs her father.” This was the longest conversation she’d ever
had with Chin. The head servant seemed relieved to confide in someone, finally. She wished she hadn’t burned Rosalie’s diary.
“I should go up and see if Mrs. Stanton needs anything.”
“There is another thing, Miss Liu,” he said, “about Master Thomas. Did the doctor know about his hair falling out? Wasn’t
he concerned? I ask because of something that happened when I worked at the hotel. A guest committed suicide by swallowing
poison. I heard about it from other servants, how terribly she suffered from stomach pain. But the most curious thing: her
hair had begun to fall out.”
“I’m sure the doctor knows,” Lisan assured him, “because I mentioned it to Mrs. Stanton. I could ask if she told Dr. Ellis.”
At the look on Chin’s normally bland features, it dawned on her. “Are you thinking of the missing rat poison?”
Chin’s eyes were troubled. Her thoughts flew to Mason and the argument she’d overheard outside Thomas’s room. Mason needed money. Thomas had left money to the company in his will. “Chin, do you think Mr. Stanton is being poisoned?”
The grim look on his face was all the answer she needed.
An hour after Chin told Lisan about Rosalie, Thomas Stanton died.
The house servants who had been responsible for the sickroom had of course reported the invalid’s details to their colleagues.
The servants were an avid and superstitious audience, deliberating on every aspect of Thomas’s condition. Caroline, they all
agreed, had nursed her husband with utter constancy, sharing with her servants the disgusting work of cleaning up his vomit
and diarrhea, of holding him while he screamed in pain. She had watched over him so carefully, with such attention, each sign
of decline in Thomas creasing her forehead with fresh worry. She had more than earned her breaks, her short excursions into
the city to buy some perfume, look at jewelry, stop for coffee and patisseries.
Lisan wasn’t sure what to do. Caroline was on her own now, her husband’s body with the undertakers. She was living in the
house where her husband had been murdered. With his murderer. But without proof, how could Lisan bring up her suspicions about
Mason Burnett? How could she ask Caroline to take her seriously? Most importantly, was Caroline in danger?
Then there was Masako Kyo’s second visit—nothing to do with Lisan, Caroline had assured her, but what Lisan had overheard
disturbed her.
And you’re impersonating Caroline Vessey. Kyo had been just outside the front door, Lisan just coming along the hallway. Had she heard Kyo correctly? There was a lot
Lisan didn’t know but she did know that Kyo delighted in causing trouble.
If Master Liu’s plan was still for her to leave Shanghai, Lisan only had a few days left at Lennox Manor.
Not very long ago, she could never have imagined her life might change so radically.
A new country, a new identity. A father.
But even though revelations of her past hammered through her head, even as she struggled to fathom an uncertain future, it was Lennox Manor that consumed her thoughts.
Both sleeping and waking, it was as though the house demanded something of her.
Zhao the cook and his son left the day after Thomas died. Zhao made his farewells to Lisan before going, an apologetic look
on his face, explaining that he’d cooked enough food to last them several more days. Zhao rattled off the dishes he had made,
some in the icebox, some in the pantry in covered containers. Beef stew, a baked ham, cold tongue, a pair of roast chickens,
two kinds of soup, custard, and stewed fruit.
“This house is cursed, Miss Liu,” he said, “but how could it not be, with Master Burnett’s son committing suicide here? And
now Master Thomas has died. You should leave too, before the ghost decides to haunt you.”
“Zhao, Mr. Stanton wasn’t haunted to death,” she said with more than a little exasperation. “He died from . . . from parasites.”
And from an incompetent doctor who couldn’t recognize signs of poisoning.
“He may have caught parasites,” Zhao said ominously, “but in the end he died because the house is cursed. At first, he was
getting better. I could tell. He was starting to eat more. And then his hair fell out. The ghost took him.”
Caroline had written an obituary, which she handed to Lisan, asking her to make sure it was hand-delivered to the North China Herald. It announced the date and time for Thomas’s funeral at Bubbling Well Cemetery.
“Charles Burnett is buried there,” Caroline said, “and Mason is giving Thomas the plot beside it. Mason bought it for himself
but now it’s for Thomas.”
Lisan busied herself tidying the papers stacked on the walnut desk in Caroline’s parlor. Caroline and Mason were in Shanghai
making funeral arrangements, selecting a coffin and gravestone, speaking to the priest.
Lisan had canceled all upcoming engagements. However, she hadn’t yet updated her own notebook. She had meant to do it so many
times, and it didn’t feel very important anymore after the tragedy of Thomas’s death, nor would it matter once she left China,
but the routine of tedious clerical work appealed to her right now. It felt calming. It helped keep the pounding headache
at bay.
She copied the cancellations into her gray notebook; then, for the sake of thoroughness, she flipped back a few pages in Caroline’s
blue appointment book, making sure to duplicate anything Caroline might’ve added herself the previous week. A few of Caroline’s
notations were cryptic: initials, address, time of day, notes that only Caroline understood, perhaps a telephone call to make,