Chapter 30 #2
today. She picked up the North China Herald. She would take it to the small parlor and put it on Caroline’s desk. She skimmed the pages while walking up the stairs.
Andrew Grey’s murder was still of interest—it was an ongoing investigation, and there were more details about the murder.
Police ask witnesses to come forward. If anyone was in the vicinity of 26 Rue Voisin near Les Trois Lanternes Hotel and saw anything unusual between 10:30 and 11:30 on the morning of March 22 please contact the Shanghai Municipal Police.
Police are still searching for the murder weapon, which they think is very likely a blade of six to eight inches, an inch and a half wide, with a sharp, tapered tip.
Like the carving knife that had turned up again. But surely that description fit any number of knives. Ju Ming’s words echoed.
But what would Mrs. Stanton be doing on a shabby street like the Rue Voisin, which is nothing but cheap hotels and cheap cafés? Instead of continuing to the attic, Lisan went to her room and opened her gray notebook, thumbed through the pages she had
updated—not Caroline’s upcoming engagements but the entries from a few days ago.
March 22. AG, 26 Rue V. 10.
The initials, the address. Did “10” mean ten in the morning? Lisan shook her head. She needed to pack her own bag. As she
climbed slowly up the attic stairs, her mind kept flashing back to Andrew Grey’s gloating face, his taunting words. I know your secret. And then to Masako Kyo’s matter-of-fact accusation. And you’re impersonating Caroline Vessey. No, it was preposterous.
In the attic, she pulled out her carpetbag. But somehow, she didn’t get to the door. She found herself kneeling in front of
the pictures leaning against the wall, found her hand reaching out to turn Rosalie’s portrait around. The soft mouth looked
as if Rosalie was about to say something, the eyes were alert, as though in warning. Although her face looked straight out
from the picture, it seemed to Lisan that Rosalie was staring at the wooden crates on the opposite wall. But she’d already
been through the boxes of silverware.
But not the second crate. The one marked Caroline Vessey bedroom.
She lifted aside the lid and leaned it against the wall.
At the very top was the cardboard box Caroline had dropped in panic when the rat ran across her foot.
There was a label pasted to the box: Miss Fielding’s Finishing School for Young Ladies: Memories of 1905.
It contained a school yearbook. Glancing into the box, she noticed a few other similar cardboard boxes, labeled for previous
years. She turned the pages of the yearbook.
The first pages contained photographs of clubs and school activities.
Helping at St. Francis Orphanage. Tennis Tournament.
Flower Arranging. Girls dressed in uniforms of ruffled white pinafores over long plaid skirts, names listed in the caption below each photograph.
She turned the pages and then saw Spring Musical: The Pirates of Penzance. A photograph of the entire cast and chorus, the caption below listing their names, left to right. She scanned the names and
there it was: Caroline Vessey, third row, second from the left. But the face in the third row was plain and thin, hair tucked
into a frilly costume bonnet. Could it be a mistake? There were so many girls in the production, had the yearbook committee
made a mistake labeling the picture? She looked at each face carefully, found Caroline in the front row. But the corresponding
name on the list was not Caroline Vessey. Eleanor Fontaine.
On the next page, the photograph showed a pretty girl, undoubtedly the Caroline she knew, in a dress with puffy sleeves and
a beribboned bonnet at the front of the stage, a few chorus members in the background. Lisan clearly recalled Caroline’s words
as she was getting ready to attend an evening performance. How much she had detested the Gilbert and Sullivan musicals at
school. It was The Pirates of Penzance and I sang the role of Mabel in an awful puffy yellow dress and bonnet. Except that the names below this photograph didn’t mention Caroline Vessey. Eleanor Fontaine.
Heart racing, she thumbed through the pages until she reached Graduating Class of 1905. Individual photos, no chance of mistaken identities. There were only two photographs she cared about. With a low cry, Lisan dropped the yearbook, which fell into the crate.
She sat on the floor, back against the wall, knees close to her chest. You’re impersonating Caroline Vessey. Was this what the warning meant? That the woman Lisan knew as “Mrs. Stanton” had taken her classmate’s identity, deceived
a man into marrying her? Now she was preparing to leave Shanghai and continue her pretense, this time as a wealthy widow.
Lisan had been about to travel the world with a woman who had lied about her identity. Her life could’ve become dependent
on the goodwill of someone like that.
I know your secret, Andrew Grey had said. Was this the secret? Had he revealed that secret to Kyo? Why had Caroline—she couldn’t think of her
yet as Eleanor—met him on the day he was murdered? Perhaps it was simply a coincidence. But the carving knife in the other crate, its gleaming
steel nestled in a velvet-lined slot, told her otherwise.
And there was something else. She pressed her back against the wall, trying to pinpoint the source of her unease. Caroline
had seemed relieved at Thomas’s death. And who could blame her when he’d suffered so much, when she had stayed up night after
night to exhaustion, dark circles swelling under her blue-green eyes? Was it possible that . . . No, it was Mason, it had
to be. Caroline wouldn’t harm her own husband.
She had to leave Lennox Manor, and quickly. Thank goodness her few belongings would be easy to pack. Suddenly she understood
the sensation of danger, of warning. It wasn’t Charles’s ghost trying to frighten her. Come find me, Rosalie had pleaded in those earlier dreams, willing Lisan to understand what she needed. And now Lisan was being warned
to get out.
From across the room, Rosalie regarded her with sad eyes. She now seemed resigned to the fact that Lisan would never come find her. She wanted Lisan to get away from Lennox Manor. Away from the woman she called “Mrs. Stanton.”
Oh, why had she been so stubborn with Yao? Why hadn’t she gone home with him? She would tell Caroline she was resigning, like
all the other servants. She would not accompany her to the hotel tonight. She’d carry her carpetbag to Jessfield Station,
where any number of donkey carts and rickshaws were available for hire. Sometimes there were even taxis, and right now she
was willing to pay the insane expense of riding in an automobile just to get back to Master Liu’s. She’d walk all the way
if she had to, in pouring rain. The thought of facing Mrs. Stanton was more daunting than the prospect of a three-hour walk.
But most important of all, she couldn’t let the American woman suspect she’d discovered her secret. Andrew Grey was ample
warning of that. Footsteps up the staircase sent her back to the wooden crate, frantically pulling the heavy wooden lid off
the floor. But the attic door opened before she could replace the lid properly and it sat askew on the crate.
“Oh good, you’re up here,” Mrs. Stanton said. “The lawyers are gone. Mason had a drink or three, then went to his room to
sleep it off. I looked at what you packed and it’s perfect. Have you done your own packing yet?”
She stopped at the sight of Lisan and her eyes took in the wooden crate, its misaligned lid, Lisan’s stricken face and trembling
hands.
The blue eyes narrowed, glimmered green. She crossed the room to the crate, moved the lid aside, and smiled. “You were snooping
through my yearbook,” she said, picking it up.
Lisan couldn’t deny it. The book had been lying at the top, not even in its cardboard box. And she couldn’t hide the anxiety
on her face. She nodded. “It’s none of my business, Mrs. Stanton,” she said. “I won’t mention this to anyone.”
“I should’ve burned these,” Mrs. Stanton said, “but after seeing that rat, I hated coming up unless it was absolutely necessary.”
It had been absolutely necessary to return the knife, Lisan thought, never taking her eyes off the woman. A stranger now.
Someone dangerous.
“It was a risk,” the American woman said, flipping through the pages. Her voice grew almost dreamy. “But not many people in
New York outside the Dominic household knew Caroline Vessey. Mrs. Dominic always pestered her to improve her appearance, always
wanted her to change her hair, select more flattering dresses, and to get out more. Get some exercise to correct her posture.
It made her self-conscious so she often pretended to be unwell because she hated meeting people and rarely left the apartment.”
The words poured out. How easy it had been to go along with what people assumed, how the little snatch of memory about Danby’s
dislike of caviar had clinched her identity for the Dominics’ lawyer.
“It was a large party and I had to help with the serving,” she said. “I was beside Caroline, holding a tray of hors d’oeuvres,
when Mr. Dominic introduced Danby to Caroline. But, of course, Danby never noticed me, I was just the help.”
The woman’s words mesmerized Lisan. How she and Lisan had so much in common because they were both orphans, left destitute.
How by working in the Dominic household, she had ensured she wouldn’t starve but neither did she have a future, or a path
to independence. She was locked into a life of servitude.
“Now tell me honestly, Lisan,” she said, tossing the yearbook into the crate, “wouldn’t you have been tempted to do the same?
To seize such an opportunity to escape from a future where the best you could hope for was, what, paid companion to some rich,
lonely spinster? A governess to spoiled children? Wife to some bank clerk or a grocer?”
“Tempted, yes,” Lisan said, “but I couldn’t be as bold. I’d be afraid that someone from my past might recognize me.” Someone like Andrew Grey, perhaps.
Mrs. Stanton held out her hand to Lisan. “Now that you know my secret, you can hold it over me, do you realize that? But somehow
that doesn’t worry me, because I trust you. We’ll travel the world together.”
“Mrs. Stanton,” Lisan said, not taking her hand, “I’ve thought it over and I’m sorry. I won’t be going with you to the hotel.
I must resign my position with you. And now I must go pack.”
The blond head tilted, green eyes gazed at her. “But why? What’s in Shanghai for you? You’re overeducated for an orphan girl,
undereducated for a teacher. Do you think you’ll get a better offer for a better life?”
Lisan glanced across the attic at Rosalie’s portrait, a ripple of fear gripping her even though Mrs. Stanton had not made
any threatening moves.
“I’ve trusted you with my secrets, Lisan,” she said, “and now are you going to trade silence for money like the others?” Her
eyes glinted a deep, impenetrable green and her cheeks were flushed.
“No, Mrs. Stanton, I would never do that,” Lisan said, keeping her voice steady, “and I understand why you became Caroline
Vessey, why you took over her life. I do. I don’t blame you for that. It didn’t harm anyone.”
“No, you’re so right, Lisan,” Mrs. Stanton said, musing, “impersonation is a crime, but it didn’t harm a single person. And
you should understand that I would do anything, anything, to hold on to this life. Well then, go pack your bag and come see
me after; I shall write you a check for your wages.”