Sugar in Her Bowl

by India Maslany

  There was sound from the upstairs floor. Mr. Lockhart was moving about. "Time for the tenant's supper," Velma said. "And could we please have a moratorium on the Hangman in this house, at least for the rest of this evening?"

  She might as well have been ignored. "I'm sure Carter has something new to share with us tonight," Lamont said and Delia nodded in eager interest. "Well? Is there?" she asked, placing her hand on his arm, a gesture that didn't go unnoticed by Carter or Velma.

  "Bloodhounds," Carter said. Lamont and Delia's eyes went wide. Velma lowered her face to hide her concern. "We're seriously considering the use of bloodhounds," Carter elaborated.

  "That doesn't sound good at all," Velma said and suddenly, all eyes were on her again.

  Lamont looked at her with astonishment. "It's a very good idea," he said. "I'm surprised no one thought of it until now. I'm surprised I didn't think of it first! But then again, how can you have bloodhounds running around in town? Too many smells to distract them."

  Carter nodded, but held up his hand. "There was a man over in Myrtle who murdered a young boy in the woods and was found out by a bloodhound. That dog went from the murder scene all the way to the man's front door and wouldn't you know it, jumped on the man and pinned him down until the officers could cuff the murderer! That bloodhound brought that criminal to justice. But, the reality is... they're not much use in our peculiar, particular situation."

  "Why not?" Velma asked, now leaning into the conversation.

  "They're just not. If the Police Department was to give an ear to all the suggestions coming in since the Hangman first struck, we'd be even further behind." Carter sighed, realizing he would eventually have to leave Delia's presence and venture back outside to face his job.

  Quite honestly, Carter was sick of his job as a night detective. He had grown weary of the general unpleasant nature of the work, mainly because of the constant taunts and questions as to why he and the police hadn't caught the Hangman yet. In fact, some of his neighbors were those who had participated in some of the protests staged outside the Police Headquarters.

  "There's another letter about the Hangman," Delia said, breaking Carter's melancholic thoughts. "Dear Sir, I believe the Hangman, whoever the monster might be, has to be known by someone in Charleston. I find it impossible that someone could commit such horrendous deeds without someone suspecting or knowing the truth. Even the most nomadic individual is bound to have a neighbor or a relative who might consider that person as a suspect. What's 'nomadic' mean?" Delia asked.

  "I don't get the sense the Hangman is addled in any way," Lamont said, attempting to define the word, albeit unsuccessfully. Carter and Velma shrugged. Delia continued.

  "The person or persons who know the horrible secret are deliberately withholding information or evidence. Maybe they're doing it because they're afraid to be considered an accessory after the fact, or maybe they're holding out for a reward, or maybe they're waiting to blackmail the Hangman.

  "This is why I suggest the authorities show leniency and perhaps offer a reward to those who may know the Hangman's identity. This might be the only way to capture this fiend, unless he happens to get careless and wind up caught the next time he attempts his fiendish work.

  "Now that is a good letter. Makes a lot of sense," Carter said. He was almost touching Delia as he leaned in to look over her shoulder.

  "Yes, Mr. Carter?" she asked him, her face waiting for a reply. There was a slight smile on her lips.

  "Well... it reminds me of a case not too long ago." Carter looked at Lamont. "Do you remember that fella who killed the old man in the railroad boxcar? He took up to hiding with a woman his mother knew and she hid him for a long time. She finally gave him up to collect a reward."

  "I don't think I could give up anyone for the promise of a reward," Lamont said. Velma looked at him in surprise.

  "Of course you would, Lamont," Carter said. "You'd be doing what any good and honest citizen would do. Sure, it's a reward, but more important, it's a civic duty. Doing your part as a good citizen -- and getting something for it -- that's more than most people get for doing their duty."

  Lamont shook his head. "Someone who gives up another for a reward is an informer, in my opinion. A dirty rat. It's different for you, Carter. Your job is to catch these criminals. A man would be a fool to take refuge with you. It'd be like walking into the lion's den!" Lamont and Carter laughed together.

  Delia interrupted, "If I did anything, I would go to Mr. Carter for help."

  "I wouldn't give you up, Miss Delia. Not for any reward," Carter replied.

  Velma backed away and caused the small end table beside Lamont's chair to topple, sending a water glass tumbling to the floor.

  "Velma, you feeling all right?" Lamont asked, fearful that she might have a fainting spell.

  "Just a cramp in my side," she said with a sigh. "It's gone. Don't mind me at all."

  "I don't believe anyone who truly knows who the Hangman is," Carter said, resuming the conversation. "Seems to me that anyone who'd give him up would potentially be putting themselves in danger. Besides, who would give refuge to such a monster? It'd be dangerous. Like keeping a man-eater in your home!"

  "Do you think this Hangman," Velma asked, haltingly at first. "Is he responsible for the evil he does? That is, if he can't control his urge?"

  "That's a very good question. Some murderers clearly have addled brains, giving them compulsions to kill much like you or I would have a compulsion to eat our favorite food or read the newspaper," Carter said, to which Lamont scoffed. "But, I'd think someone like the Hangman would still be responsible enough for their misdeeds to hang. Especially after all the trouble he's given the police... us. No, I doubt we're dealing with someone who has some sort of mental illness."

  "Besides, hanging would be too good for that Hangman," Lamont said, chuckling to himself.

  "But what if he isn't responsible," Velma cried. "If the man is a lunatic, shouldn't he be kept under lock and key in an asylum? I've never heard anything so cruel as hanging someone who's touched in the head."

  "Now you're just being contrary," Lamont said with a smirk before looking at Carter and Delia. "The last couple of days, I've begun wondering if Velma here is taking the Hangman's side. Typical of someone who was born into the kind of religious upbringing she had."

  "You shush that nonsense, Lamont Barnes!" Velma said, taking a step toward Lamont. "So what if the Hangman is taking out the trash of Charleston? Who is he killing? Whores and drunkards! The bane of this fair city's existence." Lamont, Carter and Delia looked at Velma as if she herself needed taking to the asylum. She cleared her throat and straightened herself. "Delia, put down that paper. We've heard enough tonight. Go get the tablecloth while I get supper ready," she said.

  There was a long pause until Lamont spoke. "Yes. We don't want to forget Mr. Lockhart's supper, either." Velma nodded. "Mr. Lockhart doesn't always ring," Lamont said as he turned to Carter. "In fact, he's usually out and about by this time."

  "Not usually," Velma snapped. "Just every once in a while, when he needs to purchase something at the store. But I haven't forgotten his supper. He doesn't take it until before eight."

  "I can take Mr. Lockhart his supper, Velma," Delia said in a quiet yet eager voice. She was being obedient and submissive as she laid the cloth on the table.

  "Absolutely not!" Velma said, slapping her side in protest. "I told you he only wants me to wait on me. You keep to things down here -- that's the help I need from you."

  "I'd forgotten about your tenant," Carter said, turning his attention fully to Velma. "Everything going on all right?"

  "Never had such a quiet and well-behaved gentleman for a tenant," Lamont said. "He really turned our luck around, that Mr. Lockhart." Velma nodded and retreated to the kitchen.

  Once she was gone and out of earshot, Delia chuckled. "I've never laid eyes on him. Velma keeps him all to herself! If I was Daddy, I'd be jealous!"

  Lamont and Carte
r laughed. "What, Velma?" Lamont asked before laughing again.

  Chapter 12

  "I think Delia should go. Just because one wants to do whatever they want, doesn't mean they can!"

  Velma wasn't looking at either Lamont or Delia as she spoke the words into the open air of the front room. She told by the table, looking out the window. There was no hesitation in her voice and both father and daughter knew that once Velma spoke in such a way, there was no backing her off the notion.

  There was only silence for a moment until Delia cried, "Why should I go? Haven't I been helpful? Please don't make go back to the country, Daddy! Clearly Velma isn't feeling well. I can stay and--"

  "I am perfectly fine, thank you very much!" Velma snapped, turning to face her stepdaughter with fiery eyes.

  Delia turned her face to Lamont, who chose to look away from his wife and nods disapprovingly at her display. "Daddy, I don't get to spend time with you and Velma enough," she said, tears forming in her eyes. Lamont put his arm around her and looked at Velma, exhaling through his nose in quiet protest.

  A letter had arrived that morning, an invitation from her aunt -- Lamont's deceased wife's sister, Margaux -- who worked as a housekeeper in a large house in Columbia. Her employers, the family Aunt Margaux worked for, were leaving for the holidays and Delia's aunt asked, almost begged, her to come and spend a few days at the large house.

  Delia, however, had experienced life in that gloomy large house her Aunt Margaux tended for many years and she was over any idea of revisiting that dreary locale. Aunt Margaux was very old-fashioned in her mindset when it came to servitude. While her employers were away, Margaux considered it near heavenly bliss to wash all of the valuable china kept in the house and carefully place them back in the china cabinets, as if they were fragile relics or antiquities from an era long past.

  Aunt Margaux would also sleep in every bed, a different one each night, to keep them all well aired.

  The invitation wasn't for any kind of enjoyment. Rather, it was Aunt Margaux's attempt to enlist Delia in assisting her holiday work. Delia had no interest in such an effort. In light of the time she enjoyed with her father, stepmother... and Carter, she detested the idea of going to Columbia, no matter how relatively close it was to Charleston.

  Nevertheless, Aunt Margaux was urgent in her invitation, and Aunt Margaux, Lamont knew, was not one to take the answer no easily.

  When the letter arrived, the three were enjoying a surprisingly pleasant breakfast. Velma had even laughed at some of the stories Delia related about life in the country with her grandmother. The letter quickly dampened the mood and the three talked of nothing else.

  From the beginning, Velma advocated that Delia accommodate her Aunt Margaux. In her mind, there was no need to discuss or debate the matter. For once, Lamont openly opposed his wife and sided with his daughter, which only made Velma more stubborn and set in her opinion.

  "Now, hold on here," Lamont began. "What Delia is saying is true. You haven't been yourself lately. You fainted, Velma. You can't deny it. I could call Margaux and explain the situation to her and it would be fine. She'd understand. Then Delia can help around the house until you get your bearings again."

  "No, no, no! I won't have you doing any such thing!" Velma said, her voice rising higher and higher. She was about to cry out as Delia had done in protest. "I have just as much a right to be ill, a right to faint, and a right to feel better again, just like anyone else, and I won't have anyone making over me like I'm some invalid that's lost their mind!"

  Delia clasped her hands together as if in prayer. "Velma," she pleaded. "Please say you can't bear for me to leave. I don't want to go to that dank old dungeon my Aunt Margaux calls home."

  Velma looked at her stepdaughter, then her husband before turning to leave the room. "You know what? Do what you like. I'm sick of you both right now. And believe you me, Delia Barnes, there'll be a day when you'll know that money is the only thing that matters in this world. And when your dear Aunt Margaux's savings are left to someone else because you wouldn't help her during Christmas, then you'll see. You'll see what it's like to have nothing and you'll know what a silly foolish girl you were and there'll be nothing to do about it!"

  Just like that, Delia's hopes for a reprieve were dashed on the rocks. "Velma's right, girl," Lamont said. "Money does matter. A great deal. I won't say it's the only thing that matters, but... it would be a bad idea to offend your Aunt Margaux. Besides, it'll only be a few days and then I'll come and fetch you myself." Lamont looked at Velma, as if defying her with the notion that he would indulge in the expense of going up to Columbia himself to retrieve his daughter from the dungeon, as Delia called it.

  Her father's last words were not received, for Delia had rushed from the front room, in tears, to the kitchen to hide her weeping and utter disappointment. She was a girl entering womanhood and her emotions were fragile things, the desire to be a woman mingled with the desire to make a place in the world for herself and not a grandmother or an aunt. She thought of Carter, the sweet young man who made her light up from within and how his smile and his warm brown eyes and his strong frame made her feel something that gave such a hopeful tone to the future as she tried to imagine.

  And speaking of Carter, Aunt Margaux wasn't the type of woman to tolerate a stranger of a young man showing up at her residence. What's more, she had a strong dislike for law enforcement.

  "I had no idea it would hit her so hard," Lamont said of his daughter while Velma looked at him, the last looks of contempt leaving her face.

  "You know good well why it hit her so hard," Velma said. Lamont looked at her, as if waiting for her to provide an explanation to something he apparently overlooked. "It's as plain as the nose on your face, Lamont Barnes."

  "What do you mean? I know I can be a bit slow on the up-take, Velma, but what are you going on about?" Lamont genuinely seemed puzzled.

  "Carter, Lamont, Carter! Just last summer, before Delia came here, you told me that Carter had taken a liking to Delia and was asking about her nearly every time he saw you."

  "Oh," Lamont said.

  "Oh," Velma mimicked him in reply.

  "Do you think Delia likes him?" There was a hushed yet excited tone in Lamont's voice.

  Velma managed a thin smile, the ice breaking slightly in her rough exterior. "I'll put it to you this way: Delia will have plenty of time to get tired of Carter before those two go to meet the good Lord. You watch and see!"

  "She could do a whole hell of a lot worse," Lamont said. "Steady fella, steady as the day is long, and he's making a decent living as a detective. Good pension, from what I heard. Still, I wonder how her grandmother would feel, knowing she'd lose Delia like that."

  "Who cares what her grandmother thinks? Delia has to make a life for her own, that's true. No, I wouldn't give all the Pharaoh's treasure for what your former mother-in-law thinks about whether her granddaughter should remain living with her until she becomes an old maid, tending to another old maid." Velma gave a sharp exhale of air, a sound of opposition to the idea and to the notion of what Delia's grandmother thought or how she mattered in Delia's future.

  Lamont looked at his wife as if she had changed into another person, for the tune she was now singing seemed strangely opposite from what she had been saying in Delia's presence. One minute, she was eager for Delia to leave; the next, eager for her to make a life for herself, without the presence of family dragging her into something she didn't want to do.

  "If she's still upset at dinner tonight," Velma said. "I'll excuse myself to do some shopping and you can talk to her about Carter. My advice is you tell her something like 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder.' She listens to her Daddy and she'll take that to heart. It'll make her feel better.

  "I wonder if Carter would go all the way up to Columbia to see her," Lamont thought absently, speaking to the air.