Quigley's List (The Bedfordshire Tales)

[This is an excerpt from the NaNoWriMo novel in a month challenge. This chapter has not been edited yet.] 

Chapter 4 - Mr. Quigley's List

(This is a tale about an English town called Bedfordshire - except that isn't its real name and these people aren't really English.)
    If you polled the citizens of Bedfordshire, there is little doubt Lawrence Quigley would bring up the bottom of everyone's "nice" list, except maybe his mother's, but she had died some twenty-three years before.
     It turns out, Mr. Quigley had a list of his own. Every night, before he turned out his light - even before he recorded his daily expenses and compared them to budget - he wrote the names of the ten people he wished would not be alive when he awakened the next morning. No one was quite sure how the town learned of Mr. Quigley's list, but learn they did. When children passed his house at night and saw his bedroom light on, their pace always quickened.
Lawrence Quigley wasn't a happy man, but he was content. He had his art, which gave his imagination sufficient exercise and was his muted joy as well as his vocation. He had his house, bought for its location, far from town, and for its size, with plenty of room for storing wood and the carvings he would coax out of it.
    Mr. Quigley didn't like change and didn't enjoy people. Curiously, both arrived at his doorstep one Monday afternoon in the form of a young woman wearing a faded satin dress.
Her name was Harriet True.    

    The man who lived at then end of Larreby Lane was a man with no past, at least not one anyone could recall. Even people his exact age, those who recalled that he was in their class at school, had little or nothing to say about him. The few who did talk of him, came up with stories that had the ring of a dime novel.
    Boasting an unwritten, unrevealed history, Mr. Quigley was not unlike Bedfordshire itself. And Mr. Quigley's list was one of the keys that would unlock the mystery in which this town had shrouded itself.
    A wood carver by trade, Mr. Quigley created quite exquisite small figures of knights and horses and other wondrous things that adorned the mantles of very rich people. At least, this was the Bedfordshire belief, supported every fortnight by the arrival of a small lorry in front of Mr. Quigley's house whence two men would transfer a quantity of fine oak branches to a covered shed tucked into the corner of the backyard. The deliverymen would then enter the house and emerge a half hour later carrying two packing crates that they would load into their lorry - very, very carefully and always under the watchful eye of their owner.
     No one had actually seen any of Mr. Quigley's carvings, but that carving is what he did was clear and indisputable, as these things often are in small towns, where any story repeated more than five times becomes fact.
One thing should be clarified before we proceed further: describing Mr. Quigley as not nice does not imply that he was mean. He was not cruel to people, he simply was not nice to them.
     He went to town every day and rarely returned a "good morning", seldom inquired as to anyone's health, never offered a comment on how attractive someone looked or how interestingly a store's merchandise was displayed, never said hello, or thank-you, or good-bye, and never, ever smiled, even when Mr. Robertson ran right down the middle of Dommer Avenue in his underwear, chasing a little brown and white terrier whose mouth tightly gripped his master's newly arrived, and very expensive, mail-order toupee.
    Lawrence Quigley carved beautiful wood figures, almost always animals in heroic poses such as a stag standing on a hillside, his head cocked for anything that might threaten the herd. He spent all day in a small room, really a windowed day porch that was his studio, carefully turning oak branches into horses and heroes. Sometimes in the spring, always in the summer, and usually in the fall, this work proceeded quickly and expertly. But in the severe winter months his work slowed as cold fingers struggled for the proper grip on carving tools and many works died in progress, the victims of a slipped knife or a hesitant hand.
     This winter slowdown occurred because Mr. Quigley had no stove in his studio and heating a whole house to capture extra warmth in his studio seemed a waste. Mr. Quigley deplored waste so much it was rumored that he still shaved with a razor blade he bought in 1982.
Early one spring morning, as Mr. Quigley left his house, he was observed checking his watch and writing the time in an edge-worn leather notebook. The rest of Mr. Quigley's journey was pieced together from various eyewitness accounts at O'Malleys Pub later that evening.
On his rounds, Mr. Quigley had paid visits to Rodger's Grocery, Albert's Butcher Shop, Towne Hardware, and Wilson's Fix-it place, the proprietors of which were also long-time town residents who had attended the same school Sean O'Malley had and obviously paid more attention during class when the proper use of the apostrophe was covered.
So far, Mr. Quigley's routine was normal. But, at each and every establishment, upon entering and leaving, he had made a careful note of the time. Everyone agreed that was decidedly not normal.
     Guessing the meaning of this strange activity occupied the patrons at O'Malleys for the entire evening, which was just as well because there were no cricket matches on the telly that day and not even a hint of domestic impropriety from Mrs. Windham who could usually be counted on to provide evening fodder for the pub gang.
     Around midnight, the O'Malley regulars decided to table the matter and bring it up again the next time Mrs. Windham had an off night.

     A few days later, on his trip to the grocers, Mr. Quigley posted a carefully printed note on the town bulletin board.
"WANTED: HOUSEKEEPER.
DUTIES:  CLEANING, LAUNDRY, SHOPPING, PREPARING MEALS.
ROOM AVAILABLE. REFERENCES REQUIRED.
L. QUIGLEY, LARREBY LANE, BEDFORDSHIRE."
     Not one week later, a young woman, carrying a small, embroidered valise, scanned the bulletin board, put Mr. Quigley's note in her purse and headed off in the direction of Larreby Lane.
     Apparently she got the job because Mrs. Bandershaw spotted her the next day stepping out of a cab, two suitcases now accompanying the small, embroidered valise. It was later learned that her name was Miss Harriet True from Somewhere South.
     The appearance of Miss True created considerable consternation in Bedfordshire where people were sometimes upset, sometimes bothered, sometimes angry, but had never, in any one's memory, been consternated. Strangers occasionally passed through Bedfordshire, but none ever stayed and staying appeared to be Miss True's intention. This created considerable anxiety in a town not known for this predominantly urban emotion.
     Rumors naturally flew in all directions like birds scattering when a noisy tractor rumbles down the road.
     Mrs. Bandershaw had heard from her unmarried female cousin, who had an ear for these things, that a woman answering Miss True's description had been run out of a town "somewhere south" for making disrespectful noises during church services though the exact nature of the noises and the name of the town were still unknown. Mrs. Bandershaw had posted a letter forthwith to her sister for details.
     Mr. Blackwelder thought she was a mail order Russian bride, and supported his theory by observing that she wore a bandanna folded, according to him, in a distinctively Soviet style. No one argued with Mr. Blackwelder on matters of a foreign nature as he had been in the merchant service and had, by his own account, "traveled the world."
     Mrs. Dimple heard from an unidentified but "impeccable source" that Harriet True was Mr. Quigley's dead half-sister's adopted daughter. Everyone ordered another pint as they attempted to wrap their minds around that genealogical labyrinth, an effort that proved unsuccessful.
     Mr. Ralston suspected she was some sort of government spy though everyone scratched their heads when they tried to imagine on what in Bedfordshire any government might want to spy - except, of course, The Secret, but no one ever spoke of that except in closed session.
     Lastly, Miss Wentworth thought Miss True was an alien. She also held the very same opinion about Mr. Taylor's batty bulldog and the eerie moaning heard every full moon coming from Amberly Manor.
     In point of fact, Miss Harriet True was simply a young woman who had fallen on hard times through no fault of her own, the details of which were none of anyone's business. She was now employed as a live-in maid-cook-housecleaner for a skilled craftsman who realized he could make more income carving with the time Miss True would free up for him than it would cost for her wages.
    As far as Mr. Quigley was concerned, hiring Miss True was strictly a business decision. This was not surprising, coming as it did from a man who every Sunday, when he wore his suit for church, spread newspapers on the floor to keep his pants from touching the ground, so he could save money on dry cleaning. It might be noted that this was just one of several behaviors that changed after Miss True was established in the Quigley household.
    When the front door opened, Harriet True found herself facing a not unhandsome man in his late forties, with a slight hunch to his shoulders from years of bending over his workbench to turn wood into art. They stared at each other for two minutes before any words were spoken, either because they were not sure what to say or because each felt it was the place of the other to begin the conversation.
    Finally, Harriet handed Mr. Quigley the bulletin board note she had taken and said, "My name is Harriet True. I've come for the job."
    Quigley scanned Harriet from foot to head the way he would an animal he was about to carve. Sturdy, with walker's calves and coarse hands, she was nonetheless neatly appointed in a dark green suit, the only jewelry being a small, tasteful cameo hung around her neck on a silver chain. Her green eyes were in constant motions she surveyed the room and lingered on the antique silver birds guarding the mantle.
     He'd have to watch this one carefully, thought Quigley.

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