A Recurring Character Who Demands to Be Heard by KM Rockwood

Sometimes a fictional character pops into my head and demands to present a story. It can be a brand-new character, but it’s frequently someone with whom I have dealt before.

Miss Agnes Dorothea Grayling is one of those characters. She is an elderly spinster who lives with her black cat Arabella in a deteriorating Victorian mansion in Middle Falls. The once-prosperous riverside town in the Appalachians has lost industry and population. Many of the fine homes that once belonged to the owners of local businesses have been subdivided into apartments.

When Miss Grayling insists the time has come for her to tell a story, her backstory is already complete
.

She doesn’t realize it, but time has passed Miss Grayling by. She has lived in this house her entire life. Since she never married, her father assumed responsibility for her well-being, as befits a lady of her generation and standing. The family fortune is managed by an attorney who handles all the bills, from taxes to the monthly bill from the local grocery store. He is the grandson—or is it the great grandson?—of her father’s original attorney.

Although Miss Grayling is aware that some things in her home need attention—indeed, her house has been cited for building code violations—she sees no urgency in addressing these issues. She maintains a list of items that need attention, but never quite manages to deal with any of them.

Miss Grayling wants everything in her life to remain exactly the way it has always been. She has no tolerance for “progress,” which in her mind leads only to chaos and lowered standards.

She feels obliged to uphold her standards, whether it’s sipping her brewed tea from a proper cup and saucer—none of these clumsy mugs that one might expect an Irish laborer to use—to accepting responsibility of the well-to-do to assist those less fortunate. She does not believe in dealing with difficulties by half-measures. Final solutions are more appropriate. And so where she can, she eliminates the problem.

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the contributors to Writers Who Kill post short stories as a gift to our readers. Over the years, Miss Grayling has graciously agreed to appear in two of those stories. The links are below.

https://writerswhokill.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-gift-of-peace-by-km-rockwood.html

https://writerswhokill.blogspot.com/2014/11/holiday-summons-by-km-rockwood.html

Miss Grayling will also make an appearance in the next Chesapeake Crimes anthology, Invitation to Murder, produced by the Chesapeake Chapter of SinC.