Hi, I've done a quick search and there is no answer to this. Have anyone encounter a bug where you somehow completed the Statue quest without talking to the people? Sounds like a nifty thing mayors across the world does all the time. Anyway I was playing a dumb character and I've talked to the mayor outside the building. Then I went on my merry way to get the Gem of Malachi and decided to return to check out the hall and found it was empty, save the mayor. When I talked to the mayor, I immediately get the response that I did a great job convincing the people of Ashbury and completed the quest and got a good reputation for Ashbury. I'm sure my dumb character is as confused as I am over the whole situation.
Possibly something to do with having an effectively negative intelligence score. Half-ogres who are raised in the pits might have their intelligence score displayed as "1", but they're really at -2 and if they want to raise their INT they have to spend their points accordingly (ie it requires a few points before you reach 2). Negative numbers always fuck things up.
I think that's because the script that generates the crowd expires if it's not triggered soon. The quest-completion sript is tied to the dissappearence of the towns-people so you can cheat on the quest.