The Oxford Detective Society (Lyssa Moore Mysteries #1)

Prologue Oxfordshire, England, June 1966

Prologue

Amelia Montrose looked up at the moon and wondered what it made of humanity.

All those years it had orbited the Earth, watching the dinosaurs come and go along with various ice ages and – who knew – maybe even aliens visiting and then going away again.

It must have wondered what it was all for.

And then along comes man, who thinks he knows everything and . . .

She broke off and gave a harsh bark of laughter.

If nothing else, surely the moon found mankind entertaining?

She raised her glass of champagne to toast it, drained it to the dregs, then poured out the last of the sparkling stuff from the bottle of Bollinger she was carrying carelessly in her other hand.

She placed the empty bottle with drunken precision on the edge of a hideous sculpture that Glen had loved and had insisted on buying and installing in the grounds of Evergreen, their ‘forever’ home, in Oxfordshire.

They had chosen the house together because they’d hoped it would prove to be a sort of halfway compromise between Glen’s squalid childhood home on a north London council estate and her own childhood stately-home upbringing in Gloucestershire.

In the event, it had never quite seemed to suit either of them somehow.

Hah! Now there was another cosmic joke for her to contemplate, she thought, and felt a tear slide down her cheek, tickling her skin.

Impatiently, she wiped it away. What was the point of tears now?

Glen was gone, dead at just twenty-five.

He’d left her, without warning, with only the recorded sound of his voice for company and his awful taste in art.

She laughed again and drank some more of her champagne.

The garden looked lovely in the moonlight, but why wouldn’t it?

Full of hope and optimism for the future, they’d paid a landscape gardener to design and plant it out.

She’d pictured their children playing here one day, chasing butterflies with a dog or two yapping at their heels.

So much for that.

Behind her, Evergreen was a blaze of colour and light and raucous with the sound of pop music and human voices.

Built sometime just before the Victorians came into being (for which she was eternally grateful, not being a fan of their overly ornate style) it had a simple country-house elegance that not even her snotty-nosed family could jeer at.

Not that any of them had accepted her invitation to tonight’s party, of course, one and all having assured her that they wouldn’t be caught dead at such an affair.

Only Glen’s parents had accepted her invitation and were staying overnight with their little girl Emily, who had been so wide-eyed and overawed by Evergreen when they’d arrived.

Yesterday had been her twenty-third birthday, which she’d spent stubbornly alone.

She’d only arranged to have this party a day later, when it no longer mattered, to please everybody else.

They thought such weird behaviour was typical of her nowadays, but then what did they know?

Or really care? So long as they could enjoy the free wine and food and music, they were happy.

As the Swinging Blue Jeans’ latest single blared out across the moon-kissed peonies and roses, she bent double and gave way to a sudden fit of delighted, drunken laughter.

It was the thought of her father’s face, had he been there and been forced to listen to the heavy guitar beat and simple lyrics, that made her so helplessly giddy with mirth.

Daddy dearest, who only ever listened to classical music and opera! He’d have gone purple, making him resemble a bulldog as painted by Picasso! She could even see the painting forming right before her eyes, with the help of the teensiest bit of acid she’d taken earlier, of course.

She stumbled a little as she waded through the psychedelic colours and, looking down, realised that she’d reached the stone bench set in front of the ornamental pond, and her vision cleared, leaving her feeling bereft.

She paused, staring out over the dark oval shape.

She hadn’t wanted a fountain in the middle of the pond, but Glen had insisted.

Glen, with his working-class ideas of what was right and what wasn’t.

‘Can’t have a lily pond and not have a fountain, Monty,’ he’d admonished her, a big grin plastered across his silly face as he’d draped his arm loosely around her shoulders and kissed her.

He’d even got out of bed before noon to come down and watch as the workmen installed the stone monstrosity, complete with peeing cupids and dolphins vomiting water.

And suddenly she was crying again. When had their dream turned to stone as well? And not just her dream, but that of her generation?

When she’d finally escaped her parents’ choice of private girls’ school at the age of eighteen, she’d headed straight to London, where everything was beginning to happen.

It was 1962, and everything was changing.

She could remember hearing the Beatles’ first single, ‘Love Me Do’, for the first time and how it had astonished and delighted her.

Music had always been her passion, and after the conservative offerings of her school and parents, the raw new sound of the Fab Four had been a revelation.

The astronaut John H. Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth and anything seemed possible.

In the cinema Dr No was playing, and along with a group of her friends, she’d watched avidly as the gorgeous Sean Connery had brought the impossibly cool and dangerous James Bond into sexy being.

And the rowdy and salacious talk about the actor that had followed!

Oh, it hadn’t all been wonderful, she knew that.

The Cuban Missile Crisis had given them all thirteen days of pure terrifying horror in October, with everyone wondering if it would end in a flash of light that would kill them all before the sound of multiple nuclear blasts ever got the chance to reach their suddenly non-existent ears.

But their youthful optimism couldn’t be repressed for long. London still led the world in women’s fashion, new ideas and, most of all, pop music. And then she’d met Glen and his band, the Lucky Cuckoos, who’d been playing in some dead-end pub somewhere in Soho, and everything changed forever.

Monty began to sway dreamily with the sound of the music spilling out from the party behind her.

Over the sound of voices and the laughter of her friends and all the inevitable hangers-on, she could now make out the Merseybeats, and she half hummed along with them.

It wasn’t a bad song, but not as good as any of the Lucky Cuckoos’ songs.

She abruptly stopped swaying as she faced the fact that, along with Glen, the music might be dead now as well.

The Lucky Cuckoos had enjoyed six hits over the last four years, one of them even making it all the way to number one.

But with Glen gone, and with all the in-fighting and ill feeling that beset the group now, the band seemed to be falling apart.

If they couldn’t get their act together, and the fans got fed up waiting for the next song or turned their loyalty to any of the new groups that were always cropping up .

. . Who knew if they would ever perform again?

But that was too much for her to deal with right now, and she pushed the thought aside. Besides, she would never let it happen. She couldn’t let Glen down like that.

She walked forward and sat down on the edge of the brick path that went all the way up to, and then circumnavigated, the pond.

Pale, slender, blonde-haired and ethereal-looking, she could have played the part of an elf or fairy in any Shakespeare play or child’s fairy tale.

Without bothering to take off her shoes, she thrust her feet into the pond’s cooling water, laughing at the thought of how shocked her nanny would have been.

Ruining a pair of shoes like that! That would have earned her a slapped wrist and no pudding at teatime, all right!

‘Well, I can buy a hundred pairs of new shoes anytime I want, Nanny,’ she jeered defiantly, gazing at the hideous fountain ten yards or so in front of her. ‘And not with Daddy’s money either, but with my own, so there!’

Money. With a snort of disgust, Monty put her glass down and spread her hands on the ground behind her.

Leaning backwards with her weight on her arms, she lifted her head to stare once more at the moon.

Her good friend, the moon. Idly, she kicked her feet lazily in the water, making the water lilies closest to her undulate like belly dancers on the ripples.

‘At least you don’t want any of my money, do you?’ she murmured, turning her head to one side to contemplate the pale heavenly body. ‘And you’re probably the only one who doesn’t,’ she said sadly.

Even Deborah wanted more of the stuff, but she wasn’t going to complain about that; after all, it had been her own idea to set up the charity, and any charity needed constant funding. Deborah was only doing the job Monty had set her.

The music changed to a Hollies song – the boys from Manchester.

Glen had really liked them, but Monty admired the Stones more.

She smiled a little, remembering how Glen had been secretly jealous of Mick Jagger’s voice, and how she’d had to keep on reassuring him that his own voice was just as good.

And that the Lucky Cuckoos would stay up there with the best of them for at least a decade.

Not that she or anyone else she knew tended to plan that far ahead. They had been too busy having fun, enjoying the fame and the music and the screaming fans, the all-night parties, the drugs and wine. Life was all about fun, right?

Until suddenly, it wasn’t. People started dying of so much fun, and so many of them had been in the music industry.

She had just never thought Glen would be one of them.

Gorgeous, talented, rough-and-ready Glen, the good-looking and irreverent lad from the housing estate who her family so hated and distrusted.

‘They thought you would sully me, sweetheart,’ Monty said, leaning forward again, picking up her glass and toasting the fountain ironically. ‘Taint me and lead me astray. And so you did, you lovely, lovely man, you. Did I ever thank you properly for that?’

Another tear ran down her face, and again she angrily wiped it away. How he’d jeer at her if he could see her now. Sitting outside in the dark, all alone and weeping at her own party like some silly girl in one of those awful, syrupy ballads the Americans seemed so fond of producing.

At least the Lucky Cuckoos had nothing to do with any of that!

No, good solid rock songs with heart, that’s what they were all about – a strong beat with a catchy tune, and Glen’s gravelly, deep-timbred voice leading the way.

But now his voice was gone, and they were faced with having to come up with a new direction and a new sound.

Perhaps it was a good thing that the pop world was always renewing itself, she mused fatalistically.

Fans always wanted the next thing, something they hadn’t heard before.

But this time she sensed that the changes coming would be more drastic – perhaps moving away from solid heavy beats to something more .

. . spiritual, maybe? There was a restless feeling beginning to sweep across the scene – she could feel it blowing in on the wind. She would have to . . .

She heard movement behind her and peered blearily over her shoulder.

But no one was there, unless that was a shadow moving across the lawn .

. . No, it was probably just the wind in the trees.

Or maybe a fox was prowling around. Perhaps, if reincarnation was an option, Glen would come back to her as a dog fox – it would be just the sort of thing he’d do, for he’d often quarrelled with her father over fox hunting.

Yes, that would be his idea of a joke all right.

If he did, she’d have to build him a comfortable stable and feed him only the best steak and maybe she could come back as a fox too . . .

Trying to imagine herself as a vixen, she leaned over and peered down at her reflection in the water.

It was deep at this end, because Glen had wanted to swim in it.

But, typically of him, he’d only swum in it once and then never bothered to do it again.

Her face morphed and remorphed with the gentle movements in the surface tension of the water.

It looked dark and deep down there – perhaps if she stared hard enough, she’d be able to see him looking back up at her?

Monty, like most young people, had never thought much about death. Not until death had come up and taken the love of her life from her. Now she found herself wondering about it a lot. Glen had died from a drug overdose – so presumably he’d just fallen asleep and never woken up.

Perhaps it was that aspect of it that made her so angry. It wasn’t how he’d have wanted it – she was convinced of that. He’d have preferred to go out in a blaze of glory, crashing his motorbike or something equally spectacular. Not slipping away without even noticing it.

During his funeral, and all the bleak, colourless days that followed it, she’d had plenty of time to contemplate death and how she felt about it but had never been able to come to any real conclusion.

Sometimes she longed to follow Glen, and other times she felt she still had so much she needed to do.

Either way, surely, when death came it should . . .

Monty gave a surprised yelp as she unexpectedly found herself surrounded by cold water, her whole body going into spasm at the sudden shock of it.

She gasped spontaneously, but instead of air filling her lungs, it was water – cold, dark water, chilling her to the bone and making her mind spin in panic.

Everything was so black already. Then she realised that she’d shut her eyes for some reason, and she forced herself to open them – knowing that she needed to get to the surface.

But she couldn’t seem to tell which way was up.

Where was the moon, her good buddy, the moon?

Why couldn’t she see his friendly light?

She thrashed feebly about but felt shockingly weak and lethargic.

Once more she tried to breathe but only encountered water and choked even more.

And as the water filled her up, sucking the remaining heat out of her body and replacing it with a chill that grew and grew, she understood, with a mixture of panic and awe, that she no longer had to wonder how death should be.

Death was already upon her.