7
‘You think it was suicide, then?’ Lyssa asked sharply.
‘What – you think it was an accident?’ Monica said, arching an eyebrow waggishly.
‘Come on! Monty could swim – you should have seen her doing laps in their indoor swimming pool. And she wasn’t totally out of her head on drugs – she’d only taken a tiny amount of acid, I can remember hearing Racey telling his mum that the doctors who cut her up said so.
Yeah, she’d been drinking champers, but so what?
You think she wouldn’t have sobered up pretty damn quick if she accidentally toddled into the pond and found herself neck deep in cold water? ’
Lyssa noticed that her words, whilst not quite slurred yet, were beginning to sound a little .
. . tired now. Just how much, she wondered wryly, did Monica really believe her own words?
It seemed to her that she rather liked being dramatic.
On the other hand, that didn’t mean she didn’t have a valid point.
‘You think she was that depressed, then?’ she asked calmly.
Monica sighed. She took another alarmingly large gulp of her drink and then shrugged, her bony shoulders going up and down.
‘Who can really say? The coroner and the jury said it was an accident. Who knows, maybe it was. I just never really believed it, that’s all.
You gotta remember that that night was the day after her birthday, and Glen wasn’t there with her.
Instead, his parents and his kid sister were, and the parents were only there to see if she was gonna come ’cross with Glen’s money. How depressin’ must that-a-bin?’
Monica leaned back more comfortably on the sofa, her eyelids beginning to sag.
‘Them Bannisters were already seeing solicitors about overturnin’ the Will.
Put yourself in Monty’s shoes . . . Her big love, gone – poof!
The band was split down the middle about the new sound and arguing constantly.
Yeah, they went to her party, but they were only doing it ’cause it would look bad in the papers if they didn’t.
Her parents had disowned her – or as good as.
Her birthday, and all the people around her were either hangers-on or downright hostile to her.
She’s wandering outside because her own party’s gone sour on her and she sees the pond .
. . Perhaps she did slip to begin with, but then, once she was in there, just thought .
. . you know, well wazza’ a point in goin’ on . . .’
Slowly her eyes closed, her head fell back against the headrest, and Lyssa reached forward and turned off the recorder.
This was the first interview she’d conducted where her source had drifted off on her into a tipsy catnap, and she wasn’t quite sure of the etiquette.
Did she try and wake her to say goodbye?
Or just tiptoe out, like an embarrassed guest?
In the end, she wrote a note, thanking Monica for her help, and asking if it would be all right if she came back another time to chat again, and left it on the table, where she couldn’t fail to see it. She then gathered her things together and did, indeed, tiptoe out.
The train route between Oxford and London had a stop at High Wycombe, and it had seemed to her that the opportunity to call in and see Elizabeth on her way back shouldn’t be missed, so she’d arranged to visit her client’s home later that afternoon.
She took a taxi from the station, and was, as always, impressed by the deep wooded valley where the town had been established, and the hilltop views presented to those who lived higher up the valley slopes.
She was not surprised to find that Elizabeth was one of those who liked to live up high, although her house, though large compared to your average house size in the UK, was not unduly impressive; even so, given its location and accessibility to the capital, it was probably worth a mint.
But still not, Lyssa thought, in the same bracket as those that Monty’s immediate family must continue to enjoy.
She’d done a little background check on Elizabeth before signing the contracts, and knew that she was the daughter of a daughter of a daughter in the Montrose family lineage, which almost certainly meant that she wouldn’t have inherited anything like the wealth that the male line would have, given that the rules about female equality in these matters had only very recently changed.
As she walked up to the (by most people’s standards) very desirable residence, in the very pleasant and leafy part of town, she couldn’t help but wonder if Elizabeth resented not inheriting an estate in the country, or a London townhouse, or whatever it was the upper classes had considered a ‘must-have’ back in the 60s.
Did she consider herself hard done by because she didn’t have the family millions to fall back on, like her luckier, male cousins?
She rang the bell, and it was answered almost at once. Elizabeth, small, chic, smart, grinned widely back at her.
‘Hello there. How did it go with the widow?’ she asked, pulling open the door and ushering her inside.
‘Go right on through – we’ll sit out on the patio, shall we?
It’s such a nice day.’ Just as that day at the Ivy, she seemed to almost buzz with a nervous energy that Lyssa was beginning to suspect was her natural state of being.
She followed the little pocket rocket through a stunningly decorated lounge area and then out on to a small but very pretty back garden, where a jug of what she hoped was just plain mineral water (untouched by vodka or gin!) was set out on a white wrought-iron table.
Two matching chairs sat either side of it, and as Elizabeth sank down on to one, Lyssa gratefully took the other.
‘Water? Hope you like it sparkling?’
‘Fine,’ Lyssa said, and for the next half an hour the two women talked, mostly about Monica but also about the progress she’d made on the book so far.
‘Monica sounds a hoot,’ Elizabeth said with a grin, when Lyssa had finally finished her tale about her earlier activities.
‘And she does make a good case for suicide, but I just don’t buy it somehow.
I know I never knew Monty in person, but I was very close to those who did, and from what they say, she just wasn’t the kind to chuck in the towel. ’
Lyssa nodded, watching her client carefully now.
‘I don’t want to be indelicate, Elizabeth, but it seems to me that one of the pivotal issues that any book about Monty has to tackle is the manner of her death.
Just how do you want me to handle it? Do you want us to slavishly follow the official version and leave it at that?
Or do you want to incorporate other points of view from those around at the time – like Monica? ’
Elizabeth shook her head, sending her riotous brown curls dancing, then reached out for her packet of cigarettes and lit one up, puffing on it energetically.
‘No, don’t worry – I don’t want a whitewash,’ she said firmly.
‘If you want to include Monica’s opinions, go ahead.
Who knows, you might find others that think the same.
Just don’t give any bias to one opinion or the other.
Let’s face it, we’re probably never going to know for sure what happened that night.
Even the official police investigation of the party didn’t really help much – except to show who was drunk or high, and who never left the party at around the time Monty must have died.
Which was helpful, sure, but only in a negative sort of way.
The police at the time investigated Monty’s movements thoroughly and questioned everyone, but no one saw what happened to her after she went out into the gardens.
Or if they did, nobody was owning up to it.
The coroner’s inquest went through all the facts, and even that couldn’t come up with any definitive answers.
The jury returned an accidental verdict, but who can say if they got it right or wrong?
If they couldn’t do it then, I don’t think we can be expected to succeed where they failed.
Just write up what you find honestly and in a balanced way. ’
Lyssa let out a slow breath of relief. ‘I’m so glad you said that. That’s the kind of book I prefer to write.’
Elizabeth grinned. ‘Publish and be damned, eh? I can never remember who said that or why, but he was my kind of guy. Or gal. So yes – I want you to find out as much as you can, about everything that you can, and put the whole lot down in print. Good, bad or indifferent. Whatever the truth is, there’ll have to be more to it than the generic “Oh, she was a bad ’un” rubbish that’s been floating around out there about her for over fifty years now.
And speaking of which’ – she stabbed out her depleted cigarette with quick, vicious little jabs, and then held up a hand with one finger pointing upwards in a ‘just wait’ gesture – ‘I found these . . .’ She was rooting around in a voluminous bag that was already sitting under the table, and brought out a small set of old, cracked-leather hardback notebooks and a few loose sheafs of paper.
‘I didn’t hand these over to you at the Ivy because I don’t want to let them out of my possession, but I’m sure you’ll find them interesting. These first, I think,’ she said, handing over the loose pile of yellowing paper.
On them, Lyssa was surprised to see, was written a series of about ten poems. The handwriting was faded but still legible, and was easy to read in a loose, flowing, feminine hand.
Lyssa read the poems with growing pleasure.
They were all love poems, some angry, some sad, some longing and mournful, others playful.
The syntax was idiosyncratic but very individual, and it was clear they’d all been written by the same person.
She looked up at Elizabeth hopefully. ‘Are these . . . ?’