7 #2
‘Monty’s? Yes, you betcha! Aren’t they great?
I found them in my grandmother’s attic. My great-uncle gave me permission to root around up there for anything I could find on Monty when I told him I wanted to go ahead with this project.
He wasn’t that keen on it, really, even after all these years, but his son told him that he was being an old fogey, and that got his goat all right.
So he gave me permission. I wasn’t really sure I’d find anything at all up there, but boy, did I hit paydirt. What do you think of them?’
‘They’re wonderful,’ Lyssa said sincerely.
She’d doubted that Monty would ever have found a publisher for them, since they were more personal than professionally written, but the emotion in them was undeniable, and her use of words memorable.
‘You’re sure they were written by her and not someone else in the family? ’ she said, sounding a word of caution.
‘Oh yes – the handwriting is definitely hers. I know that, because of these,’ she said, tapping the leather-bound books significantly.
Lyssa’s heart began to pound. ‘Are they what I think they are?’
‘Diaries? Yup!’
‘Elizabeth! Why didn’t you tell me about these at our lunch?’ she yelped.
‘Don’t get too excited – they’re not journals or anything.
Monty didn’t spill her heart out on paper.
Most of what’s in here are just everyday reminders about dates and appointments, and a few notes about various ordinary things.
You know, “Found a dress in Bond Street – nobody else will wear it, the chickens,” that sort of thing.
Nothing earth-shattering or revelatory. Except for one thing that really caught my eye. ’
Lyssa, whose heart had plummeted at Elizabeth’s first words, picked up again with her last. ‘Oh?’
‘Here . . . read this. This is dated November 1962. Remember that date, it’s significant.
You’ll see why in a minute.’ Elizabeth manoeuvred the book around to face her, holding it open at a certain page.
‘You can see she had a hairdresser’s appointment, but see what she jotted down just underneath it? ’
Lyssa read it aloud. ‘Meeting Glen at the Mad Hatters, 9.30 p.m. Must show him the latest line I’ve thought up for the end of “Scared Witless”.’
She frowned. ‘It’s a bit out of context, isn’t it?’ she said, looking at the notations above and below it, which were indeed, as Elizabeth had warned her, merely mundane references to other meetings, and a memo to herself to get more birth-control pills.
‘Yes – and no,’ Elizabeth said, drawing the diary out from under Lyssa’s reluctant fingers, and turning it back to face her. ‘Remember what I said about the date?’
‘November 1962 – yes?’
‘Right. And what song came out in March, just four months later? Their biggest hit of all, the one that got to number one?’
‘“The Frightened Heart”,’ Lyssa said promptly.
‘Right. Don’t you see?’
Lyssa frowned slightly. ‘Sorry, perhaps I’m being a bit dim . . .’
Elizabeth grinned at her. ‘No, you’re not.
You just haven’t been living and breathing Monty and the Lucky Cuckoos like I have these past few months.
It’s in the file somewhere that I gave you, but I dare say you haven’t got around to it yet, or if you have, it didn’t mean anything to you at the time. ’
‘Er, Elizabeth, I still haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.’
Elizabeth leaned back in her chair, her eyes glowing. ‘What if I were to tell you that before “The Frightened Heart” got recorded, they were calling it “Scared Witless”, after one of the lines in the second verse?’
‘Oh,’ Lyssa breathed.
‘Yeah. And now take another look at those poems. Doesn’t the style and the way she rhymed things remind you of anything?’
‘Oh,’ Lyssa said again. Then slowly nodded. ‘You think Monty helped Glen write the songs?’
‘Help? Hell, I think she wrote all the lyrics. And he wrote the music. I think that’s why he left her the money in his Will. He believed she’d earned it and deserved to have it!’
‘That’s . . . That’s . . . If it’s true, that’s a major discovery, Elizabeth!’ Lyssa gasped.
‘I know – which is why I want you to put all your efforts into proving it!’
On the train ride back to Oxford, Lyssa’s mind whirled.
She’d been bombarded with too much information all at once and she needed to get things sorted out in an orderly way in her mind.
As ever, she reached for pen and paper to do so.
Sometimes a laptop and keyboard were just too impersonal and awkward for her.
Pressing down the top of the pen with a sense of satisfaction and familiarity, she pulled the notepad towards her on the train’s small tabletop and began to write.
Firstly, she thought about Elizabeth, and her instructions after she’d dropped her bombshell.
Lyssa was still smarting a little about her holding the diaries and poems back for a few days, but supposed reluctantly that she could understand why Elizabeth didn’t want to let them out of her possession.
At least Lyssa had managed to get her to promise to photocopy all that she had and send it to her, so that was something.
And Elizabeth’s excitement over the possibility that Monty was actually one of the songwriters for the band’s biggest hits was understandable. After all, it would be a major weapon in their bid to get Monty’s legacy seen in a very different light.
If it was true.
But was it?
Lyssa paused in her note-taking, and ringed the last three words.
So far, they had the poems and the one reference in Monty’s diary. Elizabeth had assured her she’d gone through the diaries obsessively and that it was the only reference there was, but until she got her hands on the photocopies, Lyssa was forced to take her word for it.
The poems would have to be investigated thoroughly. Here, Lyssa’s old English tutors would be a vital source of help – they would be able to tell for sure whether they were all written by the same person.
Next, Lyssa quickly jotted down a note to remind herself to print off all the written lyrics of everything ever sung by the Lucky Cuckoos, so that the academics could make a comparison with the poetry.
This was Oxford, after all, and she had the best of the best when it came to experts who could dissect and critique literary works.
And if they all came to an expert’s conclusion that the poems and the lyrics were written by the same hand .
. . well, that would go an enormously long way towards giving Elizabeth’s theory credence.
She made another note to get a reputable handwriting expert to check that the poems and known examples of Monty’s handwriting were, in fact, a match.
What else?
Yes. Monica. And the things that had been revealed at that interview.
As the scenery sped past the windows, Lyssa felt some of the intense excitement over the possibilities Elizabeth had just raised slowly drain out of her. And after a while, as she sat staring pensively out of the window, she began to feel distinctly uneasy.
For, no matter how she looked at it, Monica’s account of things had raised more questions in her mind than she’d bargained for. The picture she’d painted of Monty’s last night on earth had been so vivid and showed so clearly how fraught it must have been, that she now couldn’t help but wonder.
It was as if, now that the question of her death being an accident had been so thoroughly challenged, another, even darker suspicion had been born in her brain.
And one that she didn’t like. At all. Because there were generally only four ways a person could die. Natural causes. Suicide. Accident. Or murder.
And the more Lyssa forced herself to think about it, the more she felt a chill sweep over her.
Monty had been alone, in the darkness of her garden. She could have fallen in the pond and died accidentally. She could have committed suicide. Either of those had to be taken seriously.
But she had also been surrounded by people who had a motive for wanting her dead.
Glen’s parents were fighting her over the terms of their son’s Will.
Just how desperate had they been for the money that would secure their future, and that of their children?
They must have felt enormous anger and hurt over Glen for leaving all that money to a woman who already had so much.
Might they not have, in a moment of anger or madness, done something they might later have regretted?
And, Lyssa reminded herself, feeling her body chill even more now, they were not the only ones with a motive. Monica had confirmed that all the members of the Lucky Cuckoos had been at that party also. And one, in particular, had had a very good reason for wanting Monty dead.
Racey.
The man who’d been denied the spotlight by Glen and his rich lover in the first place.
Racey, who, if Monty was to have her way, was about to be replaced with a handsome newcomer, whose voice she preferred to his.
Which meant that his opportunity to finally step up and take Glen’s place as leader of the band was in danger of being thwarted yet again.
Had he been unable to take the rejection a second time?
Had he turned to drink in his later years not merely out of a sense of disappointment at the band’s failure to thrive, but also because he had something to feel really guilty about?
As the train carried her back to Oxford, Lyssa began to feel distinctly tense. She was determined to write a thoroughly researched, honest and truthful account of Amelia Montrose’s life and death. But she had to wonder.
Just what had she got herself into?