"The quality of the people who were working as minders and chauffeurs for the Stones wasn't all that it could have been," notes Gered Mankowitz. "I don't think they were great human beings and I don't think Brian was well served at all. It's a pretty horrible job anyway to be a servant. And to see this young bloke with so much going for him, beautiful women, money, fantastic cars, and there he was fucking up and here's the minder having to pick him up, clean him down, put him to bed, or extricate him from some problem. Once you lose respect for the person you're working for I don't think you're going to do your job very well."
"He used to be a lot of fun in the early days," emphasises Charlie Watts. "But when that all went you were left with this rather ill, totally paranoid bloke, worried about his image. But having said that, the period when he died he lived near me in Sussex. I used to see him quite a bit on the way home from the studio and got very close to him again. But then, you know, I was never any threat to him. I didn't play guitar for a start, I was not a singer - both things that he wanted to do - I was not a writer. I was a drummer and if he'd asked me to play on a record I'd have played with him."
Jones had made tentative unspecified musical plans. Mitch Mitchell, John Mayall, Stevie Winwood, and Alexis Korner had all been down to see him and reported that he was in good spirits and eager to resurrect his career. He had also eased off the substances, too. The Stones, meanwhile, had more pressing concerns, breaking in new guitarist Mick Taylor and rehearsing for their forthcoming free concert in Hyde Park on Saturday, July 5.
"He'd phoned me on the Tuesday before Hyde Park," remembers Shirley Arnold. "After it was announced that he was leaving he was concerned about what the fans thought. I'd said I was sending the post down to him. He was telling me that he was getting things together with Alexis Korner and everything was looking fine. Mick was always asking, 'Have you heard from Brian today?' He was genuinely interested in his welfare and what he was doing. Brian asked me if I'd go and work for him and would it make it awkward with the band? I'd said I'd never leave the office but I'd always help him. He sounded fine. I put the phone down and wrote him a two-page letter telling him what I'd said to him on the phone, that I'd always be there for him."
The following night Shirley was woken in the early hours by the phone ringing. Through the drowsy haze of half-sleep, she recognised the voice of Tom Keylock's wife, Joan. She was saying something about the pool: "Brian hasn't come out…" "What do you mean?" said Shirley. "He's probably just wandered off somewhere." If only.
"It was dreadful, that next morning in the office," says Shirley Arnold. "Charlie was crying. Mick couldn't speak. I hadn't been to sleep. I got a mini-cab to work at seven o'clock. Driving through the West End and seeing the newspaper signs: 'Brian Jones drowns'. I opened the office and the first phone call was from Yoko Ono to say how sorry she and John were. Then Alexis phoned. Charlie was the first to arrive. He was in such shock that he just walked through into the boardroom without saying anything and sat there crying." It was also Charlie that laughed sardonically at Brian's funeral, when, as the cortège progressed through the crowded streets of Cheltenham, a policeman saluted. "I was surprised when he died," says Charlie. "He was actually getting his house together. He'd be showing me round there and he'd be painting all these walls. In those days purple walls were quite in. It was like one of Jimmy Page's homes, very nouveau."
As far as could be ascertained, Brian had gone for a late-night swim in Cotchford's outdoor heated pool. Those that were present, builder Frank Thorogood, his friend, nurse Janet Lawson, and a friend of Jones, student Anna Wohlin, all gave witness statements. None of them quite tallied. There were significant discrepancies regarding precise details of who was where and doing what when Brian, allegedly alone, went for a midnight swim. Conveniently or otherwise, nobody else was by the poolside when Jones somehow plunged to his death. In his statement Thorogood said he had just popped indoors for a cigarette.
The coroner recorded a verdict of death by misadventure: the cause of death, drowning. The post mortem revealed that both the liver and the heart of the deceased were grossly enlarged due to long term alcohol abuse. Although the pathologist's urine test revealed traces of "an amphetamine-like substance", and "diphenhydramine… present in Mandrax", Jones's body contained no barbiturates and none of the opiate derivatives consistent with the use of hard drugs. An inhaler had been found at the poolside, leading some to suspect that Jones had suffered an asthma attack, but Pat Andrews never once saw him use his asthma pump, "not even when he got upset after arguments with his parents". Shirley Arnold says she never saw him have an asthma attack either. "Keith says it as well. He never saw him have one." Dr Albert Sachs, who carried out the post mortem, saw fit to point out that "in death from an asthma attack, lungs are light and bulky", which they hadn't been in Brian Jones's case.
"I assumed he was stoned - he'd been an accident waiting to happen for several years," says Gered Mankowitz. "I wouldn't be surprised if it was accidental death but I don't believe it was murder. I don't see a motive, but Brian solicited resentment. These builders he employed, seeing this bedraggled, longhaired, sozzled pop star. They just thought, 'Fucking wanker.' He probably aggravated somebody. I think there was probably some horseplay that got out of hand. 'I'll teach that fucker a lesson', that sort of thing."
Mick Jagger remains totally sceptical about theories that Jones was murdered. "Oh please!" he says dismissively. "I wasn't there. I only know what everyone else says. I have no theories. I only know what I was told at the time, which seemes perfectly reasonable." That he was drinking and that it was an accident? "That all sounded very much par for the course. But who knows what happened? I never questioned it at the time. It sounds all a bit, 30 years after the event, like someone trying to drum up some sort of book or something."
The intrigue over Jones's death has indeed spawned a mini-industry of books. "I think he was definitely killed but I don't think he was meant to die," says Terry Rawlings, whose Who Killed Christopher Robin? is, along with Laura Jackson's Golden Stone, one of the few credible and painstakingly researched attempts to get to the bottom of what went on that fateful summer night. Rawlings' case hinges on an apparent deathbed confession made by Frank Thorogood to Tom Keylock in 1993. Subsequently, BBC's Crimewatch featured the case and new leads were followed up but the case remains unsolved. When Tom Keylock was contacted by MOJO for further verification, he declined to comment, citing a contractual obligation to a forthcoming Brian Jones bio-pic.
Many of those interviewed for this feature had a "don't put my name to this, but…" theory on what went on in the murky waters of Cotchford. Conspiracy theories have continued to resonate down the years. Central to many of these is the idea that there was a party at Cotchford that night and many more people were present than has previously been acknowledged. "I've heard from Amanda Lear that she had been invited to a party at Brian's house and he'd sent a car to pick her up," says Pat Andrews, "but on her way she'd suddenly decided that she was going to see Salvador Dali instead. So she stopped at Gatwick and sent the car back to Cotchford and got on a plane. She said to me that if she could ever change anything that would be it." Then there are the loony theories. Allen Klein ordered it. The Stones ordered it. Everyone but the badgeman on the grassy knoll seems to have had a hand in it.