"Obviously I don't know what happened but the thing that makes me suspicious was the way people acted afterwards," says Pat Andrews. We comb over the familiar territory. Jones's personal belongings being ransacked from Cotchford. His clothes being burnt. "His bed-clothes were burn too," she says. "All I do know is that the police didn't do a proper job." Sussex CID continued to treat the death as suspicious, even reopening lines of enquiry six months after Jones drowned, but nothing came of them.
"For a long time everybody was just in shock about it all," says Shirley Arnold, "but I remember much later Keith getting really pissed off and saying 'What the fuck were they burning his clothes for? Why?' But analysing who was there and where they went isn't going to bring him back, is it? It's not going to take the sadness away."
Like Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts remains resolute that there was nothing sinister about the death. "I think he took an overdose. In England it's very rare to have an outdoor pool. The steam would be rising from it and I think he took a load of downers, which is what he used to like, drank, which he used to do and shouldn't have done, 'cos he wasn't strong enough to drink. And I think he went for a swim in a very hot bath. I don't see why you'd bother [murdering him]. He was worth more alive than dead. If you were going to screw him or whatever, you'd try and be his manager. Quite honestly, I don't think he was worth murdering. And I don't mean that in a nasty way. I mean he was not that important to murder. Particularly at that time. He was very frail and a rather sad figure. And in a way, maybe if he'd have lived another 20 years he'd have got worse. He'd have been shuffling down the King's Road, you know, a shadow of his former self. Which is horrible. It's better he went how he did. 'Cos we wouldn't be doing this in MOJO if he hadn't."
"It's all very sinister and eerie," maintains Terry Rawlings. "There's some very dark corners of the whole story that you can't go into, stuff that I could never have put into my book, how it was done, how it was covered up. The policeman who inherited the original investigation was forever saying to me, 'Your book got pretty close to it but the stuff I could tell you - which I can't - is a book in itself.' But it will all come out eventually."
"The thing I came away with from having read these books was how little drugs were in his system the night he died," says Nick Kent. "And drowning in a swimming pool? I mean, c'mon! It's not like it was in the ocean. It's hard not to think that there was no foul play involved. Keith did an interview in Paris a while back where he said he agreed with the [Who Killed Christopher Robin?] book."
"I've seen Brian swim in terrible conditions, in the sea with breakers up to here," Richards told Robert Greenfield in a marathon Rolling Stone interview in August 1971. "I've been underwater with Brian in Fiji. He was a goddamn good swimmer. He could dive off rocks straight into the sea." Of his death Richards' response was, "such a beautiful cat, man. He was one of those people who are so beautiful in one way, and such an asshole in another. 'Brian, how could you do that to me, man?' It was like that." Richards has, however, retracted much of that over the years, most famously in a somewhat cathartic Q magazine interview in 1987. "I don't think honestly you'll find anyone who liked Brian," he says. "He had so many hang-ups he didn't know where to hang himself. So he drowned himself." In the middle of acknowledging that "I nicked his old lady" and Brian's penchant for "beating chicks up", Richards also finds time to resurrect the hoary old tale from the early days about Jones paying himself and extra £5 as leader of the band. "They still seem to dwell on that after all these years," says David Dalton. "It's incredible." Some dark memories obviously still rankle with Richards.
"When they were rehearsing for the Bridges Over Babylon tour in Toronto, Ron Wood got hold of a couple of Brian's old guitars - the 9 string and the 12 string Teardrops," claims Terry Rawlings. "Ronnie puts one on and he's going, 'Yeah, fucking great. Keith look at this…' Keith turns round, goes, 'Take that fucking thing off.' This is last year. Even now, y'know, after all this time.'
"I think the highlight of Brian's life wasn't playing in a band that was idolised, it was meeting his idols," says Pat Andrews. "I think he cherished that more than standing in front of screaming girls. He had great respect for his fans, that's why there are so many letters around from Brian because he always answered his fanmail. But I do think he was looking for something else other than adulation."
"My ultimate aim in life was not to be a pop star," Brian Jones says in Peter Whitehead's documentary, Charlie Is My Darling, filmed as the Stones toured Ireland in 1965. "I enjoy it - with reservations - but I'm not really satisfied, either artistically or personally."
"He was bright, articulate, gifted, a shining star, but he was a flawed human being," says Gered Mankowitz. "It was pretty sad from '66 onwards and it was a sad end to a sad life. He was very unfulfilled. He had problems and there was nothing anybody could do about them, least of all him."
If 'sad' and 'sinister' are the only two choices on offer it's a pretty squalid testimonial to a young life that only five years earlier had been so full of promise. At the Hyde Park free concert, which became a requiem mass for Brian, thousands of butterflies were released and Jagger read from Shelley's Adonaïs.
After the loss of their founder the Stones descended into a little darkness of their own. "it was a very dark band anyway," says Jagger of the Sympathy For The Devil period. "The band's always been a very dark band." Still? "Yeah, I think so. Definitely." At the end of 1969, at the Altamont Speedway track, they opened another box, but instead of butterflies out flew the Furies. Mick Jagger stood centre-stage, impotently pleading with the Hell's Angels to be cool while his fans were having their faces smashed in with pool cues. Satanic role playing came face to face with real evil and was found wanting. Somewhere in the mêlée, nemesis came crashing down on the head of 18 year old Meredith Hunter as he moved towards the stage, pointing a gun. Just a shot away.
Meanwhile Jimi, Janis and Jim were waiting in the wings ready for their turns on the sacrificial altar. But in Brian Jones the '60s already had its first rock'n'roll martyr.