by Kal Smagh
Mayhem for Her Majesty
A Cozy Beatles Mystery, 1963
Kal Smagh
Copyright © 2021 Kalwant Smagh
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
‘A Cozy Beatles Mystery, Mayhem For Her Majesty’
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead or undead, events or locations is entirely coincidental. Disclaimer: This is a fictional work of alternate history. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are drawn from the historical record, then altered and used fictitiously. Apart from the Beatles and other well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
This work has not been endorsed nor affiliated with any of the Beatles or their estates.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.
ISBN-13: 9798744901486
Cover design by: Kal Smagh
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309
Printed in the United States of America
Prologue
Daily Mirror Supplement Online
McCartney Recalls Unsung Hero
Sir Paul McCartney recently recounted memories of his time with the Beatles, identifying an unsung hero no one had heard mentioned in past interviews.
"Helen Spencer was one of those behind-the-scenes people able to work through difficulties supporting the Beatles’ success. She started out as a fan girl in our club, our first Beatles fan club, in Liverpool. She worked for Freda Kelly, the fan club president. I think it was the early sixties when we first met."
When asked what role Helen Spencer played Sir Paul shared, "She was one of these people who could figure out problems and solve them. A big brain. John and I talked about it. It freed us up to write music rather than deal with people stealing things or knocking the band from a playbill, or even dealing with shady Hollywood producers. Helen took care of all those dodgy people as a teenager.”
When asked if it was actually the role of Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ late manager, Paul added, "That’s who Helen was hired by. And she was good. Unbelievably good. Ringo loved her; I remember George teasing her a lot. It was great fun. I don’t know everything she had to go through, but when the Beatles became big, she became big along with us." He added, a twinkle in his eye, “Lots of times she struggled and got in over her head. We all did back then.”
He was asked why her name had never come up before.
"She’s very well-known inside Beatle circles. I’ve lost track of her over the years a little bit, maybe a card during the holidays long ago, but I know wherever she is now she’s probably retired, rich and sunning on a beach."
When I asked where he thought she might be, McCartney shared, "It would take a Scotland Yard Inspector to find her."
Sources close to the singer and co-writer of countless number one pop songs including I Want To Hold Your Hand, Hey Jude, and Let It Be, say he's 'interested to know where she is’ and is offering a whopping US $500,000 reward to anyone who can locate her.
At this large sum, his contact with her must be on an important matter, the substance of which he did not elaborate.
Who are you, Helen Spencer? More importantly, where are you?
Sir Paul wants to know!
#
1963.
Uniformed Bobbies with linked arms, tidal waves of boys and girls gasping at a glimpse of the Beatles, raucous rallies of joy and love. Sold out shows nationwide.
Mop tops, shaggy hair and beaming smiles.
Taking the stage, the contrasting black coats and white shirts, the shine on their boots and a burst of heart pounding energy at opening chords played on three guitars and accompanying drums, in harmony.
In London is where they came of age, culminating a frenetic snowball of a year speedily rolling to enormity, exerting a heavenly gravity on the masses.
And for John, Paul, George and Ringo, it was playing for the Queen Mother that almost didn’t happen, because of the powerful men taking action to prevent it.
I was just an eighteen-year-old girl living in Liverpool whose job was to open Beatles Fan Club mail.
Chapter 1: My Nemesis, Florida, USA, Present Day
Inspector Tuffle sat across from me and all I could think of was that his father was my nemesis.
Money was at stake. My money.
And he was in my home. Big him and little me.
Hello, again, my name is Helen Martha Spencer.
In my seventies now I live in my Florida retirement cottage in the United States. My days are fairly simple, and I was just checking the television listings, my house still smelling of crisp breakfast toast. I usually watch The Price Is Right, however to change things up I am looking forward to watching Wheel of Fortune. I love that you can be lucky from your enthusiasm and win prizes based on your smarts.
This is a good metaphor for my life, for I have been one of the luckiest people in the history of the 20th century. I say this because I worked for the Beatles in their fan club in Liverpool, England.
In 1962 I began working for the Boys and I answered a lot of mail and solved a big problem with someone who was trying to steal their song Please Please Me. Working with a policeman named Tuffle I was able to figure out who the robber was. And together we stopped the crook and made it so the Beatles could go record their song that became their first number one in England.
It was so exciting!
After all the hard work they had found success and I was there to see it first-hand.
John, Paul, George, and Ringo, along with my co-worker and friend of the same age, Freda Kelly, and their manager, Brian Epstein, became my family away from my parents.
At seventeen years old it was a great big new world, so exciting to be part of, and so much fun every day. I remember my adrenaline racing and my pulse pounding, cold sweat on the back of my neck, mounds of mail on a desk or on the floor to answer, a cornucopia of perfumed letters wafting scents all about, and all of that was before 1963 began.
"And now here you are seated before me, Inspector, and you want to know about my 1963." He had no idea what was in store for him. I had been waiting for this day since I was eighteen.
He said, his British accent clear, "Especially anything about my father."
"I didn't like him. He still owes me money." I looked down at my fingernails, and pulled him into my trap.
"Really?"
"And he became my lifelong nemesis." I stared at him, steely-eyed, laser-focused. I blinked my eyes slowly, enjoying knowing this day would eventually come.
My day to even the score.
Inspector Tuffle, the tall man with the wide forehead and the smooth skin, had traveled all the way from England to learn about his father.
His father, long deceased, was a policeman in the Liverpool Bobbies, and the person who helped me to unravel the mystery of the robber in 1962.
At first, I didn’t like his father because he scared me with his authority, however he turned out to be a decent man; certainly upstanding, and typically benevolent in his enforcement of the law, even when I wa
s accused of being the one who had stolen the lyrics.
But all of that is in the past.
Just one more vengeful score remained on my list to settle. Of when his father was not benevolent to me.
"So, what happened in 1963? You said the Beatles had their first number one hit; did they also have other music that became popular? Surely one or two."
He had to be kidding. Really? An Inspector not knowing about British culture? I tried not to roll my eyes but I still felt them move just a bit. I gave him the facts, "They released two albums before it was over and began to have tours all over England."
Indeed, they played to sellout crowds across the country and even began to have a music show on BBC, thirty minutes a week. It was a big deal because nobody their age, which was a few years older than I was, had progressed so far, so fast.
Unflinching, he stated facts back to me, "And you were still so young yourself at that time."
"Yes. I was working in the fan club for a year by the autumn of 1963. They had so much mail that I was hired to help Freda Kelly, the fan club leader. Well, it continued to avalanche on top of us, every day it was like a blizzard had occurred overnight and we were buried in a mountain of letters taking hours and hours to sort through."
"What did you do?"
"We put letters into their piles; one for John, a pile for Paul, a pile for George, and of course a pile for Ringo including envelopes containing rings that fans wanted him to wear during performances and then return to them as authentic Ringo souvenirs."
"You were still living at home at this time?"
"Yes, and my mother was still in my business about getting a boyfriend."
"You said she knew you were working for the Beatles?"
"Yes, however it didn’t seem to impress her. She was much more attuned to things like the royal family, you know, the tried-and-true establishment society. To her the Beatles, and myself by extension, were "kid stuff". I shook my head at the memory.
"So, you were going to tell me how the Beatles did not play for the Queen."
"Almost, did not play for the Queen. They did end up playing for the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, yes. Also Lord Snowden."
"But not the Queen? Where was the Queen?"
"The Queen was pregnant at the time, so she missed the performance. But there was so much more that happened."
"Trouble, yes?"
"There was. Much." I gulped down the rising lump in my throat. Did I still have enemies from that time?
"If you don’t mind, I’ll pour myself another spot of tea and I’d love to hear your story."
"Please do,” I reached to the cozy around the tea service between us, “the pot is still warm, help yourself."
I almost didn’t hear him when he offered to also pour me another cup because I became lost in my memories of 1963.
#
"You have been coming home late again," my mother pried, too far as usual, as she wrapped her white cotton housecoat with the pink roses around her shoulders.
My house smelled like fresh bread, lightly toasted over a flame.
We were seated at our kitchen table and there was an overcast sky outside on the October morning in Liverpool. Across the table sat my father in his suit dressed for work looking at the newspaper and mumbling to himself in reaction to the stories. I loved seeing his receding hairline and the paunch of his belly when he shuffled the paper. To me those sights felt like security and happiness. I saw his eyes glancing at headlines and then digging into the articles.
Without looking up he mumbled, "Patriotic?"
Mother mumbled back, crunching on a bite of toast, "What’s that?"
"So much infighting. Give Mr. Home a chance, I say."
"Who is that?" Mother needed to finish her bite before speaking.
"New prime minister. Lots of dissension. Much like everywhere else…now this chap Guilford is fuming about patriotism...next it will be..." he trailed off, digging into another article.
Much of the adult world was still a mystery to me. Stories about coal production, food prices, and politics bored me. I didn’t care about who was attacking whom in parliament, or whether the prime minister succeeding Harold MacMillan, now Mr. Douglas-Home, was patriotic enough.
It distressed me that I knew the names of the prime ministers from my father’s mumbling commentaries. At least part of their names. It filled my head with nonsense. Why they all seemed to be in a constant argument with one another was a mystery.
My mother, on the other hand, with her bright orange hair at all angles in the morning, and her inquisitive manner about my personal matters, and my work issues, always kept me on edge. Today was no exception. She wanted more to do with me than I cared for.
I crossed my arms, "We have been so flooded with mail, Mum. The Beatles are doing so well, their songs are on the radio, and they’re playing shows across England. Fans keep writing in, and we even have new chapters of our club planning on opening."
"Your business is growing," my father leaned toward me while still looking at the newspaper, not making eye contact with me, but listening in on the conversation.
I brightened, "Mr. Epstein seems happy."
Mother lifted her chin, "Oh, he’s that nice Jewish man you mentioned. The record store man."
"Yes, the record store. Also, he is the manager for the Beatles. And he’s the one who hired me to work in the fan club with Freda."
"I’m happy your little band is doing well. A quartet, right?"
Mother didn’t wait for a response as her eyes landed on the back of the newspaper from where my father was reading.
An article about the royal family stood out, with a black and white photo of the Queen. Mother reached for and pulled that section of the newspaper away. Their shorthand for one another, and their comforts long since established before my eighteenth birthday, my father let the section go and continued reading the newspaper without saying a word.
Mother pulled the newsprint close, "Says here Queen Elizabeth is due to deliver baby number four in March." She peered at me, seeking a kindred understanding of her infatuation, "Isn’t that exciting? It’s what a woman should do, be married and have children."
She raised her eyebrows awaiting a response.
I looked elsewhere, away, not able to bear the weight of my mother’s oppressive desire for me to meet a boy, settle down, and have babies, not to mention the enormity of her absent comment on the responsibilities of being Queen. All of that is just fine however it’s not what an 18-year-old girl wanted to be thinking about. Especially this girl, who was working with such an exciting rock ‘n’ roll band.
Her eyes misted, "Now that is something significant. The royal family goes back generations and generations. And together they oversee so many parts of the world in the commonwealth of our British Empire." Her sermon and praise session began, and I felt my eyes glaze over.
She continued, "The monarchy is really something special in this world. We commoners don’t understand exactly what it’s like with their pressures to keep affairs in order. But we can see them from a distance and I certainly admire them." She looked up to the ceiling while she spoke in glowing admiration.
I had long since gotten used to it, hearing the stories about King George the Sixth, and Queen Elizabeth, and all of the heirs and successors. Really, I tuned her out because it was such a predictable story, I’d heard it told a thousand times.
She continued, onward, her voice rising, "Why, it would be the highest honor of my life to meet the Queen. I hope one day that can happen for you, too." She paused, then added, "You know a curtsy to royalty is a sign of respect. Yes?"
Inside my brain I shouted, ‘Enough already’!
Outside I exclaimed, "I’m going to be late for my bus," to my occupied parents, my father digging into current events, mother into fantasyland. I wiped my mouth of toast crumbs and picked up my purse.
"Have a good day," my father called not looking up.
"I will."
/>
My mother was still too absorbed in her newspaper article and staring at the photograph of the Queen to comment.
#
I boarded my green double-decker bus, taking a seat on the lower level to avoid my hair blowing brown strands all about, and entered Liverpool.
Going through the city streets I liked seeing the traffic and the people on the sidewalk scurrying to work. Arriving outside of the notorious Splinter Bar, with a sign exclaiming "New Management", I exited the bus and began my ten-minute walk to the fan club office at NEMS. The North East Music Store that Brian Epstein managed and where we had an exterior office for our Beatles fan club mail was well known.
When I entered my eyes instinctively darted around the room, every bit of organization had been crushed again.
Piled everywhere were envelopes at every corner, spilling off of the desk where my good friend Freda Kelly sat already hard at work sorting letters into four globs of paper mountains.
She was putting a photograph of all four Beatles together into an envelope and licking the tab as I entered. Her brown hair, parted down the middle, was already mussed a bit.
"Good morning."
"Helen!"
I could tell by the look on Freda’s face that something was up. She knew something. And she was playing coy.
Squinting at her, "What?"
We had worked together for long enough now, over a year, and were like sisters together, that I knew her look meant something.
Her eyes were gleaming, "You’ll never guess."
I smirked at her, smug. "I’ve run out of guesses. You had me guess what would be their first number one song and I got it right, Please Please Me. You had me guess what would be the title of their first album and I guessed Please Please Me, and I was right. You had me guess what radio station they would have a program on, and I guessed the BBC, and I was right. I think we’re at the point now where you might just tell me."