Diana Christmas (Screen Siren Noir Book 1)

by F. R. Jameson

  The chauffeur swung us a little too fast around a roundabout, giving me a chance to lean into the soft upholstery, an opportunity to catch my breath. Gilbert’s eyes narrowed, both his hands leaning on his cane. The silver moulding at the top was a roaring lion, but one far more menacing than MGM’s Leo.

  “The film,” I said finally.

  “The film?” His bushy eyebrows rose. “I’m sure I don’t have to go through Diana Christmas’s curriculum vitae with you, but in a short career she was noticeably prolific. Which film?”

  “The film which caused her to end her career.”

  “Ah,” he said. “That film. The grainy, black and white one-reeler released into the shadows under the most dubious of circumstances. The itch poor Diana has never quite been able to scratch. Did Carlisle tell you all about it?”

  I was sinking back into my seat. I’d promised myself I’d never talk of this with anyone; more importantly, I’d promised Diana. “He’d lost it. He released her from any claim he had over her.”

  He snorted. “Carlisle must have reached an appallingly desperate pass if he was resorting to blackmailing the poor widows of the parish, don’t you think? Oh well, it’s good news he was so accommodating. I’m glad you got to play the hero for the night. My congratulations! And for the record, I don’t think you had the slightest thing to do with his death, Mr Mallory. Even in Carlisle’s weakened state, you don’t really look like you’d have it in you.”

  He gave me a grin that was big and toothy and strangely charming. Even as it terrified me, it seemed to invite confidences. No, to demand them.

  “She still wants his copy of the film,” I said, my voice a whisper above the smooth engine. “It annoyed her he didn’t have it any more. She wants it out of circulation, so that no one can hold it over her again.”

  “That’s understandable,” he nodded. “Perfectly understandable. Peace of mind and all that. Although it was fairly widely disseminated, if I remember rightly. Even I got given a copy once upon a time. But if I could make a suggestion, my friend, I’d point you towards having a chat with Raymond Wilder. He practically wore out his copy. Showed it to everyone who came his way. Maybe he still has it. That would make sense, indeed it would. There was a time back in the day when he and Carlisle were close, or at least a time when he treated Carlisle as his factotum.”

  Raymond Wilder was a film star of the same vintage as Diana. A one-time heartthrob whose career had played out to diminishing returns the last ten years or so.

  “But how on earth would I get hold of Raymond Wilder?”

  There was a hint of a grin on his face. “Don’t you know? I thought you were a film journalist, Mr Mallory.”

  “I’ve genuinely no idea,” I confessed. “Through his agent? The last I heard of him, he was making cheap westerns and thrillers in Spain or Italy. That’s where I imagine he is. I don’t even know in which country he lives.”

  “He’s in this country at present time. Oh, yes,” he chuckled. “Ray Wilder is making a little film down at Motspur right now. His first British film in a decade, so I’m told. It’s a crime drama set in the sordid world of amusement arcades and funfairs.”

  On screen, Raymond Wilder had always looked so smart and debonair, a pressed handkerchief pristine white in his top pocket. Even in the westerns he made, he was always the posh English visitor and his buckskins seemed hand-pressed.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Oh yes,” he said, smiling, “beyond certain. In fact, I’m directing it.”

  Grayson Gilbert clearly liked to deal out surprises as if they were aces.

  I think I managed to keep my voice level. “Do you think you could get me an introduction, then?”

  A polite frown creased his forehead. “Oh no. Raymond Wilder is an old, dear friend of mine and I’m not going to be party to him being bothered out of the blue. But –” his grin reasserted itself “– you’re a young man with a great deal of initiative. I’m sure you can find your way onto the lot. And when you do, I won’t stop you. No, I can’t pass on an invitation, but nor will I pass word of warning the other way. Fair’s fair.”

  I almost thanked him, but he lifted his left hand to signal the chauffeur and stopped me.

  “This is Waterloo, Mr Mallory. This is as far as I’m going to take you this morning.”

  I gaped out of the window. It was indeed a cold and drizzly Waterloo Road.

  “I feel sure I’ll see you again, won’t I, Mr Mallory?”

  My elbow was jerked from under me by the door opening at my side, Romesh now exhibiting the most tactful gentleness. Gilbert waved his hand and I stepped out onto the pavement, my eye line only just reaching Romesh’s shoulder.

  “Give my regards to Diana, Mr Mallory!” Gilbert called after me. “I’m sure I’ll see her at some point soon too.”

  As soon as I made it to the office, I looked up Grayson Gilbert in our cuttings file. There were reviews, of course, and promotional pieces about his earlier films. Even various gushing stories about his parties. But none of the photos that accompanied these articles – not even the one of him posing in his study, which appeared in The Sunday Times Magazine – captured the blade-like glint which seemed permanent in his eyes.

  Chapter Eleven

  McTavish was a tall man – almost six and a half feet high – who, despite being gaunt, scruffy and constantly finding himself in suit jackets just that little bit short in the arm, kept the most painstakingly groomed moustache I’d ever seen. It was thick and caramel, and it bloomed on his top lip as if he spent an hour each morning lovingly combing it.

  His hair was receding at what seemed like a daily rate, he had enough lines around his eyes to suggest a man at least ten years older, but he did have that moustache. It didn’t make him appear as suave as he obviously wanted to be. McTavish was no Clark Gable. But it did stop people immediately dismissing him an as old duffer.

  It was he who’d given me the assignment to interview Diana, when Walkinshaw – the magazine’s senior writer – was drunk and incapacitated again. “You see, Mallory,” McTavish had said to me gleefully. “I told you we were getting Christmas early this year!”

  Now he blinked at me thrice in quick succession, like a bright light had been shone into his eyes. “Raymond Wilder?” he asked incredulously.

  “I think it will be a good piece, Mr McTavish.”

  “But Raymond Wilder?” He shook his head. “I know you’re the wee whippet around here, son, but surely you’ve heard something of Wilder’s reputation. When he was a proper star back in the day, if you were lucky as an interviewer you found him either truculent or taciturn. If you were unlucky, which was most people, then he was a right cunt. If you ever read an old interview with Raymond Wilder where he sounds charming and witty, then I’ll bet you a shiny guinea his publicist wrote the whole thing for him. And if I’m honest, son, I doubt his mood will have been improved by the direction his career has taken.”

  I nodded politely. “I still think it will be a good piece, sir?”

  “Your enthusiasms baffle me sometimes, Michael. Why do you think that?”

  “He’ll offer colour on what it was like to be a first tier film star back then. Rank, Ealing, he was even at Warners for a while. There must be a hundred good stories he can tell. A proper view from the summit. And he was in some near classics as well so if the worst comes to the worst, it can be a retrospective piece.”

  McTavish scoffed. “I can no more imagine Ray Wilder happily discussing The White Man, or Five Days of Summer, than I can imagine him juggling his own stool samples.”

  We eyeballed each other, stuck at an impasse. Our magazine – focusing entirely on cinema’s past rather than its Alien or Smokey and the Bandit present – was always hard to fill. Some months we worked hand to mouth when it came to copy. Normally, McTavish leapt at any idea to fill the pages. I was therefore unpractised in how to deal with a “No”.

  “Diana Christmas thought it might be a good idea.”r />
  He blinked at me again. “Diana Christmas, ay? Well, if memory serves, they were a couple once upon a time, so maybe she knows something we don’t.”

  “They were a couple once?” I asked, maybe a tad too quickly.

  “It might have just been a studio bauble, son, a way to sell more tickets. Though I think I remember hearing that there was something in it.”

  He leant back thoughtfully in his leather swivel chair and tapped his pipe twice on the pine. I’d never actually seen him smoke it, but the office smelt deeply and forever of nicotine.

  “Okay then, give it a whirl – who knows what might happen? But if you come back needing a large, stiff drink after being bawled out by the rudest man on Planet Earth, don’t say I didn’t bloody warn you!”

  I thanked him and then nearly ran back to my own cubby-hole. On my desk I already had the number for Barrymore Productions, Grayson Gilbert’s producers out at Motspur.

  It wasn’t any effort to get through to the publicity lady. I told her I was Michael Mallory of Classic Cinema Monthly and that I’d greatly appreciate an interview with Raymond Wilder.

  “I spoke to Grayson Gilbert and he thought it’d be good publicity,” I added.

  She sighed. “Mr Gilbert is a maverick and a pain. He already knows we have a publicity plan for this movie. There will be a junket and I’ll try and squeeze you into that, but until then…”

  I took advantage of her sentence trailing off, playing the only card I had left. “I’m in touch with his old friend, Diana Christmas, and she thought it would a good idea. I’ve already interviewed her and it would be great to get Mr Wilder’s perspective on some of the things she told me. I’d hate for the points she raised to go unanswered.”

  “Diana Christmas? The actress?”

  “The one and same. Tell him I’ve already spoken to her and would love to get his side of the story. If you could do that, I really would be most grateful.”

  There was a long sigh. “Okay then, it might be more than my afternoon’s peace is worth, but I’ll check with Mr Wilder and get back to you.”

  Quite possibly she thought she’d never speak to me again, but she was ringing my number barely fifteen minutes later. I had my interview, that evening, at Motspur Studios.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Grayson Gilbert?”

  It was hard to judge the level of surprise in Diana’s voice. I was talking to her from a phone box on Oxford Street. The office was half-empty at lunchtime, but it still seemed a safer place to make the call.

  “He picked me up outside your house.”

  “I don’t understand – why? If he was there, why didn’t he knock at the door? I haven’t seen Gray since I was in films.”

  “Were you friends?”

  “I guess so,” she said. “As much as one could be friends with Gray. He’s a man who listens to his own tune, Michael, and sometimes that tune plays so loud as to drown everything else out.”

  “But you’d trust him?”

  “As much as one could trust Gray, then I suppose I would. I don’t know.”

  It was pouring with rain, hammering on the roof, the water dripping over the door of the phone box, running down the steamed-up inside of the glass. I practically had to yell to make myself heard.

  “He said that Raymond Wilder had a copy of your film?”

  There was a gasp. “You told him about that, Michael?”

  “I had to, he already knew so much.” I clutched the receiver more tightly and lowered my voice as best I could. “He knew I’d gone to see Carlisle. He knew Carlisle was dead.”

  Another gasp, then a laugh. Over the crackly line it sounded both amused and terrified. “That’s typical of Gray, so utterly typical. He always saw much more clearly than other people.”

  “So, you see, I had to tell him something.”

  “And he said Raymond Wilder has a copy of the film?”

  “He did have a copy, certainly.”

  “But how do we find Ray Wilder, Michael? There are a lot of cheap whorehouses in the world, and we can’t search all of them, even if he is bound to be in one.”

  “He’s making a film out at Motspur. Grayson Gilbert is directing it.”

  There was a surprised pause. Her voice sounded tight when she spoke. “I had no idea his career was in such good stead.”

  “Did you know Raymond Wilder well?”

  “We moved in the same circles, Michael, you must know that. There’s a great deal about Ray Wilder though, that makes him hard to like. Lord knows why Gray has hired him – I always thought Gray hated him.”

  “I’ve got an interview with him, Diana!”

  “What?”

  “This evening. Six o’clock at the studio. I’m sitting down with him, I can ask him about the film then.”

  “Oh my God! That’s incredible news, my darling!”

  “If he’s got it, I’ll find out, Diana.”

  “I have to come with you, Michael!”

  “What? No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Why?”

  “I want to see him. I want to look at him again.”

  “But he’ll recognise you. I think it’s better if I handle this.”

  “Oh, I won’t let him see me. I’ll be careful, darling, I promise. But I want to see him in the flesh again, just to see how much he’s aged. I want to see his wrinkles unfiltered by a photographic lens.”

  “But how? I can’t simply smuggle you in.”

  “I’m sure we’ll find a way. Just tell them I’m your assistant. People think it’s hard to sneak into movie studios, which is why they don’t try, but it isn’t really. And I know the old place well enough that I’ll be able to hide myself away there, I’m sure I do. Please, Michael! Carlisle Collins may have hurt me more than anyone has ever done, but I know of few people who took more pleasure in my fall than Ray Wilder. I have to see him again, I really do!”

  I hesitated, but of course I agreed.

  There was a squeal of delight. “Thank you, Michael. This means so much to me. I really do love you so much.”

  “I love you too, Diana!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Diana and I sat together on the back seat of a black cab, arms wrapped tight around each other.

  My heart had been racing before we met, a quiet panic filling me as to how good an idea it was to let her accompany me, as I debated whether or not I could talk her out of it. Once I saw her though, my heart raced for completely different reasons. She wore a knee-length lime-green dress which flowed out from her hips like she was a dancer again in the chorus, but clung tight above the waist, falling from her neck in a tantalising cross, which showed off the round firmness of her bust. Over her shoulders was draped a thick fox fur wrap, ready for the cold (although incongruously perched on top of her forehead was a pair of plastic sunglasses). She clutched a matching green handbag tightly in her hand, which seemed to weigh her down slightly, but most important of all was the green headscarf – exactly the same shade as her dress – which she had wrapped around her head. If we were venturing amongst movie people at Motspur, then she had to hide her red hair. It was her most distinctive feature, marking her out as the one and only Diana Christmas.

  When I saw her I gave a gasp of appreciation, a gasp which was pretty much an audible leer. She didn’t look like herself, but she did look like a someone. It was clear at a glance she was some kind of celebrity. Maybe though, we were heading to one of the few places in Britain where her old school glamour might help us blend in.

  On the back seat of the cab, I wound my arm possessively around her waist, marvelling again at how taut and firm her stomach was. Her legs were crossed and my little finger stroked the top of her left thigh.

  She was ravishing, truly amazing. I’d leant in for a kiss on seeing her, but she’d backed away, not wanting to ruin her makeup. So I’d ended up kissing her neck. That was fine; I could have kissed the smooth whiteness of her neck for a month and not got bored of it. Sitting on the back seat,
she kept her hand idly on my knee the whole time.

  It hadn’t been long ago that I didn’t really know anyone in London. I was lonely, fighting self-doubt on a daily basis and wondering if I’d ever have a proper girlfriend. Fearing that I was going to be a lonely bachelor for the rest of my days. Now, I had my arm around my movie star lover. Being with her that evening, I couldn’t think of her as a former movie star (which would have been remarkable enough in itself); she was someone with the sheer beauty, glamour and sex appeal to still be an honest-to-goodness star.

  And that night she really did seem to know it.

  My doubts vanished. It filled me with confidence to see her like that, to feel her so warm in my arms, to blushingly receive the sly glances she gave me. If I thought back to how I’d been with Carlisle Collins, how close I’d come to peeing my pants when that decrepit man in his decrepit chair snarled at me, I knew I needed a boost. Raymond Wilder surely wouldn’t be as sharply terrifying as Carlisle Collins, but his reputation didn’t suggest he’d be easy. It was good to have the reminder why I was doing this. Wonderful to squeeze Diana close and know that she was the woman I worshipped. An incredible lady I could be a hero to.

  “I can’t remember the last time I was here.” Her voice was quick, rushing with adrenalin. “Oh, when was it? I honestly cannot remember which I made first, Baker’s Dozen or Crackpot?”

  I was so lost in staring at her profile, flawless and photogenic even in the dusky haze of the back of the cab, that it took me a stuttering moment to process the question. If memory served, it was Baker’s Dozen they made first.

  “Then it was Crackpot! Oh, how I adored Stanley Holloway. Sid James I never really took to. He was a bit of a bully. He thought it was so funny to pinch my bum when I was in that showgirl costume. I didn’t appreciate that at all. God, that costume!” she exclaimed, her eyes drifting out of the window in recollection. “That might have been the tightest, most difficult to wear garment I have ever put on. They had to sew me into it first thing in the morning, and I really did not appreciate Mr James’s suggestion that he be the one who unpicked the string at the end of the day.