Eden St. Michel: Scandal, Death and a British Film Star: Screen Siren Noir, #2

By F.R. Jameson

Avenging her secret could put a noose around both their necks…

Joe might be a stuntman, but still he'd never expect to end up in bed with a genuine movie star. However, that's what happens the night he meets the ultra-glamorous, Eden St. Michel. Swiftly they're the talk of the town. Their passion fast, intense and dangerous.

But Eden has scars from her past, both mental and physical. Joe needs to be her hero, although retribution won't be easy. One misstep could mean the end of their careers and – maybe – their lives.

After a sudden moment of violence, Joe finds himself in deadly trouble. He may have the love of a good woman, yet it's leading him to the gallows.

But what if the only way to save Eden is to make that ultimate sacrifice?

Eden St. Michel: Scandal, Death and a British Film Star is a must-read for all fans of hard-boiled crime and film noir. If you love the thrillers of Megan Abbott, Guy Bolton and James Ellroy, then you will adore Eden St. Michel!

The second novel in the 'Screen Siren Noir' series.

PICK UP THIS NAIL-BITINGLY GRIPPING PAGE TURNER TODAY! 

• Language: English
• Publisher: F.R. Jameson
• Release date: Jun 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781393914518

F.R. Jameson

F.R. Jameson was born in Wales, but now lives with his wife and daughter in London. He writes both horror and thrillers. The thrillers are mostly of the supernatural variety, but are sometimes historical, set around the British film industry. You can find him on Facebook, and follow him on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest: @frjameson.

Book preview

Eden St Michel

Scandal, Death and a British Film Star

F.R. Jameson

Copyright © 2018 by F.R. Jameson

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

To Vicky and Elise, with love, always…

Contents

Epigraph

1.From audio recordings made by Eden St. Michel, probably about 1970

2.Chapter One

3.Chapter Two

4.From the audio recordings of Eden St. Michel

5.Chapter Three

6.Chapter Four

7.Chapter Five

8.Chapter Six

9.From the audio recordings of Eden St. Michel

10.Chapter Seven

11.Chapter Eight

12.Chapter Nine

13.Chapter Ten

14.Chapter Eleven

15.Chapter Twelve

16.Chapter Thirteen

17.From the audio recordings of Eden St. Michel

18.Chapter Fourteen

19.Chapter Fifteen

20.Chapter Sixteen

21.Chapter Seventeen

22.Chapter Eighteen

23.From the audio recordings of Eden St. Michel

24.Chapter Nineteen

25.Chapter Twenty

26.Chapter Twenty-One

27.From the audio recordings of Eden St. Michel

28.Chapter Twenty-Two

29.Chapter Twenty-Three

30.Chapter Twenty-Four

31.Chapter Twenty-Five

32.Chapter Twenty-Six

33.Chapter Twenty-Seven

34.Chapter Twenty-Eight

35.From the audio recordings of Eden St. Michel

36.Chapter Twenty-Nine

37.Chapter Thirty

38.Chapter Thirty-One

39.Chapter Thirty-Two

40.From the audio recordings of Eden St. Michel

41.Chapter Thirty-Three

42.Chapter Thirty-Four

43.From the audio recordings of Eden St. Michel

44.A note from the author

45.Also Available in Screen Siren Noir!

46.Diana Christmas

47.Alice Rackham

48.Vivian Fontaine

49.Available Exclusively!

About the Author

When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses.

Key Largo1948

From audio recordings made by Eden St. Michel, probably about 1970

"E xotic! That’s the dreadful word I was constantly labelled with. Exotic! As if I were a flamingo or a unicorn, something strange or impossible that shouldn’t really exist in their normal and tedious world.

"Yes, my looks were partly responsible. My ‘aloof beauty’, which the more unimaginative film critics – so all of them – went on and on about. ‘Glacial’, they said, ‘intimidating’, someone confessed. The phrase ‘icily alluring’ actually went out in one studio press release.

"Then one silly bastard labelled me ‘exotic’ and did it close enough to the start of my career that I wasn’t quite pinned down, and because they didn’t have an original thought in their heads, every other halfwit followed on. It was my upturned nose, apparently, my high cheekbones, the fact that my hair is so blonde it’s nearly white. Or grey if in the hands of the wrong cinematographer.

"I think my favourite guess as to the provenance of my ‘exotic’ looks was the scribe in ‘The Daily Mail’ who thought my ancestors might be from Mongolia. I mean, Jesus! Hadn’t this man ever seen anyone Mongolian? Couldn’t he have looked up a picture of a Mongolian in a book? Asked someone what a Mongolian looked like?

"There was also, of course, the fact that I grew up partly overseas, as if that alone gave me an exoticism which no English girl who’d spent zero to twenty-one going no further than the Isle of Wight could match. But really, my dad moved with his job from the suburbs of Epsom to the suburbs of Copenhagen when I was twelve, so just after the war, and we moved back again when I was fifteen.

"When I was out there I went to an English school, so I didn’t even get to learn any fun, interesting swear words.

"Besides, Copenhagen really, really isn’t exotic.

"The people of Copenhagen do not see themselves as exotic in any way. In fact, they’d no doubt look at Epsom as quite exotic.

"While, of course, I’ve learnt from experience that the people of Epsom definitely look at Copenhagen as exotic. As if it’s on the road to Timbuktu or some such thing.

"Meanwhile, I’m caught in the middle. An English girl, but with looks that surely must come from some other magical place, and my white – almost grey – hair. For no good reason, I’m exotic, and it’s all so incredibly boring.

"It’s strange, as even though my grandparents were the most English of English people, it’s this foreign quality which is seen as having somehow cursed me. That my Scandinavian beauty – Scandinavian obviously makes more sense than Mongolian, maybe the idiot got the wrong word – was the cause of my fall. As if such glacial, pristine beauty could only ever be a mask for a passionate, unruly nature, which led to a passionate and unruly life, which led to my disgrace and damnation.

"There are some out there who think that what happened to me was entirely down to my looks.

As if my great fatal flaw was my exoticness.

Chapter One

Ifirst got together with Eden St. Michel when I had sore knuckles and blood seeping out of a knife wound to my left bicep. It was at the end of a particularly wild night at The Cinema Club on Dean Street in Soho.

It was supposed to be a club exclusively for those of us who worked in the film business. A private members’ club that wouldn’t even consider anyone who couldn’t show their studio pass. But it wasn’t a snooty affair. No tie was required to gain entry, and in the last few months I’d even seen people come through the door in denim – the younger and more anti-establishment actors in the main, proving how much they could get away with. (I’m an old-fashioned bloke and so always wore a casual suit and white shirt myself, but took advantage of the laxity to dispense with the tie.) For a still fairly young man like me, it was a great place to meet budding actresses, script girls, studio typists, make-up girls. My friend Archie told me that one night he’d even seen Ida Lupino in there. So I guess there was even a chance of meeting female film directors.

Yes, occasionally it was raucous, but I liked it because in the main it had a relaxed atmosphere. And I appreciated it that most nights they had a bossa-nova or swing band on the stage. Not that I had anything against rock’n’roll or pop music, but it always felt more of an occasion if there was a live band of proper musicians. Those who understood that, as the lights got lower towards the end of the evening, slow numbers were appreciated. Part of the appeal of the place was that it was tucked out of the way unobtrusively in a basement cavern. But what I really loved about The Cinema Club was that, unlike most of the pubs and non-private clubs in London, it didn’t have to shut down at ten bloody thirty.

We were showbiz people and we liked to stay up late!

This was back in 1962 and I was a stuntman who worked pretty much exclusively in pictures (although I’d done the occasional gig for a TV show, when urgent bills needed to be paid). It was my role to crash cars, plummet from top-floor windows and fall dramatically from horses. I spent a lot of my working hours trying to make the things I did look as dangerous as possible, while not putting myself in any real danger. I’d had more sugar-glass bottles smashed over my skull than I could possibly count. But whatever ridiculous thing I was doing in the day, I knew that when I got home and cleaned myself up, just heading down the local Dog and Duck for three pints of mild and some pork scratchings before closing wasn’t my idea of fun. If I was going out then I was going to do it properly, and The Cinema Club was like a lighthouse beacon of enjoyment in the London gloom.

But even though I felt comfortable there, even though there were periods when I went there so often it felt like my own personal club, if things had taken their normal course, I still probably wouldn’t have had the nerve to get up and speak to Eden St. Michel.

Don’t get me wrong, I was no Nervous Nigel when it came to the fairer sex. I had little problem putting on my best smile and chatting up a girl. Even an actress. Most actresses are insecure, and a stream of compliments can get a bloke a great distance. Eden St. Michel wasn’t just an actress, though, she was a star. A proper, honest-to-goodness film star.

Although the club had been set up for the film industry, the front end talent wasn’t something we often saw there. They generally preferred their own, fancier places. So when she appeared that night, it was like a goddess coming down from Mount Olympus. A goddess with bright pink lipstick and her own cigarette holder.

Obviously, she’d found herself in the mood for a casual evening. She’d even dressed down, wearing a knee-length lilac dress that looked like it came from Marks and Sparks. But still it was impossible to ignore that she wasn’t like us mere mortals, she was something other – more beautiful, more self-possessed, shimmering in some impossible-to-describe way that was beyond the likes of us normal people.

‘Exotic’ is the word that was bandied about, although she soon let me know how much she hated it.

I suppose I’d have described myself as a fan. I’d paid to see a couple of her films, anyway. What I liked about her was the way she raised an eyebrow and took command of any situation with just a sardonic look. She had a way of delivering dismissive dialogue which made you believe that she could demolish any man stood in front of her – be it Stewart Grainger or Robert Mitchum – with a simple turn of phrase and an impatient tone. I liked how intimidating she was and how it didn’t just come from her incredible beauty (and she was so very beautiful), but from a sense that there was some core of steel within her which could never be broken. A man might be physically stronger, but in any way which mattered, in the long term it was Eden St. Michel – or the character she was playing – who’d be the strong one.

The tales I’d heard from around the studios said that the characters she played were basically a reflection of her personality. That she was equally intimidating, dismissive and sardonic in real life, too. So yes, I clocked her across the dance floor of The Cinema Club, but really I’d have no more gone over and tried to chat up Eden St. Michel than I’d have felt up Greta Garbo’s arse.

Although that was before the irritating little Italian intervened and somehow brought us together.

My word, he was an ugly little man. A caveman with Brylcreem who strutted about the place all evening with an unearned sense of superiority. A young, tiny Mussolini, but without the charm or the looks. I don’t think he worked in the industry, so really he shouldn’t have even been in there (but then Benny and Freddie on the door weren’t averse to taking the odd bribe), though perhaps he was some visiting dignitary from the Italian film industry.

However he’d got in there, as the evening went on he staggered around like a drunken lout, with a bottle of red wine in hand, yelling obscenities at the top of his voice and generally making a nuisance of himself.

I’ve no idea what his English vocabulary was like when he was sober, but knickers was clearly a word he’d learnt, while want to see were three others. Wine splashed out of the bottle as he waved his arms and weaved and barged around the dancefloor, yelling those four words out and trying to lift ladies’ skirts.

Well, I wasn’t going to put up with that, so I tapped him on the shoulder.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t set out that night to save Eden St. Michel. As the evening wore on, I’d lost her in the crowd and thought that she’d probably gone on elsewhere. Taken herself to some actual film star club. In the darkness of the dance floor, I didn’t even spot the lilac dress. So I had no idea that she was the last lady to receive the Italian’s nasty little attentions before I intervened.

No idea that when I spun him around, his hand had just been reaching up her skirt. Certainly I had no idea that this was going to be the first of many times when I’d try to save her.

As I yanked his shoulder, the greasy little bastard nearly lost his balance (he certainly lost a good bit of his wine) and stared up at me, momentarily confused. But then – incredibly – he slipped a self-satisfied grin on his face. The little git looked me up and down and uttered a giggly laugh.

I’m six foot two, played rugby right through school and kept myself in shape for my job, with a lot of hard hours in the gymnasium. Normally, me wearing a no-nonsense look and tapping some out-of-order bloke on the shoulder was enough.

This bastard, though, actually turned away again, as if I wasn’t six inches and four stone bigger than him, and – as if I’d dared him to – he reached his hand out to again grab the arse of the shapely blonde I’d interrupted him groping.

That’s when I swung him back around and clouted him in the nose.

What happened next astounded me. When I hit someone, they generally stay hit. If they’re not dazed, then they realise it’s in their best interest to pretend they are until I walk away. This Italian, though, bounced back up from the floor as if we were standing together on a trampoline. His hand moved so fast, I had no idea where he pulled the knife from, but suddenly there was the gleam of polished silver in his hand and he was slicing open my bicep through my suit.

Still stunned that he’d got up again so quickly, I just stood there like a flat-footed idiot as the blade whizzed through my clothing and gashed a cut three inches long into my arm. I remember the nasty little grin on his face as the shock finally hit me, the way his eyes shone death as I staggered backwards, only to slip stupidly on some of his spilled red wine. Suddenly my legs were gone and my backside was smacking hard against the cold stone floor. Unlike him, I was too disorientated to spring back up.

He stood over me, tossing the knife from hand to hand like a cheap thug from an old James Cagney movie and screaming out threats in Italian. Clearly he meant to carve up the big man on the floor good and proper. But the little bastard had crossed all kinds of lines now. He may have thought that he’d scored himself a victory, but British blokes look after their own. Four of them – two of them I’d never properly met – piled on him, snapped the knife from his wrist and took great patriotic pleasure from filling him in.

Meanwhile, I just sat on the floor and stared at the Italian bastard’s reckoning happening in front of me. My arm was bleeding and aching, while my head was suddenly pounding from the shock. It felt like I’d got myself into a ridiculous situation, one that ended with me sitting ungraciously on the floor in puddles of spilled wine and what smelt like spilled brandy, which didn’t do my sense of dignity a lot of good. I only became slowly aware that there was an incredibly beautiful woman crouched at my side, and that she was stemming the flow of blood with what was – for The Cinema Club – a surprisingly clean napkin.

In a daze, I turned my gaze towards her, and even up close it took me a few seconds to recognise her.

But then she smiled at me and I had it.

And that’s how I properly met Eden St. Michel.

Chapter Two

W here’d a nice girl like you learn to do something like that?

She had taken my good arm and, along with the barman, Sheffield Mick, helped me onto one of the benches in the far corner. Painfully my jacket had been peeled off and my blood-stained, sliced sleeve rolled up. Now Eden St. Michel herself was sat beside me, delicately sewing up my arm.

Do you think I just went to finishing school and learnt to walk with books on my head? She smiled and shook her head. No, I had a varied education. You don’t know how often home economics intersects with first aid. Men may think schools are teaching us how to run a household, but really they’re teaching us how to run the world.

She smiled up at me with that Eden St. Michel grin that I’d seen again and again on the big screen. Eyes sparkling, the corners of her lips turned up in a way that managed to be both coolly distant and yet welcoming. Her mouth was one of the things people always talked about. With her high cheekbones and delicate nose, her mouth almost seemed too wide for her face. Her lips too thick, her smile too elongated. Yet at the same time it seemed to fit in perfectly, to be a stunning mouth on a genuinely beautiful face. Especially up close, I realised.

Some people said that she was like an English Kim Novak. That apart from the different accents, they could have been sisters. I’d always thought she was much prettier than Kim Novak. And up close there was no competition.

I thought right away that her gaze up at me was more than a little flirtatious, and that thought stayed with me even as I told myself that I’d lost a bit of blood and my judgement was no longer to be trusted.

What’s the surprise? she asked. There are some film stars who are more useful than just decoration. Some of us have brains, some of us other skills. Okay, there are a lot of clothes horses who can read the dialogue without understanding any of the words, but I’m not one of them.

I’d expected her to be distant. Everything I’d ever heard about her suggested she was aloof, but I found her instantly warm. There was a kindness to her which was unmistakable, a good humour. Maybe my injury brought out the nurse in her, or perhaps she dropped the aloof act when she met someone she genuinely liked.

Whatever the reason – loss of blood or no loss of blood – I could sense already that she liked me.

In my school, I told her, they barely bothered to teach us English.

I can tell that from your accent. What did they teach you, Welshman? A hundred different ways to shear a sheep while choral singing?

I laughed and then winced as she missed a stitch of my wound. She’d poured some vodka on the cut already to sterilise her, which I’d been manly enough to pretend didn’t really sting that much. I had no idea whether