31 Plays in 31 Days, #13 - "Not Easily Undone"

[breakinglight11]

I finished the first draft of the sixth Mrs. Hawking play yesterday, woohoo! So let's celebrate by posting the scene that I put off until last because I knew no compelling way to write it!

This leads directly into Day #6 - "The Very Best News." Ugh, I hate this scene. It's boring, full of filler to set the table, but necessary in order to do some housekeeping. This is an early moment that is intended to establish where a lot of things are at this point since we last saw everyone in part 5. There's a lot of table-setting to make clear. The kids are at the point where they're working a number of cases in parallel. Mrs. Hawking and Mary have a weird coolness in their relationship still, which Nathaniel is trying to smooth over. They've been taking apart Mrs. Frost's criminal enterprises in her absence. Mrs. Hawking really, really wants to be working on the Ripper case, but since the police are still chasing her and know to recognize her stealth suit at this point, she cna't get near it.

That's a lot. This scene I think technically has all that, but it's awkward and bloated. I'd love to smooth it out and cut it down, especially given the first complete draft of this script turned out longer than any other first Hawking draft to date. Sigh.



Day #13 - "Not Easily Undone"
From Mrs. Hawking VI
By Phoebe Roberts

London, England, 1888

VICTORIA HAWKING, lady's society avenger, late forties
MARY STONE, her housemaid and assistant, late twenties
NATHANIEL HAWKING, her gentleman nephew and assistant, mid thirties
~~~

(MARY enters.)

MARY:

Back, madam.

NATHANIEL:

Splendid, we can make report.

(NATHANIEL gets a notebook to consult.)

MARY:

What became of the extortionists that Frost had in Cheapside?

MRS. HAWKING:

Thanks to some well-placed letters, each of the ringleaders thinks the other has sold them up the river, so they’ve turned their sights on destroying each other. I expect in punishing each other for the treachery they’ll soon have torn their whole operation apart.

NATHANIEL:

Which takes care of another of Frost’s lieutenants. And you, Mary? Has the man you pegged for the Gardener murder been taken in?

MARY:

Just last night. I passed off the balisong knife and the bloodstained gloves to Arthur, and when the coppers came for him he cracked like an egg.

MRS. HAWKING:

You handed over all the evidence?

MARY:

Yes, to confront the killer with. Is there something else you’d have me do?

MRS. HAWKING:

No. It sounds as if you’ve got it well in hand.

NATHANIEL:

Well… that sounds settled, then. It seems we’ll have time to take on something new.

MRS. HAWKING:

Yes, more distractions from the only case that matters.

NATHANIEL:

Madam, we’ve been through this. There are too many police about it to involve yourself in the Ripper case.

MRS. HAWKING:

For all the good it does! Two more women are dead in one night! How many more will there be while we stand by?

MARY:

And how do you mean to investigate? You can’t go out in your suit now that the coppers have come to recognize it.

NATHANIEL:

Frost’s work is not easily undone.

MRS. HAWKING:

So you’d have us stand by.

MARY:

Not forever. But not before we have a plan. Charging after the Ripper in your hood won’t serve this time.

MRS. HAWKING:

Make no mistake, Miss Stone. If I have my way, my hood will be the last thing that monster ever sees. Now, if that’s all, you must excuse me. I have an appointment.

(MRS. HAWKING exits.)