31 Plays in 31 Days, #17 - "Gratis"

[breakinglight11]

The hilarious thing is all day yesterday I was digging into the actual edit of the completed Mrs. Hawking VI play. I was so absorbed that I forgot to post a scene for the challenge, as tangible proof that I'm actually doing work. Yet another small demonstration of how useless doing this challenge is or me.

This scene immediately follows Day #1 - Live for the Game.



Day #17 - "Gratis"
From Mrs. Hawking VI
By Phoebe Roberts
~~~

London, England, 1888

VICTORIA HAWKING, lady's society avenger, late forties
ELIZABETH FROST, former criminal mastermind, now institutionalized, early fifties
~~~


MRS. FROST:

Now, dear boss… what else have you got for me?

(Pause. MRS. HAWKING opens her portfolio.)

MRS. HAWKING:

Four women, murdered over the course of two months, by means of a sharp blade in the slums of Whitechapel. No stab wounds at all, only slashes. Most had organs removed in their entirety— kidneys, liver, once even the womb. Each one more more brutalized than the last.

MRS. FROST:

He’s intensifying. He was interrupted in his third attempt, and couldn’t bear to go home without his souvenir. Where were the bodies found? Have you got a map to mark them?

(MRS. HAWKING produces one. They go over the inquests to mark the spots. MRS. FROST lights a cigarette.)

MRS. HAWKING:

Polly Nichols in Buck’s Row. Must you do that? It’s a small room.

MRS. FROST:

Yes. It is. But they permit me few enough pleasures in here, so you’ve only yourself to blame. Annie Chapman on Hanbury Street.

MRS. HAWKING:

Hm. I suppose you’re not the first I’ve driven to vice.

MRS. FROST:

Oh, indeed. I imagine the Colonel was a chimney by the end.

MRS. HAWKING:

That was the least of it. Elizabeth Stride in Dutfield’s Yard.

MRS. FROST:

What was his poison? Drink?

MRS. HAWKING:

Most people didn’t know. And Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square.

MRS. FROST:

All within an hour’s walk or so, all in alleyways or yards or some other place reasonably secluded. He knows the lay the land. A local?

MRS. HAWKING:

There where does he go?

MRS. FROST:

Perhaps he disappears into plain sight. Tell me, how fares Nathaniel these days? Our very own ghost of Christmas past.

(Pause. MRS. HAWKING glares.)

MRS. FROST:

Come now, a little conversation is a small price to pay.

MRS. HAWKING:

(Sighs) Braver and stronger than ever you knew. But if our man lives there, how does he disappear so completely? I’d say he has some other place to go, that he can leave for once the investigation gets underway.

MRS. FROST:

So he has reason to be there, but not all the time. Who comes to Whitechapel enough to know it, but doesn’t have to live there? What military surgeon does?

MRS. HAWKING:

A workhouse doctor. The standards are low; they wouldn’t need an accomplished medical man.

MRS. FROST:

Often volunteers from the superior classes who mean to do a charitable deed. Volunteers who needn’t live in the same pit as their patients.

MRS. HAWKING:

The houses on Charles Street and the South Grove are within a mile.

MRS. FROST:

It looks as if you’ve got a place to begin.

MRS. HAWKING:

Of course the area is crawling with police officers. Thanks to you, I won’t be able to investigate with my usual low profile.

MRS. FROST:

I thought you were good at this. Whatever did you do, before you could pass the hard work off to the boy and the girl? Go in plain clothes; they shan’t be on the alert for that. What’s the worst that could happen? You’ll have to talk to someone?

(Pause.)

MRS. FROST:

In the meantime, I shall think on what I’ll ask for in exchange for the next consultation.

MRS. HAWKING:

Who’s to say there shall be a next consultation?

MRS. FROST:

At any rate, we’ll call this one gratis— or nearly so. The next one, however… that will cost you.