Page 407 - SHERLOCK transcripts

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(She looks towards the two front doors to confirm this, then raises her eyes to the windows in
which the glass is opaque.)
SHERLOCK (over phone): ... painted windows. Twenty-three and twenty-four Leinster Gardens
...
(He pauses and sighs gently.)
SHERLOCK (over phone): ... the empty houses.
(The camera rises up towards the rooftops of the buildings.)
SHERLOCK (over phone): They were demolished years ago to make way for the London
Underground, a vent for the old steam trains.
(The camera lifts over the top of the houses and reveals that behind their front walls there is
nothing else of the buildings. The houses on either side are complete but these two have only
the front wall remaining, and underneath the houses runs a train line along which a Tube train
now passes by.)
SHERLOCK (over phone): Only the very front section of the house remains. It’s just a façade.
(He draws in a breath.) Remind you of anyone, Mary? A façade.
(At that moment a picture is projected onto the front of the two houses. Three storeys high,
stretching from the first floor to the third, it is a photograph of Mary. The picture, obviously
taken on her wedding day, is a head shot only and shows her wearing her headdress with the
white veil surrounding her head as she smiles happily at the camera. Mary turns and looks
behind her, trying to see where the picture is being projected from.)
SHERLOCK (over phone): Sorry. I never could resist a touch of drama.
(She turns back and looks at her image on the houses.)
SHERLOCK (over phone): Do come in. It’s a little cramped.
MARY (starting to walk towards the houses): Do you own this place?
SHERLOCK (over phone): Mmm. I won it in a card game with the Clarence House Cannibal.
(One of the two adjacent front doors is slightly ajar and there is light behind it. She walks
towards that door.)
SHERLOCK (over phone): Nearly cost me my kidneys, but fortunately I had a ... (he draws in a
breath) ... straight flush.
(Mary pushes open the door and looks inside. On the wall inside the door is an empty socket for
a large electric plug and beside it is a fuse box.)
SHERLOCK (over phone): Quite a gambler, that woman.
(Mary walks inside. All that remains of the house is a long narrow corridor running along the
front of the house. She looks back behind her for a moment and then focuses on the corridor. It
is lit at her end, and at the other end a bright light shines towards her, obscuring her view of
the far end, but she can just about see a shape sitting on a chair in the shadows under the
light. She stares at the shape and draws in a breath.)
MARY: What do you want, Sherlock?
(We switch to the other end of the corridor, looking towards Mary over the shoulder of the
figure sitting there and facing her. Water trickles from the ceiling beside it. We can also see the
thin clear tube of a medical drip hanging beside the figure.)
SHERLOCK (over phone): Mary Morstan was stillborn in October 1972. Her gravestone is in
Chiswick Cemetery where – five years ago – you acquired her name and date of birth and
thereafter her identity.
(She starts walking slowly along the corridor.)
SHERLOCK (over phone): That’s why you don’t have ‘friends’ from before that date.

FLASHBACK to Sherlock standing in the living room of 221B looking at his wedding plans on the
wall behind the sofa.
SHERLOCK (turning to where Mary is sitting at the dining table): Need to work on your half of
the church, Mary. Looking a bit thin.
MARY (smiling): Ah, orphan’s lot. Friends – that’s all I have.

In the present, Mary continues to walk slowly along the corridor.
SHERLOCK (over phone): It’s an old enough technique, known to the kinds of people who can
recognise a skip-code on sight ...

FLASHBACK to Mary on the first floor landing at 221, showing Sherlock the text message she
has received.
MARY: At first I thought it was just a Bible thing, you know, spam, but it’s not. It’s a skip-code.
(Sherlock looks closely at her.)

Transcripts by Ariane DeVere (arianedevere@livejournal.com)