Page 438 - SHERLOCK transcripts

437

(Brief shot of the woman lying on the carpet in the room where she shot herself, the pistol still
in her hand.)
LESTRADE: Emelia Ricoletti. Yesterday was her wedding anniversary. The police, of course,
were called, and her body taken to the morgue. (He drinks from his glass.)
HOLMES: Standard procedure. Why are you telling us what may be presumed?
LESTRADE: Because of what happened next.
(In Limehouse, a pretty Chinese woman smiles at an English man who is sitting in a carriage. A
Chinese man stands beside her. Nearby, another Chinese man stands outside what can be
presumed to be an opium den.)
LESTRADE (voiceover): Limehouse, just a few hours later.
(An English man in a smart dress suit comes out of the den and starts to walk down the street.
The scene freezes with the man facing towards where the sitting room of 221B seems to have
appeared in the street. Lestrade looks towards the man.)
LESTRADE: Thomas Ricoletti, Emelia Ricoletti’s husband.
HOLMES: Presumably on his way to the morgue to identify her remains.
(Lestrade takes another drink, then nods.)
LESTRADE: As it turned out, he was saved the trip.
(In the street, a hansom cab approaches and a horse whinnies. Ricoletti turns around to look.
The door of the cab opens and a woman starts to get out. At this moment all we can see is her
boot and her white wedding dress covering her leg.)
BRIDE (singing): ♪ Do not forget me ...
(Ricoletti stares in horror as the Bride is revealed, her face covered and obscured by the head
dress’ veil. She is holding a shotgun which she now aims at him as she continues to sing.)
BRIDE (singing the next line of her song): ♪ Do not forget me ...
(Ricoletti raises his hands in terrified submission. The Bride slowly walks towards him.)
BRIDE: ♪ Remember the maid ...
RICOLETTI: Who are you?
BRIDE: ♪ The maid of the mill. ♪
RICOLETTI (talking over her): Why are you doing this? Just tell me who you are!
BRIDE: You recognise our song, my dear? I sang it at our wedding.
(Ricoletti stares in horror as the Bride lifts her veil with one hand. Her lipstick is even more
smeared than before, and there are powder burns around the middle of her lips.)
RICOLETTI: Emelia?! (He stutters.) You’re dead. You can’t be here. You died.
BRIDE (smiling at him): Am I not beautiful, Thomas? As beautiful as the day you married me?
(Behind her, a young police constable runs toward the scene but stops a few paces away.)
PC RANCE (nervously): What the hell’s all this about?
(The Bride turns her head towards him. The back of her head is covered with blood.)
BRIDE: What does it look like, my handsome friend?
(She turns her head towards her husband again.)
BRIDE: It’s a shotgun wedding.
(Cocking the shotgun twice in rapid succession, she fires at him twice. She smiles as he stares
sightlessly at her for a moment, his own blood spattered over his face, then drops to the
ground. His head seems to lands on the carpet of the sitting room in 221B. Holmes looks
impassively at the man’s body.)
HOLMES: ’Til death us do part. Twice, in this case.
(He smiles at Lestrade. In the street, the Bride has pulled her veil back over her face and now
turns in the direction of the hansom cab. The back of her head can be seen more clearly and it
looks as if the rear of her skull has been blown off. PC Rance gasps as she walks past the cab
and continues on into the fog and disappears from view. Rance blows his police whistle and
then runs off after her.)
WATSON: Extraordinary.
MRS WATSON: Impossible!
HOLMES (standing): Superb! Suicide as street theatre; murder by corpse. Lestrade, you’re
spoiling us. Watson, your hat and coat.
(He walks towards the door.)
WATSON (also standing): Where are we going?
HOLMES (standing just outside the sitting room): To the morgue. There’s not a moment to lose
...
(He takes off his dressing gown and puts on his jacket.)
HOLMES: ... which one can so rarely say of a morgue.
MRS WATSON: And am I just to sit here?

Transcripts by Ariane DeVere (arianedevere@livejournal.com)