plott

Leona Stevenson is the spoiled, bedridden daughter of wealthy businessman James

Cotterell. One day, while listening to what seems to be a crossed telephone connection,
she hears two men planning a woman's murder. The call cuts off without Leona learning
very much other than it is scheduled for 23:15, when a passing train will hide any
sounds. She calls the telephone company and the police, but with few concrete details,
they can do nothing. Complicating matters, her husband Henry is overdue and their
servants have the night off, leaving her all alone in a Manhattan apartment.

As she makes a number of phone calls trying to locate Henry, Leona inadvertently
begins to piece together the mystery in flashbacks. When Leona reaches Henry's
secretary, Elizabeth Jennings, she learns that he took an attractive woman, Sally Lord,
to lunch and did not return to the office. Sally Lord turns out to be the former Sally Hunt.
Leona stole then-drug-store-employee Henry from Sally, and married him against her
father's wishes. Sally is now the wife of Fred Lord, a lawyer in the district attorney's
office. From overheard conversations, she learned that her husband was close to
resolving an investigation that involves Henry somehow. Sally became so concerned
that she followed her husband and two associates to a mysterious meeting in a
seemingly abandoned house on Staten Island. The house, according to a "no
trespassing" sign, belongs to a Waldo Evans, a chemist working for her father. Sally
arranged to meet Henry for lunch, but before she could warn him, he left the table and
did not return. Later, Sally calls Leona with more news. The house on Staten Island has
burned down, and three men, including one named Morano have been arrested. Evans,
however, has escaped.

Leona then receives a message from Henry stating he has gone out of town on
business he had forgotten about and will not be back until Sunday. Leona next gets in
touch with Dr. Phillip Alexander, a specialist she had come to New York to see
regarding her lifelong heart troubles. Alexander reveals that he gave Henry her
prognosis ten days before, something that Henry kept from her. Henry had married
Leona without being aware of her health problems. He first found out when she had a
heart attack after they quarreled about his attempt to get a job on his own, rather than
being a do-nothing vice president in his father-in-law's business. Cotterell sabotaged his
job interview.

Leona's attacks became more and more frequent, until she finally took to her bed about
a year ago. Alexander, however, diagnosed Leona's problems as purely psychosomatic;
nothing is wrong with her physically. Leona goes into hysterics and phones a hospital,
asking to hire a nurse for the night. The receptionist tells her that they are short-staffed
and she can only have a nurse if the doctor feels it is an emergency. She thinks it is
only 11:00 pm, but discovers her clock has stopped.

Leona receives a telephone call from Waldo. He reluctantly discloses that Henry
recruited him to steal chemicals from the Cotterell drug company to sell to Morano.
Later, Henry decided to bypass Morano when Waldo was transferred. Morano,
however, showed up with two thugs and intimidated Henry into signing an IOU for
$200,000 for his lost profits, due in three months. When Henry protested that he did not
have that much, Morano pointed out that Leona must have a large insurance policy.

With Morano now in custody, Waldo stresses that Henry no longer has to raise the sum.
Waldo gives Leona a number to call to locate Henry, but when she calls she discovers
that it is for the city morgue.

When Henry calls her from a train station, Leona gives him Waldo's message. Seeing
that it is only minutes from 11:15, he pleads with her to go to the balcony and scream
for help, but she protests that she cannot, though she can hear somebody downstairs.
When the intruder enters her bedroom, she begs for her life, then screams. Unaware of
the policemen about to apprehend him, Henry frantically calls back, only to have a man
answer, "Sorry, wrong number."

POINT OF VIEW

Lucille Fletcher tells her play Sorry, Wrong Number in the first and third-person limited
omniscient perspective, from the point of view of stage directions for action in third, and
in the first-person with respect to the characters involved in the play. This is done
because the stage directions must be told in third-person so the actors and stage crew
know what to do. The characters all speak in the first-person because they become the
characters they are meant to play. The play is further told in the limited omniscient, so
that readers and viewers only know as much as the characters do, as they learn and
discover things. This adds mystery and suspense to the play's plot.

theme

Mystery

Mystery is a dominant theme in the play Sorry, Wrong Number by Lucille Fletcher.
Mystery involves elements of the unknown. There are two mysteries in Fletcher’s play,
both of which concern Mrs. Stevenson. While one of these mysteries is solved, the
other is left open-ended. Mrs. Stevenson is the victim of the murder plot. However, the
second mystery about the murderer's boss is speculation based on Mr. Stevenson's
urgent trip out of town and a logical motive for having his wife killed.

Terror

Terror is an underlying theme in the play Sorry, Wrong Number by Lucille Fletcher.
Terror is a classic element in horror, mystery, and crime-themed literature and pop-
culture. Terror is essentially fear brought on by some internal or external individual,
situation, or circumstance. Terror in Sorry, Wrong Number revolves around the
character of Mrs. Stevenson.

Summary

Sorry, Wrong Number tells the story of Mrs. Elbert Stevenson an invalid woman
confined to her bed, who becomes increasingly frantic as the story progresses. The
drama begins with Mrs. Stevenson attempting to call her husband, who is working late.
Frustrated with the busy signal, she seeks the help of the operator who connects her
through to what she assumes is her husband's office phone. Instead of hearing his
familiar voice, she listens in on a conversation where two men are plotting a murder.
The victim is a woman, home alone, who lives near a bridge. The men plan for the
attack to take place just as the train crosses the bridge, so the sound will mask any
screams from the victim.

Horrified by what she hears, Mrs. Stevenson calls the operator to demand that she trace
the source of this call. The operator explains that only the police can push through a
request like that, and so begins 20 minutes of calls to the police, telephone operators,
and even to the phone company's Chief Operator as Mrs. Stevenson attempts to alert
someone to the gravity of the situation. None of the people she talks to will
acknowledge that she is in any danger. Meanwhile, the audience learns that Mrs.
Stevenson has been confined to her bed for 12 years with anxiety issues. No one on the
phone has the answers she's seeking and her anxiety mounts, building suspense that
her health may be at risk.

The drama culminates in a scene were Mrs. Stevenson becomes certain that she's the
target of the murder; after all, she lives near a train that crosses a bridge, and when she
hears that her husband has left town on business, she knows that she will be at home
alone at the designated time for the attack. In the final minutes she hears an intruder
listening on the downstairs phone, and then she picks out footsteps coming up the
stairs. She hastily calls the police for help, and just before they answer the phone, her
terrified screams let the audience know that she has been caught by the killer.

The story ends when the police ask about the emergency nature of the caller. The killer
picked up the phone, explained that he was fine, and said that he never intended to call
the police. He apologized for dialing the wrong number and hanging up.

Protagonist

The main protagonist of the play is Mrs Stevenson who was shown as self-centred,
querulous, neurotic, useless, imperious and dramatic lady.

She lives in the Second Avenue nearby a bridge. Also, she used to get in touch with her
husband but the lines never connected making her more worried.

Hence, she was all alone.

PLOT

Mrs. Stevenson is a bed-ridden woman who has sent her nurse away for the night. She
places a call to her husband and the operator connects teh call. On this call, she
overhears 2 men plotting a murder of a woman who lives near the railway bridge.

She becomes hysterical and again calls the operator to ask for the telephone number
that was dialed in error. However, the operator refuses to divulge the number and tells
her that only the police are offered this information. She then calls the police and tries to
report the crime. However, no one believes her despite her numerous pleas and
attempts.

over a course of time, she starts believing that she is the women who is to be murdered
and she calls the police for help. Later, she hears the downstairs telephone being
answered and she realizes that the killer has entered her house.

She is finally murdered when a train passes the bridge, thus drowning her screams.