Cold Feet

© Louis Felder

(Comedy/Mystery, a full-length play)
Three woman of various ages believe they've each murdered a despicable old man, but he's alive and wants revenge.

Six characters, present time, one set

Characters
Gretchen Foxcroft, About 50 or so, the Dean of Women at Langley College. Intelligent, intimidating, attractive, forceful.
Diana Kingsley, Also about 50 or so, an advertising art director. Slim and attractive, she dresses with style; her manner is theatrical. Diana and Gretchen are rivals for the professor they hate.
Paul Ingersol, About 25, a university student by day, an undertaker's assistant by night, a hopeful romantic and hopeless writer who finds himself acting like a detective.
Rudy Vendetta, One of the Vendetta brothers, 30-35, huge, muscular, pleasant but not especially bright, with a Sicilian temper. He drives a hearse.
Bessie, Beautiful, 19, a dream until she opens her mouth. Tough, punk, into rock music and Hollywood.
Professor Fletcher Healy, 70s, an egotistical, wealthy, selfish university professor who is also sexually perverse and devious. It is assumed he's dead in the first act, but he's very much alive in the second act.

Synopsis

COLD FEET can be performed as a two-act play or as a long one-act without intermission.

A mystery/farce. The living room of the huge baronial house has all the usual spooky Gothic trappings, and of course it’s night with thunder and lightning.

Upstairs lies the body of Professor Healy. An undertaker’s assistant arrives — Paul, a part-time student, with the hearse driver Rudy. Paul questions the woman (Gretchen) who notified him but she is evasive, hiding the fact that she killed him. Another woman (Diana) arrives and she too is evasive, also believing she killed him. Old Bessie, the housekeeper in the basement, turns out to be a gorgeous girl of 19 who believes she alone killed the professor. All three women are guilty but only of attempted murder because the professor emerges alive! And he’s mad! And he wants revenge!

So now it’s not a “who-done-it,” but a “who’s-going-to-do-it”. All three women have their personal motives. The window seat is large enough for a body, the bookcase has a secret panel, and the bar revolves into the wall, and the chase is on. In the end, the three women get what they want, and the professor gets what’s coming to him.

Download the script