Episode Details

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman — when a masked stranger calls at 221B Baker Street after dark claiming to be the agent of a European royal house, Holmes sees through the disguise before the man finishes his first sentence: the King of Bohemia is about to marry, and a single photograph in the hands of Irene Adler, an opera singer with a brain of the first order and the face of the most beautiful of women, could shatter the engagement and shake a throne; armed with disguises, a smoke rocket, and the cold certainty that no one has ever beaten him, Holmes sets out to recover the photograph — and meets the only adversary who ever saw through him in return; this is the very first Sherlock Holmes short story ever published, the case that made Doyle's detective the most famous in the world and the only case Holmes lost, first printed in The Strand Magazine in July 1891 and collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, presented complete and unabridged, exactly as Arthur Conan Doyle wrote it, from the Midnight Archive — Nocturnal Tales' library of the classic detective stories that built the genre.

ℹ️ FOR LISTENERSThis is a complete, unabridged reading of A Scandal in Bohemia by Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in 1891 and now in the public domain. Every word is the author's own. Part of The Midnight Archive: three nights of classics every week, alongside four original Nocturnal Tales mysteries.

🗳️ YOU CHOOSE WHAT'S NEXTThe Archive is deep — more Holmes? Father Brown? Arsène Lupin? Anna Katharine Green? Vote in the poll attached to this episode, or tell us in the comments which classic you want to hear by lamplight.

💬 QUESTION FOR THE COMMENTSHolmes calls her "the woman" — not because he loved her, but because she beat him at his own game and walked away. Is being outwitted by an equal a defeat — or the only compliment a mind like his could ever receive? 🕵️

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🧾 CREDITSStory by Arthur Conan Doyle (public domain). Narrated and produced by Nocturnal Tales.

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