Episode Details

This radio drama uses AI-generated writing, voices, music, sound effects and artwork. All spoken performances in this edition use ElevenLabs V4.

A woman living alone in Rome is strangled in her flat, and the London claims man whose company insured her can find nothing wrong with the claim. So why can't he bring himself to sign it? Who killed her?

🎭 Directed Edition — every role cast for this story and every line performed with full voice direction.

London, autumn 1959. Rain has fallen all week, Holmes has been idle a fortnight and is shooting a loyal E.R. into Mrs Hudson's wallpaper, and Watson is drafting yet another apology when the telephone rings: a claims man in the kiosk across the road asks to come up. A lady his company insured for a fortune has been strangled in her Rome flat, and although the claim is perfectly in order, he cannot sign it. By noon next day Holmes and Watson are in Rome with a patient inspector who has a burglary that walked past the silver, a door nobody forced, a loyal young maid with her own key and a secret she will not give up, a doorbell dead for six months that rang the morning after, and a husband six hundred kilometres away in Milan who wants the girl charged.

From the series Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases: a real crime of the 1950s reimagined as a classic Sherlock Holmes radio mystery, performed by a full multi-voice AI cast, with sound design and a light score that stays under the story.

Loosely inspired by a real crime of the 1950s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the victim, her husband and her family, her household, the insurers, the investigators and the police — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. This is a work of fiction, not a factual account of any real person or institution. No real person is portrayed, and no real individual, company or organisation is accused of any act shown here.

Setting: London, Rome and Milan — autumn 1959.

Writer v2.7 — the studio's newest writing process: the plot is planned and checked by an AI story editor, then each act is drafted with the whole story in view and edited before a word is voiced — and then cast and performed with our new casting and voice direction.

Chapters:
0:00 Powder Smoke in Baker Street
2:50 An Office Loud with a Fan
4:50 A Young Woman on the Step
6:22 Red Seals on the Door
8:00 The Shuttered Hall
8:59 Out on the Landing
10:37 A Gale Through Every Drawer
12:27 Clean Plates and a Cold Stove
14:06 A Whitewashed Cell
15:29 North to Milan
16:25 A Back Office Smelling of Cigars
17:24 The Builder's Yard
18:54 Flour on His Turn-ups
20:41 A Borrowed Office
21:52 Back Above the Yard
23:47 One Barred Window
25:44 Baker Street, Three Evenings Later

Read the story and the full transcript: https://matezz.com/episodes/the-case-of-the-silent-doorbell-sherlock-holmes-the-new-cases/