Episode Details

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

Half a million pounds of motorists' claims money has vanished from a collapsed insurer, and the auditor who signed its accounts begs Sherlock Holmes to prove him not innocent, but merely a fool. Where did the money go?

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

A new edition of “The Sealed Move”, rewritten from the ground up.

London, July 1966. The city talks of nothing but the World Cup and the wage freeze, Holmes has been idle all week, and the moths have eaten the morning coat Watson means to wear to a friend's wedding when a man who has stood an hour on the Baker Street step at last comes up the stair. He was the auditor of a motor insurer that has just collapsed, leaving its policyholders without a penny of cover. In February, he says, the manager of a bank abroad telephoned to swear the money was there to the pound, and he signed the accounts on that word; now half a million pounds is gone, and the morning papers are ready to call him a thief. In a claims hall of forty empty desks and telephones nobody answers, Holmes and Watson meet a young Welsh clerk who boxes up claims she cannot pay and writes back to the motorists night after night, a greengrocer selling her scales to pay for a smash, a chairman who says he never read a balance sheet in his life, and a Scotland Yard inspector who wants a thief — because a fool won't do.

From the series Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases: a real crime of the 1960s 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 event of 1966. The characters, their names and their dialogue are fictional, and the events of this story are fictionalized; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the insurer's chairman, its auditor and its staff, the policyholders, the investigators and the police — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. Where a real company, bank or place is mentioned, its part in this story is invented. 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 — July 1966.

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 Moths in the Wedding Coat
2:35 The Claims Hall
4:07 Plums and Brass Scales
5:30 A Drink with the Chairman
6:56 Tea Chests in the Boardroom
8:40 One Lamp Still Lit
10:04 Pencil in the Cash Book
11:25 A Hard Chair at the Yard
12:55 Supper in Baker Street
14:00 Brown Tape and Two Constables
15:48 The Cells Beneath the Yard
17:26 Two Rooms and a Gas Ring
18:59 Morning in Lestrade's Office
21:10 Tugs on the Ebb
22:08 A Tea Tray Nobody Ordered
23:49 Across the Hall
25:42 The Evening Paper

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