Episode Details

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

How could a telegram from Moscow quote a promise a young dancer had written in only one place — a sealed letter he left at his Paris hotel desk?

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

London, May 1960. A gale is moaning in the Baker Street chimney when a call comes through from Paris: the young star of a Soviet ballet company on tour begs Holmes for help, says he is afraid he will never reach London — and the line goes dead. In Paris, Holmes and Watson find him watched at every hour, each late night noted down in a little book, and learn of a letter he left sealed at the hotel desk for his mother, promising her a blue shawl. The next morning, as the company sets off for London, he is handed a ticket home and a telegram: his mother is gravely ill — and she wants the blue shawl he promised. A sour night clerk, a devoted Parisian friend and the company's own watchful administrator all had their chance at that desk, and two governments are waiting to see what the French police will do.

From the series Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases: a real Cold War event 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 Cold War event. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the dancers and their friends, the ballet company and its officials, the hotel staff, the diplomats 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 or organisation is accused of any act shown here.

Setting: London and Paris — 1960.

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.

Updated edition — re-recorded with refined voices, levels and details.

Chapters:
0:00 A Coat That Won't Button
2:47 Backstage at the Theatre
4:08 Midnight at the Hotel Desk
5:26 Among the Chimney Pots
7:04 A Telegram at the Gate
8:57 A Stamp on the Company's Bill
10:05 The Key to Thirty-Two
11:15 Pipe Smoke off the Customs Hall
13:02 The Green Waiting Room
14:11 Lamps Along the Runways
15:09 A Cold Pipe at Eleven
16:55 Sorting the Night's Letters
17:59 An Office Like a Wardrobe
19:26 A Black Citroën Before Dawn
21:44 A Grey Sky Over the Runways
23:08 First Light at the Moscow Gate
24:24 A Crowded Office
26:49 Treacle Tart and Rain

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