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 ship that could not sink is towed into harbour with not a soul aboard: her lamps still switched on, coats still on their hooks, both her clocks stopped at the same minute. Twenty-two people sailed in her, and none came home. Was it the sea that took them — and why would anyone abandon a ship that would not go down?

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

London, 1954. After a sour, idle week, Holmes has just picked out a loyal monogram in bullet holes above the mantel when a frantic wife races up the Baker Street stair with her taxi still running in the rain. A ship has been towed into Dunmore with nobody aboard, and her husband sailed in her. Holmes will not sell her a villain — the sea drowns people without anyone's help — but Watson points out what she said: towed. Four days of aeroplanes later they are in the heat of Dunmore, where an unhurried Inspector of the Dunmore Police has twenty-two families meeting every boat and an inquiry sitting within the fortnight, and he must give it more than the sea. A Clydeside surveyor who reads from his book and deals in no guesses, the agent who booked the voyage and will not come within ten yards of the gangway, a genial trader flown in for the inquiry, and the Inspector himself, who has already chosen his suspect, all have something to tell them — and the inquiry will not wait.

From the series Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases: a real mystery 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 event of the 1950s. All characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the ship's master, her crew and passengers, her agent, the traders and officials, the investigators and the police — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. Everything this story suggests about what happened at sea 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, or of any neglect, shown here.

Setting: London and the islands — autumn 1954.

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 A Taxi with the Meter Running
2:46 The Inspector at Dunmore
4:04 Aboard the Empty Ship
5:41 Down the Iron Ladder
7:03 The Agent on the Wharf
8:25 The Underwriters' Reply
9:29 The Surveyor's Office
11:17 Whisky at the Hotel
12:32 Noon at the Wharf
13:52 A Passport Is Taken
15:17 Midnight on the Verandah
16:28 A Call to London
18:07 A Corner Table
19:19 Back in the Inspector's Office
21:11 Pacing the Deck
22:21 Down Below Again
23:56 The Cells Beneath the Station
25:35 Tea and a Cable from Dunmore

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