Episode Details

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

Within hours of his wife's death, a doctor in Ohio puts an overseas call through to Baker Street and asks Sherlock Holmes to come before "the Cleveland papers decide what happened." Why is a grieving husband racing the newspapers instead of the police?

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

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

London, August 1956. It is a close, thundery Sunday evening; rationing has only just ended, and Mrs Hudson has celebrated with an extravagance of bacon. Holmes, idle and peevish for a week, is scraping at his violin, and Watson sits by the open window dreading the third telephone call of the evening from a frightened retired bandmaster, when the line that rings instead is an overseas one from Ohio. A doctor named Grant says his wife Helen was killed that morning in their house on Shore Road, and he wants Holmes there before the papers have decided what happened. By noon the next day Holmes and Watson are standing at a white frame house above the lake, with flashbulbs popping on the lawn, where a heavy man in shirtsleeves fills the doorway: a homicide inspector who has been trying since yesterday to question the husband and who greets them as the family's hired Englishman, sure they were hired to explain the evidence away. Grant lies propped on his pillows in a private room at the family's hospital; the papers are already asking pointed questions about him, and his brother, a surgeon, cuts him off mid-sentence. Next door, a neighbour of nine years, who sleeps with her window open on hot nights, has a good deal to say. Holmes has crossed an ocean for one answer: what woke Grant that night?

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 event 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, his brother, the neighbours, the doctors and staff of the hospital, the investigators and the police — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. Where a real city, state, public body or newspaper is mentioned, its part in this story is invented; the lakeside town, its hospital and its streets are invented too. 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 and Ohio — August 1956.

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 Thundery Sunday and a Bandmaster's Heart
2:52 A White Frame House Above the Water
4:20 A Private Room at the Family's Hospital
5:48 Ward Lamps Burning Low
7:08 A Strip of Lawn to the Neighbour's Porch
8:32 Standing Beside the Daybed
10:00 Scorched Coffee in the Neighbour's Kitchen
11:26 Weathered Steps Down the Bluff
13:03 Wet Stones at the Water's Edge
13:56 Holding a Brother Together
15:11 Thunder Along the Lake at Nightfall
16:23 The Morning of the Funeral
17:49 An Empty Place at the Graveside
18:55 A Rattling Fan at Police Headquarters
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