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 nanny goes down to a Belgravia basement to make a pot of tea and never comes back up. Her mother rings Baker Street before the police have finished with the house. Who was waiting on the dark kitchen stair?

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

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

On a sleet-soaked Friday in December 1976, Holmes and Watson are scrubbing a scorch from the Baker Street carpet when a telephone call comes in from a woman who will not leave her address. Her daughter, a nanny, was killed in a Belgravia house the night before, and she wants the truth while someone is still willing to tell it. Holmes declines to answer, since half of Scotland Yard is already in Belgravia, but he and Watson set out anyway. In a tall white house they find Inspector Lestrade, who did not send for them. The nanny went down to the basement and never returned. The mistress of the house went after her, was beaten on the unlit stairs, broke free and ran to a nearby public house, where she named her husband aloud. The husband has reappeared at his solicitor's with a stranger's name on his lips and no account of his night, and his gambling friends all repeat the same story. In the nanny's attic room, among a child's drawings of a zoo, Holmes asks who she was. Then the pursuit leads to a Mayfair gaming club. Where did the master of the house spend Thursday night?

From the series Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases: a real crime of the 1970s 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 1970s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including a nanny and her mother, a nobleman and his family, a club manager and his members, 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 gaming club, the public house and the hospital named in it 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: Baker Street and Belgravia — December 1976.

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 Sleet and Scorch at Baker Street
2:33 A White House in Belgravia
4:32 The Room Under the Slates
5:55 The Head of the Basement Stairs
7:23 Past Midnight at the Mercer
8:59 Behind the Baize Door
10:32 A Corner Shop in Croydon
12:17 Twice in One Day
13:21 The Marble Hall Again
14:40 Grey Dawn at Folkestone
16:20 Walking the Quay
17:07 The Baccarat Room Falls Silent
18:51 Early Monday in Croydon
20:04 A Face Across the Counter
21:51 A Cold Room at the Yard
22:51 Back Up the Mercer's Stair
24:35 Baker Street, Two Evenings Later