Episode Details

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

On a thundery September evening in 1982, a secretary telephones Baker Street: Chief Ojo has been seized from the pavement outside his own front door, in full view of her office window. Why would kidnappers work so openly, with a witness looking on?

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

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

London, September 1982. Sherlock Holmes is deep in a chemical experiment, and Dr Watson is struggling with a wedding reply, when the telephone rings. The caller is the private secretary to Chief Ojo, an African statesman living in Bayswater. She saw him taken from the pavement outside his house, and she begs Holmes to come at once. Holmes would rather leave a street abduction to the police, but Watson's remark that the kidnappers did not care who saw them changes his mind. In Bayswater, the secretary shows them the Chief's broken spectacles lying in the gutter, crushed by a tyre. Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard is already in the study, with ports and airports warned and the Foreign Office pressing him for quiet and quick results. An unfinished letter to the Chief's wife shows that he walked out for a newspaper every evening at six. From her window the secretary tells what she saw: a yellow van with its engine running, three men on the pavement, and a gloved hand reaching from the dark interior. Someone shouted for 'the Doctor' and his needle. Who was in that van, and who is the Doctor?

From the series Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases: a real crime of the 1980s 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 1980s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including a visiting chief and his household, a driver, a customs officer, 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 Bayswater house, the airport 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 Bayswater — September 1982.

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 September at Baker Street
2:57 Spectacles in the Gutter
4:10 The Study and the Unfinished Letter
5:50 A Window Above the Front Door
7:30 Brandy in the Hall
8:59 Headlamps Under the Mews Arch
10:21 The Driver's Statement
11:42 Amber Light on the Stucco
12:43 A Torch Beside the Daimler
14:32 A Long Drive East
16:09 The Officer's Itch
17:11 Four Faces in the Torchlight
18:31 Small Hours in Bayswater
19:55 A Green Room Below Stairs
21:25 Before Dawn, Beneath the Lamp
22:38 First Light Under the Roof
24:30 The Kettle Comes to the Boil
26:09 Some Days On, Back at Baker Street

#MonoNoirRadioDrama #SherlockHolmes #AudioDrama