Episode Details

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

In January 1943 the Admiralty drags Sherlock Holmes across a winter Atlantic to New York over one letter that came back undelivered. Why would the Royal Navy send for a detective over a returned letter, when New York has police of its own?

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

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

London, January 1943. While Holmes feeds his post to the fire and Dr Watson fishes it out again for the paper salvage, a Commander Tremayne of the Admiralty telephones with an urgent request: Holmes must come to New York about a letter that came back. After a hard crossing, the pair meet Inspector Gallagher of Centre Street, who has little welcome for a London desk in his city. Tremayne explains that a woman in Dayton, Ohio, was sent back a letter she never wrote, posted in New York, addressed to San Teodoro and meant for Tokyo. It is cheerful chatter about dolls, yet one doll is a British carrier, and damaged Allied ships are mending in American yards. Holmes goes shopping on Madison Avenue, where a dealer and her salesgirl teach him the doll trade. He then meets the frightened collector from Ohio, who buys by post from three New York shops and has a son on a destroyer in the Pacific. At the British Consulate Tremayne spreads the letter under a lamp and insists its sender's identity be kept among a handful of people. Which ship is the bride doll with the torn veil, and who is writing these letters?

From the series Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases: a real crime of the 1940s 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 1940s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including dealers, shop girls, collectors, naval officers, 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 doll shop, the lodging house and the town of San Teodoro 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: London and New York — January 1943.

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 Paste-Pots, Salvage and a Telephone
2:45 A Cold Welcome at Centre Street
4:32 A Lesson in Dolls on Madison
6:16 The Frightened Lady from Dayton
7:55 A Locked Room at the Consulate
9:25 A Cracked Doll and a Question
10:33 A Map of the Brooklyn Waterfront
11:50 A Morning Visit from Centre Street
13:20 Four Flights Up on Sands Street
14:41 Crossing the Bridge at Dusk
15:36 Storm on Madison Avenue
17:14 A Cable from Washington
18:43 Carbolic and Cold Morning Light
20:35 Madison Avenue After Closing Time
21:45 A Delegation at the Door
23:58 Noon in the Charge Room
25:38 Home to Baker Street Again

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