Episode Details

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

What became of a family's household that was meant to follow them to Shanghai, and why does it turn up in a Vienna auction room just before the hammer falls?

Read the story and the full transcript: https://matezz.com/episodes/the-planks-that-talked-vienna-files/

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

Vienna, 1946. In his courtyard office off the Herrengasse, the private detective Brenner sorts rescued files while his chronicler Fuchs keeps count of something odd: four flats emptied in six days, each left behind with nothing owed and the furniture untouched. An unclaimed zither has stood in the corner for three days, and a visitor is climbing the stairs two at a time. She is Hella Feldmann, whose parents sailed for Shanghai in the war's first winter. Their household, shipped as lift seven, was meant to follow on a later boat, and it never came. This morning she found her family's crates listed in the preview catalogue of the Halberg House. Brenner and Fuchs go to the preview, where the clerk Mizzi Kern shows them eleven ownerless lots brought in by a porter who paid cash and left no name. Hella recognises the stencil and the carpenter's chisel mark on the planks, but the sale is set for Friday noon. At the freight yards by the Nordbahnhof, a forwarder offers coffee, talks of shut ports and tells them the authorities have taken the stranded lifts in hand. The sale, he says, goes ahead. Who is able to turn a family's household into someone else's bargain?

From the series Vienna Files: a real Austrian crime reimagined as a post-war noir radio mystery, performed by a full multi-voice AI cast with an original score and sound design.

Loosely inspired by a real Austrian case of the 1940s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including a private detective and his chronicler, a young woman whose family sailed to Shanghai, an auction clerk, a freight forwarder, a yard watchman, 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 auction house, the freight yard and the restitution desk 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: Vienna, 1946 — with the Herrengasse courtyard, the Halberg House auction rooms, the Nordbahnhof freight yards and the Rossauer Lände.

Chapters:
0:00 Emptied Flats and an Unclaimed Zither
1:34 A Breathless Visitor on the Stairs
3:17 Crates in the Preview Room
5:05 Evening at the Courtyard Office
7:09 Coffee and Closed Ports at Nordbahnhof
8:59 The Desk on the Rossauer Lände
10:57 A Long Night at the Cabinet
12:26 Night Shift by the Timber Shed
15:09 The Hammer Waits at Noon
17:03 Dusk in the Courtyard Office
18:39 Back to the Freight Yards
21:17 Morning at the Restitution Desk

#MonoNoirRadioDrama #NoirMystery #AudioDrama