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 sealed letter bearing the delegation's stamp, though no delegate admits to writing it, is carried through the rain to a Vienna detective. Who put the footballers' families on the road west under that stamp?

Read the story and the full transcript: https://matezz.com/episodes/letters-from-the-belvara-vienna-files/

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

Vienna, December 1957, and the night is wet. Tibor Sallai, an official of the footballers' federation, climbs to the rooms of the private detective August Brenner on Tuchgasse with a sealed letter he has snatched from a refugee family at the Westbahnhof. It carries the delegation's stamp, yet nobody in the delegation will own it. Sallai explains that the stranded squad is gathered at the Hotel Belvara, that nobody flies home, and that the federation wants watchers on every man. By morning Brenner brings the unopened letter to the hotel lobby, where Captain Balogh holds his players together, Resi Lengl shepherds the waiting wives upstairs, and Ilonka Varga asks in vain for word of her husband. Only fourteen of the twenty-two players are under the hotel's roof. At the railway police post, Inspector Karasek shows Brenner and his friend Dr. Fuchs a file of nineteen wives and children, every one entered at the border as a cook or a masseur, even a nine-year-old girl, and all of it kept from the press at the federation's written request. Ilonka Varga, meanwhile, says she wants only a kitchen somewhere west and the chance to cook again. Who ordered a squad's families written down as kitchen staff, and why under a stamp that no delegate will claim?

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 1950s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the footballers, their wives and children, the hotel staff, the federation officials, 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 hotel, the railway station and the football federation 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, December 1957 — with Brussels.

Chapters:
0:00 A Wet Night on Tuchgasse
1:41 The Lobby of the Belvara
3:28 Nineteen Names at the Westbahnhof
5:24 A Wife in the Parlor
7:38 High Rooms After Midnight
9:49 Grey Hours at the Desk
11:08 Marble Hall at Midday
12:49 Afternoon at the Railway Post
14:25 Tea by the Lobby Fire
16:03 A Late Knock at the Door
18:10 Two Men and No Sleep
20:10 First Light Under the Platforms
21:59 The Brussels Train Waits
23:26 A Stove at the Police Post
25:27 Lamplight Above Tuchgasse

#MonoNoirRadioDrama #NoirMystery #AudioDrama