The Case of the Unwilling Traitor · Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases

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

Every newspaper in Europe can tell you where the man who hunted spies for Bonn is tonight: East Berlin. So his wife flies to Baker Street with a trunk and two winded porters, and asks Sherlock Holmes for the one thing the papers cannot tell her: how he got there. Did he go over of his own accord, or was he taken?

🎧 Full episode of Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases: a new Sherlock Holmes radio drama, an audio mystery performed by a full cast.

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

Stories, transcripts and the schedule: https://matezz.com

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

London, September 1952. Rain ticks on the sash at Baker Street, the wireless murmurs cricket scores, and Holmes, after a fortnight of nothing grander than sorting his commonplace books, lays Watson a guinea that it will rain on a garden wedding in Surrey. Then two winded porters haul a trunk up the stair, and Mrs Hudson finds a lady on her landing. Greta Kessler has come straight from the airport and means to go straight back with Holmes. Where her husband is, the whole world knows; what she wants from Holmes is how he got there. Holmes calls that a matter for governments. Watson calls it the one missing man in Europe who isn't missing, and asks when Holmes last refused a paradox. By eight the next morning, after the night flight, they are in a West Berlin police office, facing Inspector Zimmermann, whose file is thin and whose top sheet is dog-eared. The facts are public, he says: one evening Herr Kessler, who spent four years catching spies, never came back to his hotel, and two days later East Berlin radio announced where he had gone. East Berlin calls him a defector, Bonn calls him a traitor, and the inspector has heard the man's voice himself. At Kessler's office his secretary, Fräulein Pauline, is nailing the files into crates because Bonn wants every paper by Monday. In a hotel room with the blinds drawn against the afternoon glare, Greta presses an envelope on Watson and asks him to read it aloud, because she cannot. At dusk, in a consulting room of leather and walnut high above the traffic, Dr Falk, her husband's oldest friend in Berlin, takes her hands before he offers his to Holmes and Watson. Zimmermann is waiting for Bonn to take the file off his desk, and Holmes has flown through the night on a single question from a wife.

From the series Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases: a real crime of the 1950s 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 1950s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the missing man, his wife, his friends, colleagues and staff, the investigators and the police, and the officials and broadcasters of the governments involved — 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 and the offices 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 West Berlin, Germany — September 1952.

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 Rain on the Sash, Cricket Scores and a Garden Wedding
2:33 A Grey Dawn and a Heavy Man Behind a Heavier Desk
4:12 Files Nailed Into Crates, Every Paper by Monday
5:34 Hotel Blinds Drawn Against the Afternoon Glare
7:01 Dusk in a Room of Leather and Walnut
8:42 A Taxi Crawling Back Beneath the Neon
9:54 His Name Gone From the Door and a List in Her Hand
11:17 Kept Standing While the Inspector Finds His Page
12:40 Rain by Evening and a Second Climb Up the Stair
14:24 Near Midnight Past Waiters Stacking Chairs
15:39 A Knock at Holmes's Door Before Breakfast Was Cleared
17:13 Dusk and the Walkers Coming Home From the East
19:01 Nine the Following Morning at the Inspector's Desk
20:47 A Sleeping Porter and a Hotel Lounge at Two in the Morning
22:21 Morning Sun and Four Callers Unannounced
24:24 One Green Lamp Burning in the Inspector's Office
26:58 Baker Street Again, Mrs Hudson Gathering the Tea Things

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