The Case of the Empty Gilt Frames · Sherlock Holmes Full-Cast Radio Drama

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

Eight borrowed paintings vanished overnight from an exhibition in Aix-en-Provence, and the curator has come to Sherlock Holmes at Baker Street, asking that nobody know. She has not telephoned a single lender; she promised each of them that every picture would come home. Who took the pictures, and why may she not ask the police?

🎧 Full episode · full-cast radio drama, 27 min. Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases: new Sherlock Holmes stories and audio mysteries, performed by a full cast.
Hörspiel · audiokniha · rozhlasová hra (English audio, English captions)

Listen as a podcast, with full transcripts: https://mono-noir.transistor.fm/

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, summer, 1963, with the city emptied for the holidays. Holmes and Watson quarrelled at breakfast over the last of the marmalade, and neither has yielded since. In the sitting room, sweltering behind drawn blinds, Watson reads aloud the new lease from Mrs Hudson while Holmes lies opposite with his revolver, improving the wallpaper. The tenant, the lease says, shall not deface the walls; Holmes calls it decorating, and the Queen's cipher takes shape in bullets. Then the front doorbell gives one polite ring, and Mrs Hudson announces a lady from abroad with no name to give. She has come straight from the airport and would rather nobody knew: she is Madame Garnier, curator of an exhibition at the Villa Castelane in Aix-en-Provence, from which pictures have vanished. She must have them back at once, and she may not ask the police. Holmes has no standing in France; Watson points out that whoever gave that order never thought to forbid Baker Street, and within the hour their taxi is bound for the airport. Aix meets them with cicadas and a white glare. Eight canvases, every one of them lent by collectors in three cities, are gone from the Villa. They are insured, but the money, Madame Garnier says, is not the point. She has not dared to telephone a single lender; they lent to her, she sat at their tables, and she promised that every picture would come home. At the lodge by the gate, Luc, the Villa's old watchman, rises to greet the English gentlemen, and a gilder named Bastide calls in on him. Upstairs, a broad man in a creased linen suit, Inspector Rocca of the police, greets Holmes as the Englishman Madame Garnier did not mention to him; Madame mentions nobody, Holmes replies, and it is her finest quality.

From the series Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases: a real crime of the 1960s 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 1960s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the curator and organisers of the exhibition, its watchman and the tradespeople who worked there, the lenders and collectors, the mayor and the officials of the town, the investigators and the police, and anyone ever suspected or accused in a real case — 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 villa, its exhibition and the paintings 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: Aix-en-Provence, France — July 1963.

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 Marmalade, a Revolver and Mrs Hudson's Lease
2:32 Cicadas and a White Glare in Aix
4:04 Coffee and Camphor at the Gate Lodge
5:43 A Broad Man in a Creased Linen Suit
7:03 Back Down at the Lodge With the Inspector
8:46 Up a Stepped Lane in the Old Town
10:26 The Mayor's Secretary in His Empty Office
11:52 Next Morning Along the Upstairs Gallery
13:10 A Crowded Gatehouse at Noon
14:43 Two Coffees Beneath the Plane Trees
15:38 Three Days Later, Back at the Villa
17:09 Paris Comes Tomorrow
18:45 Madame Garnier Waits at the Gate
20:13 After Dark, With the Waiters Stacking Chairs
21:36 Two Porters Leaving the Curator's Office
23:15 A Gathering in the Upstairs Gallery
25:33 The Marmalade Replaced, and a Letter From Aix

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