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

On Whit Monday evening a typist with a bandaged hand brings Sherlock Holmes a letter the police laughed at: an apology from whoever shot a racing driver outside a Hampstead pub. Why would a gunman stop to say sorry to a stranger?

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

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

On the evening of Whit Monday, 1957, Holmes and Watson are idling at Baker Street over a wager about a passer-by when a woman arrives with a cab waiting at the kerb. Rosalind Ridley, a solicitors' typist, was wounded in the hand by a stray bullet outside the Black Heron in Hampstead, where a racing driver was shot dead the night before. She has since received a typed note of apology, and the police have filed it with the cranks. Holmes is reluctant to take on what looks like legwork for Scotland Yard, but Watson points out that cranks boast and accuse, and never apologise. At Ferndale Rise, Inspector Lestrade shows them the chipped brickwork, the low bullet marks and the grim facts of the shooting. Next morning Watson dresses Mrs Ridley's torn hand and gives her a hard verdict about her trade, while Holmes asks her to relive the minutes before the first shot. The police station register records a revolver found beneath a plane tree across from the pub. The station also holds the note itself. A woman's life's work has been taken by a bullet meant for someone else. Who would be sorry enough to write, yet cold enough to fire?

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 a racing driver, a club proprietor, a typist, a barman, 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 pub, the club and the newspaper 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: Baker Street and Hampstead — June 1957.

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 A Wager at the Window
2:38 Bullet Marks in Ferndale Rise
4:05 A Typist's Bandaged Hand
5:47 The Station Register
7:16 Back on the Pavement
8:51 Contents of a Dead Man's Pockets
10:15 Past Midnight Above Knightsbridge
11:53 The Office Behind the Bar
13:34 A Constable's Book of Empty Houses
15:23 The Club Falls Quiet
16:35 Midnight in Baker Street
17:35 Three Days at the Gunsmith's
18:52 Under the Roped-Off Tree
20:04 Down in the Cells
21:37 A Taxi Through the Lamplight
22:36 An Hour Before Opening
24:13 The Green-Shaded Lamp
25:47 A Fortnight Later

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