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

Eleven classified folders have vanished from a locked vault at a defence plant in California, and the lock shows no sign of force. Three men hold the combination, and the company's own security chief has flown to London to say so. Who among them could have opened it?

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.

In the first week of August 1983, a wet grey morning in London, an American security chief named Barrow is shown into the sitting room at Baker Street. He has flown through the night from Calder Avionics, a defence contractor in Culver City, California. Eleven folders of classified guidance material have gone from the company vault, and the lock is untouched: no forced entry, nothing broken. Only three men know the combination, and Barrow is one of them. Holmes agrees to come on one condition: no police, no press, no questions at the gates. With Watson he crosses the Atlantic, and the next morning they stand in the emptied vault, where the shelves show a clean outline of every folder taken. Barrow counts the keys that exist, and the list is short. A radar engineer is summoned, wearing worn cuffs and a defensive manner. Holmes asks for the vault's tally books and the names of every man who holds a key. How does a locked vault give up eleven folders without leaving a mark?

From the series Sherlock Holmes — The New Cases: a real crime of the 1980s 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 1980s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the security men, the engineers, the club staff, 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 avionics company and the club 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 Los Angeles — August 1983.

Chapters:
0:00 A Caller at Baker Street
2:10 The Emptied Vault at Culver City
3:41 Tally Books and Missing Numbers
5:15 Veranda Above the Tennis Courts
7:13 An Early Visitor at the Hotel
9:06 An Inspector Brings a Folder
10:27 Tea as the Light Fades
12:13 Monday Morning in the Security Office
13:59 Behind the Club Bar
15:14 The Steward's Desk, Late Afternoon
17:40 Morning Report at the Hotel
18:18 Pacing Before the Hotel Window
20:10 Dusk on the Final Saturday
23:01 Empty Courts, Evening Falls
24:34 Home to Baker Street

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