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

In the Vienna rain a woman finds her mother's Sabbath candlesticks on a market stall: silver that left her family's flat on a train which the Americans now hold under guard. The stallholder will say only that Vienna sells and she holds the scales. Who sold her the silver?

🎧 Full episode of Vienna Files: a post-war detective radio drama set in occupied Vienna, an audio mystery performed by a full cast.

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.

Vienna, the autumn of 1945. Ilona Vámos, soaked by the rain, climbs the mezzanine stair to the detective August Brenner's rooms off the Herrengasse, where the narrator, Dr. Fuchs, offers her a chair she will not take. On a stall at the Tannenmarkt she has found her mother's Sabbath candlesticks, a silver pair, the left one dented by her brother when he was five, and the stallholder, Marie, will not give them back. Men with armbands wrote the family's things into a ledger in their flat and sent them away on a train: the amber train, people call it now, the one the Americans caught and now hold under guard. Somebody carried the silver here, Brenner says. At the last stall in a lane where the city sells its grandmothers' things for bread, Marie rings the silver with a fingernail, asks three cartons of American cigarettes for the pair, and will say only that Vienna sells and she holds the scales. Brenner fetches Inspector Lang, who seizes the candlesticks as stolen goods and draws him aside: the Americans have filed a list with the police of train goods drawn out to furnish billets in Vienna, one lot only, two crates, to a captain in Döbling. Then Ilona asks to hold one of the candlesticks, and underneath something is cut into the silver. That evening the tall house in Döbling shows Brenner and the doctor its caretaker, Frau Radakowitsch, who has black under her nails and says she never goes near the Tannenmarkt, and Captain Pruett, who shows them the chit that sets the whole lot down as plated, of no value. Seven tenants have cellar keys, the crates sit in an open cellar, and nobody would report a piece missing from a lot written off as worthless. Brenner has a dented candlestick, a lane of other people's belongings and no seller's name. Who is selling the silver of the amber train?

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 1940s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including the survivors and their families, the market traders, the caretakers and tenants of a Vienna house, the officers, supply staff and guards of the occupying forces, 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 market, the house 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: Vienna — autumn 1945.

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 Up the Mezzanine Stair in the Rain
1:36 A Rain-Soaked Lane and the Last Stall
3:23 Inspector Lang Fetched Through the Downpour
5:23 A Borrowed Address in Döbling
7:37 A Telegram Read Twice at the Schottenring
8:53 The Market at Its Busiest Hour
10:51 An Afternoon Call Upstairs in Döbling
12:33 Notes Spread Across Brenner's Desk
13:55 Back to Döbling With Ilona
15:41 An Unannounced Caller at the Schottenring
17:12 Carbolic, Wet Wool and a Market Shawl
18:56 The Four of Us Among the Drips
21:09 The Döbling Stair in the Dark
22:24 A Whole Procession at a Lamp-Lit Door
24:29 Lang Opens His Briefcase
26:11 Up the Dark Stair, Two Steps at a Time

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