Nocturnal Tales: Mystery Audiobooks and Crime Stories

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Two cases tonight from the gentleman thief who has drawn more requests than anybody else in the Archive.

WILFUL MURDER is the darkest thing in the whole collection. Bunny warns us at the outset that most of their robberies will not bear telling at length. This one will — because on this occasion Raffles is not planning a theft at all. There is a man who knows too much about them, a fence out at Willesden with a nasty habit of following people home, and Raffles has worked out, quite calmly and from the comfort of an armchair, what the only permanent solution to such a man would be. He is not joking. Bunny cannot make him stop.

NINE POINTS OF THE LAW is the antidote, and Hornung knew exactly what he was doing by pairing this kind of story with that kind. A gentleman answers a very strange advertisement and engages Raffles for a very particular commission: not to steal something belonging to somebody else, but to steal back something that was stolen from him. Possession, as the saying goes, is nine points of the law. Raffles has always found the tenth point negotiable.

Both come from The Amateur Cracksman (1899), the book that invented the gentleman thief and made a hero of a man the reader really should not be rooting for.

ℹ️ FOR LISTENERS
This is a complete, unabridged reading of these two stories by E. W. Hornung, collected in The Amateur Cracksman (1899) and now in the public domain. Every word is the author's own. Part of The Midnight Archive: three nights of classics every week, alongside four original Nocturnal Tales mysteries.

🗳️ YOU CHOOSE WHAT'S NEXT
The Archive is deep — more from tonight's detective? Loveday Brooke? Violet Strange? Sherlock Holmes? Father Brown? Max Carrados? Lady Molly? Raffles? Dr Thorndyke? Arsène Lupin? Vote in the poll attached to this episode, or tell us in the comments which classic you want to hear by lamplight.

💬 QUESTION FOR THE COMMENTS
Wilful Murder shows you what Raffles actually is; Nine Points reminds you why Bunny keeps coming back. Which of tonight's two did you prefer? 🕵️

🕒 CHAPTERS
00:00 - Introduction
01:46 - Wilful Murder
33:42 - Interlude
34:24 - Nine Points of the Law

📖 GET THE EBOOK — $3.99

📌 Patreon — included with Writing Table & Archive Society, or one-time purchase
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https://nocturnaltalespod.gumroad.com/l/ebookvol2

❤️ SUPPORT & LISTENING OPTIONS

📌 Patreon — every new case first, ad-free and early
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🎧 Apple Podcasts
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🧾 CREDITS
Narrated and produced by Nocturnal Tales. Story by E. W. Hornung (public domain).

🔖 TAGS / KEYWORDS
e w hornung audiobook, raffles audiobook, wilful murder audiobook, nine points of the law audiobook, the amateur cracksman 1899, gentleman thief mystery, gentleman burglar story, victorian crime fiction, raffles and bunny, classic detective story audiobook, public domain audiobook, unabridged classic mystery

🏷️ HASHTAGS
#NocturnalTales #MidnightArchive #Raffles #EWHornung #GentlemanThief #ClassicMystery #FullAudiobook #Unabridged #VictorianCrime #PublicDomain

📌 Patreon — every new case first, ad-free and early ($2.99/month)
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🌐 Website — every story we've ever made, free to listen. No paywall, no account, no password.
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✨ A REIMAGINED EDITION — this case first appeared in the second volume of our collected mysteries. We have gone back through it, corrected it, and recorded it properly, so it can be heard as it was always meant to be heard.

London, May 1935, at the very height of the season, when the town is given over entirely to motor-cars, uniforms, flowers and gossip.

Arthur arrives at a red-brick palace as a guest, not insensible to the honour — though he suspects the invitation has rather more to do with the friend he brings than with himself.

A celebrated set of stones is to be displayed at a dinner in two evenings' time. Half the guest list already knows it. Within a day the jewel case is found closed, unforced, and empty.

There is no broken lock. There is a duplicate key lying in the garden. A servant's button in a corridor. And a glass of champagne hidden behind a vase of lilies, with a woman's lip upon the rim.

There is also a household in which every single person has something they would prefer not to be asked about — and one of them is not who they say they are.

The Belgian Detective is shown into a house where the truth has been arranged with very great care, and where the evidence has an unfortunate habit of turning up exactly when somebody needs it to.

ℹ️ FOR LISTENERS
This is an original mystery written by Nocturnal Tales, inspired by the spirit of the great Golden Age crime writers — but the plot, characters and text are entirely our own creation. All characters and events in this story are fictional. No affiliation, endorsement, or official connection is implied.

💬 QUESTION FOR THE COMMENTS
Be suspicious of the evidence that arrives exactly when you need it. So: when did you first stop believing the housemaid — and would you have trusted the glass? 🕵️

📖 GET THE EBOOK — $3.99

📌 Patreon — included with Writing Table & Archive Society, or one-time purchase
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❤️ SUPPORT & LISTENING OPTIONS

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🧾 CREDITS
Written by Nocturnal Tales. Narrated by Nocturnal Tales.

🔖 TAGS / KEYWORDS
Belgian detective mystery audiobook, jewel theft mystery, impossible theft mystery, London 1935 mystery, palace mystery audiobook, planted evidence mystery, imposter in the household, high society mystery, Arthur narrator mystery, reimagined edition, golden age mystery audiobook, classic whodunit audiobook, full-length mystery audiobook

📌 Patreon — every new case first, ad-free and early ($2.99/month)
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🌐 Website — every story we've ever made, free to listen. No paywall, no account, no password.
https://nocturnaltalespodcast.com

Somebody has got hold of Miss Loveday Brooke's private address, which she had given strict orders was to be handed to nobody at all. Her holiday lasts precisely as long as it takes to read the note.

In a quiet lane outside Brighton, a respectable household is being haunted. Not by one nervous servant with an overactive imagination — by everybody. The cook, the children, the mistress of the house: each has seen the same figure, and each describes it in the same sharp, confident detail.

There has also been a stolen cheque, and the two things are not being discussed in the same room.

Loveday Brooke of the Lynch Court agency is about thirty, dresses in plain black, and enjoys the great professional advantage of being entirely unmemorable. She arrives, listens to the ghost story from five different people, and then asks the household the one question that nobody has thought to ask.

Pirkis was writing in the eighteen nineties, when spiritualism was at its height and perfectly respectable people were paying money to sit in the dark. She puts a woman in plain black in the middle of it who politely declines to be impressed.

ℹ️ FOR LISTENERS
This is a complete, unabridged reading of The Ghost of Fountain Lane by Catherine Louisa Pirkis, collected in The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective (1894) and now in the public domain. Every word is the author's own. Part of The Midnight Archive: three nights of classics every week, alongside four original Nocturnal Tales mysteries.

🗳️ YOU CHOOSE WHAT'S NEXT
The Archive is deep — more from tonight's detective? Loveday Brooke? Violet Strange? Sherlock Holmes? Father Brown? Max Carrados? Lady Molly? Raffles? Dr Thorndyke? Arsène Lupin? Vote in the poll attached to this episode, or tell us in the comments which classic you want to hear by lamplight.

💬 QUESTION FOR THE COMMENTS
Ghost-seeing, Loveday says, is quite as catching as scarlet fever. Have you ever watched a story spread through a group exactly that way? 🕵️

🕒 CHAPTERS
00:00 - Introduction
01:54 - Part One
14:50 - Part Two
26:27 - Part Three
39:20 - Part Four

📖 GET THE EBOOK — $3.99

📌 Patreon — included with Writing Table & Archive Society, or one-time purchase
https://www.patreon.com/posts/156573383

🛒 Gumroad — EPUB + PDF included
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❤️ SUPPORT & LISTENING OPTIONS

📌 Patreon — every new case first, ad-free and early
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🎧 Apple Podcasts
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🧾 CREDITS
Narrated and produced by Nocturnal Tales. Story by Catherine Louisa Pirkis (public domain).

🔖 TAGS / KEYWORDS
catherine louisa pirkis audiobook, loveday brooke audiobook, the ghost of fountain lane audiobook, experiences of loveday brooke 1894, victorian lady detective, victorian ghost mystery, female detective audiobook, spiritualism mystery story, brighton victorian mystery, classic detective story audiobook, public domain audiobook, unabridged classic mystery

🏷️ HASHTAGS
#NocturnalTales #MidnightArchive #LovedayBrooke #ClassicMystery #FullAudiobook #Unabridged #FemaleDetective #VictorianMystery #GhostStory #PublicDomain

📌 Patreon — every new case first, ad-free and early ($2.99/month)
https://www.patreon.com/NocturnalTales
🌐 Website — every story we've ever made, free to listen. No paywall, no account, no password.
https://nocturnaltalespodcast.com

Los Angeles after midnight. The white buildings turn grey, the palm trees turn black, and the city finally stops pretending.

Veronica Lakewood likes it better that way. At least now it is being honest, she says.

She and Arthur have left a party in Beverly Hills shortly before twelve and stopped at an all-night grill on the corner, because the coffee is bad and the company is interesting. Two men come in. The lights go out. When they come back on, a police officer and a young woman are dead on the floor — and the girl has spent her last breath on three words that nobody in this story will ever be able to finish for her.

By morning Veronica's photograph is on the front page of the Examiner, and a good many powerful people in this town would very much prefer that she stop asking who the dead girl was.

A newspaperman who is always at the scene before the police. A detective who has been waiting three years for one particular arrest. A house above Mulholland with nobody living in it. And four young women, only one of whom ever got a headline — and only because somebody famous happened to be standing in the frame beside her.

The City of Broken Angels is an original noir mystery about a beautiful place that is very good at not noticing things.

ℹ️ FOR LISTENERS
This is an original mystery written by Nocturnal Tales, inspired by the spirit of the great Golden Age crime writers and the Los Angeles noir tradition. The plot, characters and text are entirely our own creation. All characters and events are fictional. No affiliation, endorsement, or official connection is implied.

💬 QUESTION FOR THE COMMENTS
The girl uses her last breath on three words, and nobody in the story ever finds out how the sentence ended. What do you think she was trying to say? 🕵️

🕒 CHAPTERS
00:00 - Introduction
01:58 - Chapter One - After Midnight
09:52 - Chapter Two - The Morning Edition
18:13 - Chapter Three - The House Above Mulholland
27:40 - Chapter Four - The Blue Dahlia
35:48 - Chapter Five - The Man in the Photograph
43:27 - Chapter Six - Broken Angels

📖 GET THE EBOOK — $3.99

📌 Patreon — included with Writing Table & Archive Society, or one-time purchase
https://www.patreon.com/posts/156573383

🛒 Gumroad — EPUB + PDF included
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❤️ SUPPORT & LISTENING OPTIONS

📌 Patreon — every new case first, ad-free and early
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🌐 Website — every story, free, no account needed
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📺 Rumble — free, supports us with ad revenue
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❤️ Buy Me a Coffee — one-time support
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💛 PayPal — one-time tip
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🎧 Apple Podcasts
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🧾 CREDITS
Written by Nocturnal Tales. Narrated by Nocturnal Tales.

🔖 TAGS / KEYWORDS
veronica lakewood mystery, 1940s los angeles noir audiobook, hollywood noir mystery, hardboiled detective audiobook, original noir mystery, police corruption story, missing girls mystery, film noir style audiobook, lady detective audiobook, full length mystery audiobook, golden age mystery audiobook, original mystery audiobook

🏷️ HASHTAGS
#NocturnalTales #VeronicaLakewood #NoirMystery #HollywoodNoir #FullAudiobook #DetectiveFiction #Whodunnit #GoldenAgeMystery

📌 Patreon — every new case first, ad-free and early ($2.99/month)
https://www.patreon.com/NocturnalTales
🌐 Website — every story we've ever made, free to listen. No paywall, no account, no password.
https://nocturnaltalespodcast.com

A bell rings in the small hours, and Dr Jervis finds himself doing the one thing he thought he had left behind when he gave up medicine for the law: answering an urgent summons in the dark.

A man lies dead in his own sitting room with a dagger of very curious manufacture driven into his back. The door was bolted on the inside. The windows are high above a garden nobody crossed. Nothing is missing, nobody was seen, and there is no possible way for the murderer to have come or gone.

Scotland Yard has already decided who did it, and is preparing to arrest her.

Dr John Thorndyke — physician, barrister, and the first true forensic scientist in detective fiction — has decided nothing at all yet. He has brought his research case, and he would like to measure a few things first.

There is no leap of intuition anywhere in this story. There is measurement, material, and a patient refusal to accept an impossible conclusion when an unlikely one will do. That is Freeman's whole method, and it is why Thorndyke has lasted.

ℹ️ FOR LISTENERS
This is a complete, unabridged reading of The Aluminium Dagger by R. Austin Freeman, collected in John Thorndyke's Cases (1909) and now in the public domain. Every word is the author's own. Part of The Midnight Archive: three nights of classics every week, alongside four original Nocturnal Tales mysteries.

🗳️ YOU CHOOSE WHAT'S NEXT
The Archive is deep — more from tonight's detective? Loveday Brooke? Violet Strange? Sherlock Holmes? Father Brown? Max Carrados? Lady Molly? Raffles? Dr Thorndyke? Arsène Lupin? Vote in the poll attached to this episode, or tell us in the comments which classic you want to hear by lamplight.

💬 QUESTION FOR THE COMMENTS
The room insists the murder could not have happened. How far into the story did you get before you stopped believing the locked door? 🕵️

🕒 CHAPTERS
00:00 - Introduction
01:59 - Part One
17:27 - Part Two
32:44 - Part Three
47:01 - Part Four

📖 GET THE EBOOK — $3.99

📌 Patreon — included with Writing Table & Archive Society, or one-time purchase
https://www.patreon.com/posts/156573383

🛒 Gumroad — EPUB + PDF included
https://nocturnaltalespod.gumroad.com/l/ebookvol2

❤️ SUPPORT & LISTENING OPTIONS

📌 Patreon — every new case first, ad-free and early
https://www.patreon.com/NocturnalTales

🌐 Website — every story, free, no account needed
https://nocturnaltalespodcast.com

📺 Rumble — free, supports us with ad revenue
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❤️ Buy Me a Coffee — one-time support
https://buymeacoffee.com/nocturnaltales

💛 PayPal — one-time tip
https://paypal.me/nocturnaltalesprod

🎧 Apple Podcasts
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nocturnal-tales-mystery-audiobooks-and-crime-stories/id1896195848

🧾 CREDITS
Narrated and produced by Nocturnal Tales. Story by R. Austin Freeman (public domain).

🔖 TAGS / KEYWORDS
r austin freeman audiobook, dr thorndyke audiobook, the aluminium dagger audiobook, john thorndyke's cases 1909, locked room mystery, impossible crime mystery, forensic detective story, scientific detective fiction, edwardian london mystery, classic detective story audiobook, public domain audiobook, unabridged classic mystery

🏷️ HASHTAGS
#NocturnalTales #MidnightArchive #DrThorndyke #RAustinFreeman #LockedRoomMystery #ClassicMystery #FullAudiobook #Unabridged #ImpossibleCrime #PublicDomain

📌 Patreon — every new case first, ad-free and early ($2.99/month)
https://www.patreon.com/NocturnalTales
🌐 Website — every story we've ever made, free to listen. No paywall, no account, no password.
https://nocturnaltalespodcast.com

Kenya, 1938. The Muthaiga Club, the Ngong road, and a set of transplanted English aristocrats who travelled six thousand miles in order to behave in ways they could never have got away with at home.

Arthur arrives convinced that half the British population of Nairobi is hiding from something. The Belgian Detective disagrees. People do not travel six thousand miles to escape themselves, he says. They merely arrange for their mistakes to be made in better weather.

There is a dinner. A broken glass. A man who makes enemies as easily as he makes conquests. And a warning delivered across a crowded ballroom that everybody laughs at — until the following morning.

Then the lights fail. A motorcar goes roaring away into the dark. And a Bentley is found tilted down an embankment on the Ngong road, with a dead man behind the wheel.

A lady in silver. A photograph from Zanzibar. A last dance nobody wants to talk about. And a colony where everyone has an alibi because everyone was drinking with everyone else.

The Murder Beneath the African Moon is an original Golden Age-style mystery about exile, appetite, and a society so busy protecting itself that it never quite gets around to finding the killer.

ℹ️ FOR LISTENERS
This is an original mystery written by Nocturnal Tales, inspired by the spirit of the great Golden Age crime writers. The plot, characters and text are entirely our own creation; the historical epilogue draws on the real murder of Lord Erroll in 1941, one of the most famous unsolved killings of the last century. All characters and events in the story are fictional. No affiliation, endorsement, or official connection is implied.

💬 QUESTION FOR THE COMMENTS
The real case has never been solved — not because there were no suspects, but because there were too many people with reasons to want it closed quickly. Does a crowd of powerful, embarrassed witnesses make the truth harder to find than no witnesses at all? 🕵️

📖 GET THE EBOOK — $3.99

📌 Patreon — included with Writing Table & Archive Society, or one-time purchase
https://www.patreon.com/posts/156573383

🛒 Gumroad — EPUB + PDF included
https://nocturnaltalespod.gumroad.com/l/ebookvol2

❤️ SUPPORT & LISTENING OPTIONS

📌 Patreon — every new case first, ad-free and early
https://www.patreon.com/NocturnalTales

🌐 Website — every story, free, no account needed
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📺 Rumble — free, supports us with ad revenue
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❤️ Buy Me a Coffee — one-time support
https://buymeacoffee.com/nocturnaltales

💛 PayPal — one-time tip
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🎧 Apple Podcasts
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nocturnal-tales-mystery-audiobooks-and-crime-stories/id1896195848

🧾 CREDITS
Written by Nocturnal Tales. Narrated by Nocturnal Tales.

🔖 TAGS / KEYWORDS
Belgian detective mystery audiobook, Lord Erroll murder inspired, Happy Valley set, Kenya 1938 mystery, colonial Africa mystery, Muthaiga Club mystery, unsolved murder mystery, Bentley on the Ngong road, Arthur narrator mystery, golden age mystery audiobook, high society scandal, classic whodunit audiobook, full-length mystery audiobook, historical mystery audiobook

📌 Patreon — every new case first, ad-free and early ($2.99/month)
https://www.patreon.com/NocturnalTales
🌐 Website — every story we've ever made, free to listen. No paywall, no account, no password.
https://nocturnaltalespodcast.com

Mr Carlyle arrives at The Turrets in the very best possible spirits: white spats, a gardenia in the buttonhole, and the bustling importance of a man who is certain he has brought his friend a straightforward piece of business.

A society lady's pearl necklace, worth five thousand pounds, has vanished during a night at the opera. The newspapers have it before lunch. The insurers are already unhappy. And the lady herself is, as the title promises, extremely clever.

That is the whole difficulty. Because Max Carrados — blind since a riding accident, and the most humane of the great detectives — works out what happened rather sooner than anybody involved would like him to.

A fraud. A counter-fraud. A glove that falls from a box during the first act. And a detective whose real problem is not who did it, but how much of it needs to be said aloud.

This is Ernest Bramah in his lighter, more mischievous key, and it ends not with an arrest but with a telephone call from Charing Cross — and one very carefully chosen word.

ℹ️ FOR LISTENERS
This is a complete, unabridged reading of The Clever Mrs Straithwaite by Ernest Bramah, collected in Max Carrados (1914) and now in the public domain. Every word is the author's own. Part of The Midnight Archive: three nights of classics every week, alongside four original Nocturnal Tales mysteries.

🗳️ YOU CHOOSE WHAT'S NEXT
The Archive is deep — more from tonight's detective? Loveday Brooke? Violet Strange? Sherlock Holmes? Father Brown? Max Carrados? Lady Molly? Raffles? Dr Thorndyke? Arsène Lupin? Vote in the poll attached to this episode, or tell us in the comments which classic you want to hear by lamplight.

💬 QUESTION FOR THE COMMENTS
Carrados settles this one without an arrest. He sees everything, and then decides how much of it needs saying. Was he right to handle it that way? 🕵️

🕒 CHAPTERS
00:00 - Introduction
02:06 - Part One
13:31 - Part Two
25:49 - Part Three
37:30 - Part Four
50:01 - Part Five

📖 GET THE EBOOK — $3.99

📌 Patreon — included with Writing Table & Archive Society, or one-time purchase
https://www.patreon.com/posts/156573383

🛒 Gumroad — EPUB + PDF included
https://nocturnaltalespod.gumroad.com/l/ebookvol2

❤️ SUPPORT & LISTENING OPTIONS

📌 Patreon — every new case first, ad-free and early
https://www.patreon.com/NocturnalTales

🌐 Website — every story, free, no account needed
https://nocturnaltalespodcast.com

📺 Rumble — free, supports us with ad revenue
https://rumble.com/c/c-7820714

❤️ Buy Me a Coffee — one-time support
https://buymeacoffee.com/nocturnaltales

💛 PayPal — one-time tip
https://paypal.me/nocturnaltalesprod

🎧 Apple Podcasts
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nocturnal-tales-mystery-audiobooks-and-crime-stories/id1896195848

🧾 CREDITS
Narrated and produced by Nocturnal Tales. Story by Ernest Bramah (public domain).

🔖 TAGS / KEYWORDS
ernest bramah audiobook, max carrados audiobook, the clever mrs straithwaite audiobook, max carrados 1914 collection, blind detective mystery, pearl necklace mystery, insurance fraud mystery, edwardian detective story, london society scandal, classic detective story audiobook, public domain audiobook, unabridged classic mystery

🏷️ HASHTAGS
#NocturnalTales #MidnightArchive #MaxCarrados #ErnestBramah #ClassicMystery #FullAudiobook #Unabridged #BlindDetective #DetectiveAudiobook #PublicDomain

📌 Patreon — every new case first, ad-free and early ($2.99/month)
https://www.patreon.com/NocturnalTales
🌐 Website — every story we've ever made, free to listen. No paywall, no account, no password.
https://nocturnaltalespodcast.com

A will has vanished.

Not stolen from a safe. Not burned in a grate. Simply gone — from a house where it must still be, leaving a family facing ruin and a set of children whose entire future turns on a single sheet of paper that nobody can find.

Everyone in that household has already searched. Everyone has already failed.

So the problem is handed to a young woman who is not supposed to be thinking about anything more taxing than her dance card: Violet Strange, the society debutante who glitters through New York's ballrooms by night and is, in the strictest secrecy, a paid investigator.

Nobody suspects her, because nobody could possibly imagine it. And she solves it the way she always does — by listening to the exact word somebody used, rather than the word everyone expected them to use.

From Anna Katharine Green, the American novelist often called the mother of the detective novel, who was writing best-selling mysteries a decade before Conan Doyle put pen to Baker Street.

ℹ️ FOR LISTENERS
This is a complete, unabridged reading of The Dreaming Lady by Anna Katharine Green, collected in The Golden Slipper and Other Problems for Violet Strange (1915) and now in the public domain. Every word is the author's own. Part of The Midnight Archive: three nights of classics every week, alongside four original Nocturnal Tales mysteries.

🗳️ YOU CHOOSE WHAT'S NEXT
The Archive is deep — more Violet Strange? Loveday Brooke? Sherlock Holmes? Father Brown? Max Carrados? Lady Molly? Raffles? Arsène Lupin? Vote in the poll attached to this episode, or tell us in the comments which classic you want to hear by lamplight.

💬 QUESTION FOR THE COMMENTS
The whole case turns on one small thing: listening to the exact word somebody used, instead of the word you assumed they meant. When did you first suspect where the will had gone? 🕵️

📖 GET THE EBOOK — $3.99

📌 Patreon — included with Writing Table & Archive Society, or one-time purchase
https://www.patreon.com/posts/156573383

🛒 Gumroad — EPUB + PDF included
https://nocturnaltalespod.gumroad.com/l/ebookvol2

❤️ SUPPORT & LISTENING OPTIONS

📌 Patreon — every new case first, ad-free and early
https://www.patreon.com/NocturnalTales

🌐 Website — every story, free, no account needed
https://nocturnaltalespodcast.com

📺 Rumble — free, supports us with ad revenue
https://rumble.com/c/c-7820714

❤️ Buy Me a Coffee — one-time support
https://buymeacoffee.com/nocturnaltales

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Story by Anna Katharine Green (public domain). Narrated and produced by Nocturnal Tales.

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anna katharine green audiobook, violet strange audiobook, the dreaming lady audiobook, the golden slipper violet strange, female detective audiobook, missing will mystery, hidden document mystery, mother of the detective novel, new york society mystery, classic detective story audiobook, public domain audiobook, unabridged classic mystery

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Two things have happened to the Hawke household, and Loveday Brooke's chief is convinced that only one of them is worth anybody's time.

A young lady has lost a valuable necklace and wishes the matter hushed up. Obvious, says Mr. Dyer. A child could explain it.

The other business he dismisses as a puzzle without a point: a series of anonymous drawings of daggers, arriving quietly through the post.

Loveday takes precisely the opposite view. As she tells him: "Sometimes the explanation that is obvious is the one to be rejected, not accepted."

So a quiet woman in plain black travels out to a household where nobody is telling the whole truth — a yellow damask curtain dividing one drawing-room from another, a family closing ranks, and a threat that arrives on paper and says nothing at all.

Billed in her day as "the female Sherlock Holmes," Loveday Brooke works nothing like him. No theatrics, no lecture at the end. She simply refuses to accept the story everyone finds most convenient.

ℹ️ FOR LISTENERS
This is a complete, unabridged reading of Drawn Daggers by Catherine Louisa Pirkis, collected in The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective (1894) and now in the public domain. Every word is the author's own. Part of The Midnight Archive: three nights of classics every week, alongside four original Nocturnal Tales mysteries.

🗳️ YOU CHOOSE WHAT'S NEXT
The Archive is deep — more Loveday Brooke? Sherlock Holmes? Father Brown? Max Carrados? Lady Molly? Raffles? Arsène Lupin? Vote in the poll attached to this episode, or tell us in the comments which classic you want to hear by lamplight.

💬 QUESTION FOR THE COMMENTS
"The explanation that is obvious is the one to be rejected, not accepted." Is that the sharpest rule in detective fiction — or a very good way to talk yourself out of the right answer? 🕵️

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🎧 Apple Podcasts
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nocturnal-tales-mystery-audiobooks-and-crime-stories/id1896195848

🧾 CREDITS
Story by Catherine Louisa Pirkis (public domain). Narrated and produced by Nocturnal Tales.

🔖 TAGS / KEYWORDS
c l pirkis audiobook, loveday brooke audiobook, drawn daggers audiobook, lady detective victorian, female detective audiobook, lynch court agency, stolen necklace mystery, anonymous threat mystery, poison pen mystery, victorian mystery audiobook, classic detective story audiobook, public domain audiobook, unabridged classic mystery

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