Ashoke Viswanathan explains a scene to Simon Wilson during the shoot in Shillong

The British deputy high commissioner in Calcutta has a new address — 221B Baker Street.

The 1 Ho Chi Minh Sarani office remains where it is, but the boss is going places — that too in a long coat, hat and pipe.

Simon Wilson is playing a bit role as Sherlock Holmes on the big screen. Inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four, Ashoke Viswanathan is directing The Diamond Murders in Hindi, for which he found his super sleuth in the highest-ranking British official in eastern India.

After a hush-hush shoot in Hotel Pinewood in Shillong over the weekend, Wilson told Metro: “I am very interested in theatre and I have acted in the past. I have known Ashoke as a friend. This film is an Indian version of the Sherlock Holmes story and Ashoke offered me a cameo.”

Wilson plays Holmes, who appears in the climax scene to give “a piece of advice” to the Indian detective Prashant Saigal (played by Rajit Kapoor) that helps him crack the case. Saigal will speak in Hindi, while Holmes says his lines in English.

“It’s a surreal scene where Saigal meets Holmes, set right in the middle of the waters. It is crucial in the unravelling of the plot,” said Viswanathan over phone from Shillong, where he has been camping for the past 10 days.

What in Wilson — popular in the city’s social circuit for his genial ways — made Viswanathan sniff out his Holmes? “It’s very difficult to find someone with a hawk nose like Sherlock Holmes’s but I thought Simon would fit the role as he has a good height and a pure British accent, which was very important for the film,” said the maker.

After canning the shots of the career diplomat as consulting detective, he is more than happy with his casting coup. “Delivering dialogues with pipe in mouth is not an easy task but Simon is doing just fine,” he said.

But Wilson’s role does not end there. “He is also advising us on the 19th century costumes of Sherlock Holmes,” added Viswanathan, who has based his Holmes on the drawings, diagrams and the various tele-serials and feature films made on the world’s most famous sleuth.

“There’s a cultural link between England and India and I think it could be demonstrated through this film,” said the 51-year-old Tollywood debutant who has been deputy high commissioner in Eastern India since April 2006.

The “part-detective, part melodrama” being produced by the Calcutta-based Unilux Films also stars Simone Singh, Victor Banerjee, Raj Zutshi and Priyanshu Chatterjee.

The Shillong shoot with Wilson was kept under wraps, with only Meghalaya tourism minister Conrad Sangma meeting the movie team and its unlikely star. “He is here in his personal capacity to give the film a Scottish touch,” said Sangma.

State chief secretary Ranjan Chatterjee lost a chance to meet Sherlock Holmes at the landmark hotel the British built. “I was coming out of the gym when I saw Rajit Kapoor and then asked someone what was happening. I was told that a film shoot was going on but I did not pay much attention. I had no inkling that the British deputy high commissioner was here!” he said.

Just as the British diplomat was the chosen one, Shillong was the chosen spot for this Arthur Conan Doyle tale. “It’s very cold and misty and has the Scottish kind of look. Shillong is known as the Scotland of the East and so it is the ideal place for this film,” said Viswanathan.

(WITH INPUTS FROM OUR SILIGURI BUREAU)