A fun squib by Peter Pan author J. M. Barrie. Barrie was a friend of Conan Doyle and, as with the other Holmes parodies he penned, “The Late Sherlock Holmes” has the flavour of a shared joke.

The story takes the form of a breathless newspaper report on the death of the great detective, with Dr. Watson being arrested for murder after the events at Reichenbach Falls described (from Watson’s own point of view, of course) in “The Final Problem.” Drawing on the evidence presented in that story, which is heightened for humorous effect, the report makes the case for why Watson may have wanted to do away with his famous former companion. “Latterly,” we’re told, the two men “have not been on friendly terms, Holmes having complained frequently that whatever he did the other took credit for.”

On the other hand, the suspected accomplice [Watson] has been heard to say “that Holmes has been getting too uppish for anything,” that he “could do very well without Holmes now,” that he “has had quite enough of Holmes,” that he is “sick of the braggart’s name,” and even that “if the public kept shouting for more Holmes he would kill him in self-defence.”

Then the screw gets turned a little further as Barrie plays on Doyle’s own desire to do away with Holmes, introducing the author himself into the story as a “dark horse” candidate for Watson’s accomplice. And if you’re a real Holmes aficionado you’ll like the reference to the Ardlamont murder case, the trial for which took place the same year, 1893, that this story was first (anonymously) published. One of the expert witnesses at the Ardlamont trial was Dr. Joseph Bell, the man who inspired the character of Sherlock Holmes.

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