Arthur Conan Doyle, murderer?

So my first instinct upon reading this is to remember my absolute distaste for Patricia Cornwell’s witch hunt of Walter Sickert to “prove” he was Jack the Ripper. But then again…:

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, one of the world’s most famous crime writers, was himself a murderer and a thief according to a team of literary sleuths, who plan to prove their claim with a macabre exhumation in a Devon churchyard.

Investigators are attempting to show once and for all that the creator of Sherlock Holmes was involved in a dark plot to bump off a former editor of the Daily Express – the man who should truly be acknowledged as the creator of the Hound of the Baskervilles.

In a bizarre scenario that Holmes himself might have appreciated, it is alleged that Bertram Fletcher Robinson was poisoned with laudanum, administered by his wife under the instruction of Conan Doyle.

The motive, the investigators allege, was to cover up the theft of the Baskervilles tale and silence the true source of the story. Next week the investigators will make a formal application to the Diocese of Exeter to dig up Fletcher Robinson’s corpse. Officially the cause of death was typhoid.

Paul Spiring, a scientist coordinating the investigation, said: "If you take a purely objective, scientific view of our findings, the evidence of a cover-up is irrefutable."

And now I want to make jokes along the lines of "How do you spell CONSPIRACY? R-E-L-I-E-F" but I suspect it would be kind of lame…