SHERLOCK Holmes aficionado Paul Spiring says he has laid to rest rumours that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stole his most famous sleuthing story from a South Devon author.

Doyle wrote his classic chiller-thriller The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1901, having been introduced by Ipplepen author Bertram Fletcher Robinson to a similar Dartmoor folk myth.

This friendship between the two men has been the subject of extensive speculation in recent years, with some experts suggesting that it was Robinson who actually wrote the bestseller.

There have even been claims that Doyle had an affair with Robinson's wife and persuaded her to murder him.

But Newton Abbot author Paul Spiring, who has co-written two books about Doyle and Robinson, said the speculation is pure fiction.

However, he does concede that Doyle probably would not have written a word of the great book if he had never met Robinson.

Paul said: "I want to end the speculation about Fletcher Robinson's contribution. I'm sure he didn't write a word of The Hound of the Baskervilles.

"He was writing thousands of words for himself, daily, and he also got engaged around that period, so he didn't have the time to write for Doyle. However, he was honoured to have helped Doyle.

"It's a well-known fact that Doyle generally struggled for ideas, but what he could do was take an idea from someone else and interpret it brilliantly.

"Robinson had the opposite problem. He had a great imagination but couldn't execute his ideas the way Doyle could. Doyle turned ideas into something special.

"There's no doubt that Robinson assisted Doyle with the general plot and local details for a story entitled The Hound of the Baskervilles.

"This came after Doyle had previously killed off Sherlock Holmes in a story entitled The Final Problem, published in December 1893.

"Following the publication of The Hound of the Baskervilles, Doyle wrote a further 33 short stories and one novel, each featuring Holmes.

"However, none of these ever eclipsed the popular success of his earlier Dartmoor-based adventure."

Robinson met the Doyle in July 1900, when they were aboard a ship destined for Southampton from Cape Town.

Months later, Robinson showed Doyle around Dartmoor and told him legends of ghostly hounds.

In 2003, historian Rodger Garrick-Steele wrote a book proposing that Doyle, angered by rumours that Robinson wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles, had a lethal dose of laudanum administered to his friend.

The death certificate noted 'typhoid' as Robinson's cause of death, but Garrick-Steele disputed this and in 2005 he applied to dig up the body so that tests could be done.

Ipplepen church elders refused the application, and since then the speculation about Robinson's death has continued.

But Mr Spiring said: "Doyle and Robinson were members of many of the same societies, and I would maintain that Robinson used Doyle as a mentor, because Doyle took him under his wing and was very encouraging of his writing.

"Garrick-Steele says Doyle stole The Hound of the Baskervilles and then persuaded Robinson's wife to poison him.

"However, in reality the two writers met at least six times after the publication of the book.

"These meetings are documented, and they played golf together, and Robinson wrote very complimentary things about Doyle at this time.

"Doyle got into spiritualism after Robinson died and wrote that his premature death was a 'loss to the world'. It's pretty clear that he grieved for Robinson when he died."

Paul Spiring's books — On the Trail of Conan Doyle, and Bertram Fletcher Robinson: A Footnote to The Hound of the Baskervilles — were co-written with Brian Pugh.

They detail the many previously unknown documents unearthed during Spiring and Pugh's literary investigations, which stretched from Edinburgh to Plymouth.