Lost, then found: Rare Barrie play is published

As mysteries go, “The Reconstruction of the Crime” is especially light, a stage farce billed as one “Sensational Scene” in which a man identified only as “The Victim” asks the audience to help find the culprit.

J.M. Barrie, the co-creator, was known for playing to the crowd.

Published this week in The Strand Magazine, a quarterly that has unearthed obscure works by John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald and many others, “The Reconstruction of the Crime” is a collaboration between Barrie and his friend and fellow man of letters E.V. Lucas, believed written during World War I and rarely seen since. The manuscript is part of the Harry Ransom Center archive at the University of Texas at Austin.

“It’s very much a subtle and sly comedy and that’s what Barrie really excelled at,” Strand managing editor Andrew Gulli told The Associated Press. “Also, there is audience participation which echoes back to ‘Peter Pan.’ Who can forget that Peter asks the audience if they believe in miracles?”

The play’s setting is a hotel room and the characters besides the Victim are “an asthmatic husband, a devoted wife and a doctor.” The “weapon” is a mustard plaster, given to a man, the Victim, who doesn’t need it. “The Reconstruction of the Crime” begins with the Victim poking his head through the curtains and asking for quiet.

“Please don’t applaud,” he says. “Of course I like it; we all like it. But not just now. This is much too serious. The fact is I want to take you into my confidence: to ask your assistance. A horrible crime has been committed. An outrage almost beyond description has been perpetrated upon an inoffensive gentleman staying in a country hotel, and the guilty person has to be found.”