Dying Clue: Difference between revisions

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If what they used to write was their own blood, see also [[Couldn't Find a Pen]]. See also [[His Name Is]].

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=== Versions: ===

=== Versions ===

== 1. The message was incomplete. ==

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* ''The Seventh Sinner'' by Elizabeth Peters: the dying man scrawled "VII". Now which of the group of seven tourists should be considered the seventh? {{spoiler|He was actually starting to write "Virginia," the name of one of them whom most of the group knew only by her nickname}}.

== 2. Dying people lack clear elocution: ==

== 2. Dying people lack clear elocution ==

* Ellery Queen's ''Diamonds in Paradise'': Victim steals diamonds at the Paradise Gardens Casino, but falls from a fire escape fleeing police. When asked where he hid the diamonds, he replies "Diamonds in paradise". {{spoiler|He was trying to say "Diamonds in pair of dice". He had a specially hollowed out pair in his pocket.}}

* Ellery Queen's ''The Last Woman in His Life'': The victim announces he will be changing his will to disinherit his three ex-wives (Alice Tierney, Audrey Weston, and Marcia Kemp) as he will be marrying his true love Laura. He is murdered that night, and dies saying "home". {{spoiler|The killer was his lawyer Al Marsh (nee C. Aubrey Marsh), who had an unrequited attraction for the victim. The victim had had a stutter even before he was stabbed and couldn't risk saying "Al" (Alice), "Marsh" (Marcia), "Aubrey" (Audrey), "Lawyer" (Laura), "Attorney" (Tierney), or "Man" (Laura Mannzoni). He was trying to say "homosexual".}}

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* {{spoiler|Nikki}} from ''[[Lost]]'' staggers out of the jungle, mutters something that sounds like "Paulo lies", and then collapses. {{spoiler|She's actually not dead, and she said "Paralyzed"; Nikki was bitten by a spider whose venom causes paralysis. The other survivors don't know this, though, so they bury her alive.}}

* A victim in [[Case Closed]] who was burned alive couldn't even speak clearly, so he settled for grabbing an umbrella as the dying message. {{spoiler|The umbrella was an oblique reference to [[Oda Nobunaga]], whose role the murderer played while on a tour group.}}

** In the [[Case Closed]] movie "Captured In Her Eyes", a police officer who was murdered appeared to point to his notepad in an effort to leave a [[Dying Clue]], since he didn't have enough strength left to talk. However, the officer was actually pointing to his heart. In Japanese, the Kanji character for "heart" also appears in the word for "psychiatry." He was attempting to identify his shooter as {{spoiler|the psychiatrist who'd been called in to treat Rachel's amnesia. Said psychiatrist had formerly been a surgeon until a doctor he worked with "accidentally" slashed his hand, keeping him from ever performing surgery. He later learned that the doctor had done it deliberately, so he murdered him. Several years later, the cop mentioned earlier began looking into that murder and he was beginning to catch on that the not-so-good doctor was the killer, so he had to die.}}

** In the [[Case Closed]] movie "Captured In Her Eyes", a police officer who was murdered appeared to point to his notepad in an effort to leave a Dying Clue, since he didn't have enough strength left to talk. However, the officer was actually pointing to his heart. In Japanese, the Kanji character for "heart" also appears in the word for "psychiatry." He was attempting to identify his shooter as {{spoiler|the psychiatrist who'd been called in to treat Rachel's amnesia. Said psychiatrist had formerly been a surgeon until a doctor he worked with "accidentally" slashed his hand, keeping him from ever performing surgery. He later learned that the doctor had done it deliberately, so he murdered him. Several years later, the cop mentioned earlier began looking into that murder and he was beginning to catch on that the not-so-good doctor was the killer, so he had to die.}}

* In the video game ''Discworld Noir'', a victim who was hung upside-down, blinded, and left to bleed to death scrawls a note in blood on the wall. The message is {{spoiler|a code-number for the hiding place of a mysterious relic, but it appears to be a name because it's written upside-down}}.

* In [[Isaac Asimov]]'s juvenile mystery story "Try Sarah Tops," a jewel thief who'd been mortally wounded by his double-crossing accomplices flees into a museum, then gasps out a cryptic phrase before dying. It sounds like he's suggesting the cops ask someone named "Sarah Tops" where he's hidden the loot, but in fact he'd tossed it into the nearest exhibit, a ''Triceratops'' skeleton.

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* In the [[Nero Wolfe]] short story "Before I Die," Archie Goodwin is on hand to hear the last words of the victim of a drive-by shooting: "Shame. Goddamn shame." {{spoiler|What she was actually saying was not "shame" but "''Shane''", the name of her then-unknown accomplice, who had come up with his own idea to get money.}}

== 3. Victim didn't know the killer's name: ==

== 3. Victim didn't know the killer's name ==

* Ellery Queen's ''E=Murder''

== 4. Other messages: ==

== 4. Other messages ==

* In ''[[The Incredibles]]'', doomed missing superhero Gazerbeam has the foresight to scrawl the villain's secret password "Kronos" in the cave, so that future superheros hiding behind his body and looking out through his skull can see it.

* Ellery Queen's ''The Glass Domed Clock'': The victim knocks over a glass domed clock and grabs an amethyst. {{spoiler|One of the suspects was a stockbroker (the clock resembled a stock ticker), who was born on February 29 (birthstone is an amethyst). However, other evidence indicates that the victim thought the suspect was born on March 1. Other evidence reveals that only one suspect knew the real birthdate and could have left that message.}}

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** This had earlier been used in a short story of [[The Saint]], with people suspecting that the murderer was a policeman until Simon Templar realized the victim's nationality. The killer's name was Soren.

** Again, in one of Isaac Asimov's ''Black Widowers'' stories the guest relates the tale of a Russian spy (that is, a Russian national working for the West) who left a dying message that nobody had been able to interpret: the letters E P O C K from a Scrabble set. The word 'epock' was meaningless and no anagram could be found either, so the spy's intention had been a mystery for more than twenty years. As always, Henry the waiter solves it, pointing out that the letters ''could'' be rearranged - to form 'CKOPE', which in the Cyrillic alphabet spells the word 'score'. This, along with a newspaper opened at the sports page (the ''scores'', gettit?) implied that the agent was trying to communicate the number twenty. The Widowers' guest is thunderstruck at this - in the code they used at the time, '20' meant "Government in firm control" and if they had known this, the Bay of Pigs invasion could have been called off.

* ''[[Across Realtime|Marooned in Realtime]]'' by [[Vernor Vinge]] features possibly '''''the'''''' most epic case of "murder victim writes cryptic final message" in the entire history of detective fiction. The murderer uses a uniquely science-fictional murder weapon that results in a ''three-decades long'', lingering death ''of old age'' for the victim, so she has time to write a final message over ''two million words'' ~~long -- but~~ the important bit is still so cryptic only one man could see it - and it's ''not'' her lover. This is because the murderer is ''watching'' her the entire time, and would have destroyed anything that looked like a clue to his-or-her identity.

* ''[[Across Realtime|Marooned in Realtime]]'' by [[Vernor Vinge]] features possibly '''''the'''''' most epic case of "murder victim writes cryptic final message" in the entire history of detective fiction. The murderer uses a uniquely science-fictional murder weapon that results in a ''three-decades long'', lingering death ''of old age'' for the victim, so she has time to write a final message over ''two million words'' long—but the important bit is still so cryptic only one man could see it - and it's ''not'' her lover. This is because the murderer is ''watching'' her the entire time, and would have destroyed anything that looked like a clue to his-or-her identity.

* [[Agatha Christie]]'s [[A Murder Is Announced]] has one that doesn't quite count as a clue, as it's actually the reason she was killed, but similarly to the Roger Rabbit case above. Was it "She ''wasn't'' there"? or was it "''She'' wasn't there"? or maybe "She wasn't ''there''"? {{spoiler|"She wasn't ''there''".}}

* The dying Inspector-General in ''[[Dong Yi]]'' showed the titular character a set of cryptic hand signals before he died. The signals actually point out the identity of the killer, although it would take the titular character many years before she deciphered the meaning behind them.

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** The victim is in a museum that gives out custom pens to their employees, and the victim is an employee of the museum. It is shown on a security cam of the victim grabbing a exhibit card from a table and his pen, and scribbling something into the paper before throwing the pen away. {{spoiler|He was trying to scribble out the name of the other employee that the killer was trying to frame, but the killer purposely left a pen that had no ink on the table and then switched it out with a functioning pen later.}}

* The mystery comic series ''[[The Maze Agency]]'' had an example of this version using one of Jack the Ripper's famed messages.

* This happens ''all the time'' in the ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' games, and it's always misleading. In the second game, this actually provided a major ~~clue -- because~~ the message in question was ''spelt wrong'', and the victim was the framee's boyfriend.

* This happens ''all the time'' in the ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' games, and it's always misleading. In the second game, this actually provided a major clue—because the message in question was ''spelt wrong'', and the victim was the framee's boyfriend.

* The culprit in the Sherlock Holmes story A Study in Scarlet wrote RACHE on the wall to make the police think of a revenge killing by a secret society or that the murderer's name was Rachel

** In "A Study in Pink", a loose adaptation of the story in [[Sherlock]] {{spoiler|the victim did write RACHE, but she died before she could finish writing RACHEL, the password to her computer.}}

* ''[[Serenity]]'': Mr. U either didn't think that someone besides Mal would ever come back to his [[Hacker Cave]] or didn't have time to prevent the message from looping. His [[Dying Clue]] thus leads the Operative right to Mal [[Just in Time]] for the big [[Fight Scene]].

* ''[[Serenity]]'': Mr. U either didn't think that someone besides Mal would ever come back to his [[Hacker Cave]] or didn't have time to prevent the message from looping. His Dying Clue thus leads the Operative right to Mal [[Just in Time]] for the big [[Fight Scene]].

* On one episode of ''The Cosby Mysteries'', a reporter murders a British actress, writes Guy's phone number on her hand (to imply she was going to call him), and forges an entry in her diary to cast suspicion on her husband. However, Guy notices two mistakes: the forged diary entry uses the American spelling of "color" instead of the British one ("colour") and his phone number was written on her left hand which was the hand she wrote with.

* [[Agatha Christie]]'s ''[[Death on the Nile]]'' has the letter J written in blood at the scene of the crime, but since Jackie, the obvious "J" person, couldn't have possibly committed the murder, Poirot deduces that it was made by the murderer trying to frame her. {{spoiler|Or, as it turns out, because they had a flair for the dramatic.}}