The Butler Did It: Difference between revisions

* "What, No Butler?" by [[Damon Runyon]] (1933)

* ''The Butler Did It'' by [[P. G. Wodehouse|PG Wodehouse]] (1957)

* ''[[To Say Nothing of the Dog]]'' by Connie Willis plays with this trope. First it's [[Discussed Trope|discussed]], when time-traveling main character Ned muses that the mystery they're solving is nothing like old-school detective stories, where the butler always does it. It actually becomes a [[Running Gag]] in the book, as when he travels to a [[Genteel Interbellum Setting]], people are complaining that it's becoming cliche in stories for the butler to do it. {{spoiler|And then in the end, it turns out the running gag is a Checkov's Gun, and butler really did do it... but the "it" that he does is "elope with the beautiful daughter", not "murder the victim"}}.

* In the [[Agatha Christie]] novel ''Three-Act Tragedy'', {{spoiler|the murderer posed as his friend's butler solely in order to murder him and then fled afterwards in a deliberately suspicious manner, returning in his usual guise as the victim's good friend.}}

** In ''Murder on the Orient—Express'', depending on which solution you believe, the butler did indeed do it {{spoiler|along with everyone else in the Calais Coach, including the coach attendant. Poirot and the victim are the only people in that coach who didn’t put their hands on the blade.}}

** In ''Black Coffee'', {{spoiler|the butler really did do it. However, since this was already a dead horse trope, you never see it coming because the butler never actually does it.}}

* In [[Arthur Conan Doyle]]'s [[Regency England|Regency-era]] novel ''Rodney Stone'', the butler was ''going to'' do it when the victim cut his own throat first.

* A spy story written by Eric Ambler in the 1930s has an author as the main character. He gets into a conversation with a senior member of a foreign police force, who turns out to have literary ambitions of his own, but no talent: the cop's idea of a stunning resolution to the cliche-ridden murder mystery he dreams of writing is, in fact, this trope.

* In ''[[Nightside|Hell To Pay]]'', John Taylor admits that he was reluctant to suspect the Griffins' butler because it's such a cliche. {{spoiler|The butler ''did'' do it, but charging him with the crime becomes a bit beside the point when his true identity as an archdemon is exposed.}}

* ''[[In Death]]'': At one point in ''Divided In Death'', Eve talks to Baxter about his partner Trueheart. Baxter is letting Trueheart handle a case in which a woman was found manually strangled in Upper East Side, New York City. She had a lot of money, a miserable disposition, a huge mean streak, and a dozen heirs who are all glad to see her dead. Baxter then says, "I told him I thought the butler did it, and he just nodded, all serious, and said he'd do a probability. Christ, he's a sweet kid." Clearly, Baxter was just being funny.

* There's a short story where the members of the Retired Butler's Club are boasting about how they were each suspected of murder and then cleared by clever detectives {{spoiler|even though they were all actually guilty. Then, the club's butler murders all the members.}}

=== Live Action Television ===