History Main / INeverSaidItWasPoison

* A "Five Minute Mystery" titled [[http://www.otr.net/r/fmin/74.ram The Return of Mr. Lawrence]] plays it by the book: a murdered woman's maid accuses the woman's former husband of poisoning her. The police never said it was poison. (Note that while the inspector claims in the end to have given instruction that the details of the murder would not be discussed this instruction was never revealed previously; nonetheless, the maid had not actually been told of the murder method previously).

See also: ConvictionByContradiction

-->'''Bart/Hamlet:''' Ahhah! Me thinks the play's the thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
-->'''Moe/Claudius:''' Catch my conscience? What?
-->'''Bart/Hamlet:''' You're not supposed to hear me. That's a soliloquy.
-->'''Moe/Claudius:''' Okay, well I'll do a soliloquy too. *ahem* Note to self: kill that kid.

-->'''Moe/Claudius (nervously to Gertrude/Marge):''' Do you have diarrhea? I have diarrhea... ''[tries to leave]''
-->'''Gertrude/Marge:''' Sit down.

* Ed Exley from ''LAConfidential'' likes doing a variant of this in his [[PerpSweating interrogations]]. In particular, he tends to say something about them being guilty as if it were a fact, and note that the person never protests or reacts as an innocent person would. For example, in his first interrogation he tells the perp "It's a shame you didn't pull this a few years ago when you were a minor, you being an adult makes it a gas chamber offense." Later, after he's done and is leaving the room, he stops to say "You know Ray, I'm here talking about you getting the gas chamber and you never asked me what this is about. You've got a big guilty sign on your forehead." The kicker though is that [[spoiler:the guys he's interrogating are guilty but not of the crime he's investigating.]]

* In TheCountOfMonteCristo film, Mercedes realizes that the mysterious Count really is Edmond when he tells her that "Edmond Dantes is dead." She had told him that her love was dead, but not his name.
* A version of this is in the movie PatriotGames, after Jack Ryan's IRA informant gives him pictures of the people who had attempted to kill Ryan (and in a separate attack, his wife and daughter). Jack's superior dismisses the information, believing that mole is trying to mislead Jack. "All he has to do is show you a few pictures of a girl... Jack realizes he never told the man he was looking for a female assassin and realizes the information must be legitimate.

-->'''Moe/Claudius:''' Okay, well I'll do a soliloquy too. * ahem* Note to self: kill that kid.

* This is sufficiently common in real criminal investigations that it's one of the reasons civil rights advocates warn people never to talk to the police without an attorney present. Even an innocent person can make assumptions about a case, and look guilty if they turn out to be right. (e.g. Saying 'I don't even own a gun' when you were never told the victim had been shot).
** Not to mention that there is also the possibility that this can be used against you in a somewhat dishonest way. For example, say you were previously told that the victim was shot while being brought to the station. Then, the officer interviewing you asks you if you had anything to do with the murder. You reply truthfully and include the above statement. In the courtroom, the prosecutor could ask the policeman what you said and if anything stood out as strange. If the policeman "misremembers" they might say they never said anything about a shooting. Now you're screwed.
** This is also the reason newspaper reports about homicides tend to be deliberately vague: The police withholds all crucial information until they have had a chance of interrogating the suspects.
** Another reason why lawyers tell you not to say anything is because nothing you say can be used in the court of law to help your case, it can only be used to hurt you. This is called hearsay.
*** Actually, anything you say might indeed help your case...but it isn't the responsibility of the prosecution to help you defend yourself. It's up to your lawyer to bring what you said forward.

([[spoiler: Of course, we eventually learn Benny hated that dog, so it makes a weird kind of sense that this revelation turns into one of the moments when it almost seems like Benny's a friend again.]])

** Vimes uses it once again in ''{{Discworld/Thud}}'' when talking to the Troll crime boss Chrysophrase. Chryosphrase lets slip that his knowledge of a crime scene is greater than what the public would know. When Vimes calls him out, Chrysophrase dismisses the accusation as gossip that he heard from the Dwarfs.

** To be fair, he was already onto them. One of them had blood on their clothes and they claimed to have been called by someone from the house, even though the phone lines were dead and no one could have called.

* Ed Exley from ''LAConfidential'' likes doing a variant of this in his [[PerpSweating interrogations]]. In particular, he tends to say something about them being guilty as if it were a fact, and note that the person never protests or reacts as an innocent person would. For example, in his first interrogation he tells the perp "It's a shame you didn't pull this a few years ago when you were a minor, you being an adult makes it a gas chamber offense." Later, after he's done and is leaving the room, he stops to say "You know Ray, I'm here talking about you getting the gas chamber and you never asked me what this is about. You've got a big guilty sign on your forehead."
** The kicker though is that [[spoiler:the guys he's interrogating are guilty but not of the crime he's investigating.]]

* Played straight so often in ''Woman in the Window'' that it stops being suspenseful and becomes hilarious; the guilt-ridden professor lets slip every possible detail, including knowing the man was murdered (when the body hadn't turned up yet), knowing where the body was placed, that it happened at night, etc. To be fair, his friends are so dense that they wave off every comment and never suspect him, but you would think he'd just learn to keep his mouth shut, especially when having casual conversations ''[[WhatAnIdiot with the district attorney]]''.

* A version of this is in the movie PatriotGames, after Jack Ryan's IRA informant gives him pictures of the people who had attempted to kill Ryan (and in a separate attack, his wife and daughter). Jack's superior dismisses the information, believing that mole is trying to mislead Jack. "All he has to do is show you a few pictures of a girl. . ." Jack realizes he never told the man he was looking for a female assassin and realizes the information must be legitimate.

** Sneaky example: In one instance the impatient suspect complains about how long the search for a missing gemstone is taking and is told not to worry, "It's only a narrow flight away." Any normal person would have taken this to mean the nearby stairs... rather than shot out the window with a bow (an ''arrow'' flight). Better not have told the police to go outside to look for it.
*** Unsurprisingly, ConvictionByCounterfactualClue. Who says "flight" meaning "flight of stairs", unless stairs have already been mentioned? On the other hand, taking "an arrow flight" as anything other than a figure of speech probably indicates guilty knowledge.
** Another book had Encyclopedia figuring out which member of a gang robbed a grocery store, his only piece of evidence being a knife left stuck inside a watermelon. When confronting the gang, one of the members says his knife is an inch longer...despite the knife never having been taken out of the melon. Whoops.
*** Uh... if the knife were an inch longer, would it stick out the other side of the melon?
**** Nah, it was specifically mentioned that this was a particularly huge watermelon.

** And yet, the only one who connected the dots was Sergeant. Sergeant is eight.
*** Sergeant is the one who found the body, and the one who told Achilles about it. No one else knew he had left out the method, so no one else had the chance to figure it out. More interesting is that when he realizes Achilles did it, he immediately decides to keep the secret to protect the other kids.

* In JoWalton's novel ''Farthing'', the murder victim appears to have been stabbed. The police forensic techs figure out that he actually died of carbon monoxide poisoning, but don't reveal this to the press. [[spoiler:Later, the victim's wife confirms her guilt by mentioning that he was gassed. Not that it matters, since her husband's political cronies have pressured the police to pin the murder on a convenient scapegoat.]]
** Did she see the body? Did she know that not turning blue after death is a sign of carbon monoxide poisoning?
* Invoked in TerryPratchett's ''{{Discworld}}'' book ''Discworld/NightWatch''. After an antagonist officer tells Vimes of a break-in, Vimes asked what had been stolen. The other officer tries to invoke this trope, replying "Did I say they stole anything, sir?" and Vimes shuts him down with "Well, no, you didn't. That was me jumping to what we call a ''conclusion''. Did they steal anything, then, or did they break in to deliver a box of chocolates and a small complimentary basket of fruit?"

** Also inverted in ''Discworld/{{Feet of Clay}}'' when Carrot becomes sure that Dorfl didn't kill Dr. Hopkins when he agrees to Carrot's statement that Dorfl beat him to death with an iron bar, when in fact he was killed with a loaf of dwarf bread. Although a casual observer [[IndestructibleEdible might have just confused the two]].

* Inverted in ''A Widow for a Year'' when the policeman deliberately gives the press false information about a murdered prostitute, saying she was killed WITH a struggle. This enabled him to dismiss the two men who confessed as they were covered in bruises and scratches.
* Popular in ''Two Minute Mysteries'' - things like "Dr. Smith was murdered, where were you at the time?" "I haven't been to a dentist in years."
* Used near the beginning of ''{{The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray}}''- the hero finds a young woman in the part of London infested by gribbly things, and asks the governor of a local mental asylum if he's lost any patients- he mentions her being found in the Old Quarter, despite not being told. Somewhat averted in that the hero reasons that it's a sensible assumption, but decides to be careful and gives a false description- [[spoiler:a good idea, since said governor is part of the cult that had captured the girl...]]

* Reversed in Clancy's ''Clear and Present Danger'', when the FBI is investigating the mistreatment of prisoners on a Coast Guard ship- he says that one of the prisoners was executed (he wasn't, but they staged an execution by hanging to get a second prisoner to confess everything) to which he captain replies "We captured 2 prisoners, we gave you 2 prisoners, alive, so who did we shoot?"

** Note this is TruthInTelevision. By holding back details from the media it's easier to identify real witnesses and suspects.
*** Also note that not revealing everything you know makes the criminals sweat (since they're never sure what you ''do'' know) and makes subsequent interrogations easier as well.

** Another ''CriminalMinds'' example:
---->'''Gideon:''' Is that why you stabbed him in the groin?
---->'''Suspect:''' It's what he deserved.
** The victim had been stabbed in the head. This is from "A Real Rain."

* On ''{{NCIS}}'', one of the several clues that a midshipman's training sergeant had been guilty of his murder was that when Gibbs notified him of his (missing-presumed-deserted for several days) student's death, ''without'' mentioning that his death was murder, the sergeant's first question was 'Do you know who killed him'?
** Not the greatest example, because what are the odds of a twenty-something physically fit person dying of accident/suicide/natural causes just days after someone he was closely connected to was murdered? The biggest giveaway is really that, after Gibbs points out he never mentioned murder, the sergeant attempts to kill him.
** Used again in a later episode, when the suspect's wife assures Gibbs that her husband would never shoot a woman in the back. Of course, Gibbs hadn't mentioned to her or her husband how the victim had died.

** An example from season 2: A woman with amnesia comments that "someone bashed that poor man's head in," when no one had told her how the man was killed. Unfortunately, by the time Kate realizes this, it's too late. [[spoiler:She's holding an extremely volatile bomb. At least they didn't have to arrest her afterwards.]]
* Subverted on ''HomicideLifeOnTheStreet'': In the episode "Bad Medicine," Detective Lewis tells VillainWithGoodPublicity Luther Mahoney that a recently deceased thug obviously committed suicide. Mahoney scoffs, pointing out that the victim was shot in the back of the head and the gun was left on the table next to him. Lewis gleefully pounces, proclaiming that neither piece of information was released to the public and placing Mahoney under arrest. [[spoiler:It doesn't matter in the end, though, because the state's attorney figures that there are any number of ways Mahoney could have learned it, too many to be beyond reasonable doubt. Mahoney walks with a big grin on his face, and the only witness is later found shot in an alley.]]
* Inverted on ''TheWire'': The detectives show one of the perps a bag with three guns saying that they found his fingerprints on one of them. The perp knows that they cleaned them, so asks the detectives which one it is. They point to another gun. See kids, drug dealers can be smart too...

** Though really, this would only prove that she and Mal already knew each other. Not necessary that Mal's account of their past was accurate.

** It belongs in the cupboard. If someone were trying to make things look like nothing had happened, where else would they put it?

* Slight variant. In ''HumanTarget'', Chance suspects the cops escorting his client of being the ones trying to kill her contact. They're too clever to let this slip, so he openly mentions an unknown fact about the meeting place (that it was on a bridge) and uses their lack of response to this "new" information to confirm his suspicions.
** Which leads to a desperate fight between him and the two cops, which while cool, could have been averted if he had waited until he wasn't trapped in a car with two armed men.

* In ''{{Hamlet}}'', when telling Laertes about [[spoiler:Ophelia's death by drowning]], the queen describes it in perfect detail, including things she couldn't possibly had known unless she had been there [[spoiler:("she was singing as she fell in the water, and didn't drown immediately because her clothes held her up")]], which prompts many critics to think that Gertrude [[spoiler:killed Ophelia]]. Subverted in that none of the other characters notice.

** Another reason why lawyers tell you not to say anything is because nothing you say can be used in the court of law to help your case, it can only be used to hurt you. This is called hearsay.

* In [[http://everything2.com/titl/I+ want+ my+ trail+ to+ grow+ over+ and+ disappear%252C+ but+ now+ someone+ is+ reading+ it one chapter]] of ''NewYorkMagician'', Michel confronts a suspect in a girl's disappearance. Every word out of the man's mouth [[DiggingYourselfDeeper somehow gets him into more trouble]].

** Vimes uses it once again in ''{{Discworld/Thud}}'' when talking to the Troll crime boss Chrysophrase. Chryosphrase lets slip that his knowledge of a crime scene is greater than what the pubic would know. When Vimes calls him out, Chrysophrase dismisses the accusation as gossip that he heard from the Dwarfs.

** Not to mention that there is also the possibility that this can be used against you in a somewhat dishonest way. For example, say you were previously told that the victim was shot while being brought to the station. Then, the officer interviewing you asks you if you had anything to do with the murder. You reply truthfully and include the above statement. In the courtroom, the prosecutor could ask the policeman what you said and if anything stood out as strange. If the policeman "misremembers" they might say they never said anything about a shooting. Now your screwed.

** Also common in ''Two Minute Mysteries,'' by the same athor - things like "Dr. Smith was murdered, where were you at the time?" "I haven't been to a dentist in years."

* Ed Exley from ''LAConfidential'' likes doing a variant of this in his [[PerpSweating interrogations]]. In particular, he tends to say something about them being guilty as if it were a fact, [[CrucialMistake and note that the person never protests or reacts as an innocent person would]]. For example, in his first interrogation he tells the perp "It's a shame you didn't pull this a few years ago when you were a minor, you being an adult makes it a gas chamber offense." Later, after he's done and is leaving the room, he stops to say "You know Ray, I'm here talking about you getting the gas chamber and you never asked me what this is about. You've got a big guilty sign on your forehead."

* Invoked in TerryPratchett's ''{{Discworld}}'' book ''Discworld/NightWatch''. After being told of a break-in by an antagonistic officer, Vimes asked what had been stolen. The other officer tries to invoke this trope, replying "Did I say they stole anything, sir?" and Vimes shuts him down with "Well, no, you didn't. That was me jumping to what we call a ''conclusion''. Did they steal anything, then, or did they break in to deliver a box of chocolates and a small complimentary basket of fruit?"

* Invoked in TerryPratchett's ''{{Discworld}}'' book ''Discworld/NightWatch''. After being told of a break-in by an antagonistic officer Vimes asked what had been stolen. The other officer tries to invoke this trope, replying "Did I say they stole anything, sir?" and Vimes shuts him down with "Well, no, you didn't. That was me jumping to what we call a ''conclusion''. Did they steal anything, then, or did they break in to deliver a box of chocolates and a small complimentary basket of fruit?"

* Used lightly in ''[[FourteenOhEight 1408]]'' when Mike Enslin calls a hotel for a reservation in the eponymous room, which the staff says is unavailable, despite not knowing ''when'' he'll be visiting, since they don't want anybody staying in the room ever.

* ''MinorityReport'' The villain realizes the protagonists are onto him when he's caught in one of these. [[spoiler:Anderton's wife asks about Anne Lively's death, and Burgess pretends not to know about it, but says he'll look into a woman by that name being drowned. She tells him she didn't say how she died.]]

* ''MinorityReport'' features an accidental example of this. [[spoiler:Burgess had a woman drowned so that he could use her daughter as part of a system to detect crimes before they happen, and the main character comes to suspect as much but is falsely accused of intent to murder and imprisoned. His wife asks Burgess to look into the killing of the woman, and when Burgess replies that he will see if there is any record of such a woman being drowned, the wife is tipped off that he had something to do with it - because she only mentioned that the woman had died, not the manner of her death.]]

** Another example on ''TheWire'', this one tragic. During an interrogation, Herc accidentally reveals too much about his informant (Randy), which gets the kid branded as a snitch, his house firebombed, his foster mother killed, and generally ruins his life.

-->'''Monty:''' I misunderstood.