History DyingClue / Literature

* In ''Literature/TheSwanPrincess'', King William says "It's not what it seems, Derek. It's not what it seems!" in reference to the [[OneWingedAngel Great Animal]] that has attacked him. Derek has to figure out what he means by himself, eventually finding a book that describes shapeshifting in the library.
* Taken to rather ridiculous extremes in ''Literature/TheDaVinciCode'' [[spoiler:dragging himself round an art gallery scrawling hidden messages on various paintings before arranging his dying body in a meaningful pose]], since revealing the identity of the killer is not so important to the dying man as giving clues to the AncientConspiracy that he was killed to cover up.
* In the Literature/DirkPittAdventures novel "Iceberg", [[spoiler:Dr. Hunnewell's]] last words to Dirk Pitt are "God save thee!" Pitt later discovers [[spoiler:that Hunnewell wasn't just identifying Oskar Rondheim as his killer, but also admitting to being in league with him. The dying message was an excerpt from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", Rondheim's favorite story.]]

* ''Literature/TheThinkingMachine'': "His Perfect Alibi" features a rare variant in the which the victim manages to actually write down the name of his killer before expiring. However (as might be guessed from the title), the killer has a seemingly perfect alibi that makes it physically impossible for him to have committed the murder.
* ''Literature/TheSherlockHolmesStoriesOfEdwardDHoch'': In "The Manor House Case", a dying murder victim drags himself across the room to pull the ten of spades from a deck of playing cards as a clue to his killer's identity. [[spoiler:The suit was irrelevant. The dying man grabbed first ten he found in the deck in attempt to indicate the killer's surname was 'Zehn': German for 'ten'.]]
* ''Literature/SimonArk'': In "The Witch of Park Avenue", a man who is dying trapped inside a revolving door knows he only has seconds to live and writes the name "MARIE" on the glass with a felt tip pen. Although this seems to implicate a woman named Marie who is involved in the case [[spoiler:Simon determines that the victim and Marie had never met, so he could not have known her name, nor would she have reason to kill him. The actual killer was Dr. Langstrom, who had just married the eponymous witch. Langstrom's name was too long for him to write in the time he had left, so he tried to leave a short word that would nonetheless implicate Langstrom. However, while dying, he instinctively reverted to his native language, French, and wrote "marié", the French for "bridegroom".]]
* In the Literature/NeroWolfe novella "The Zero Clue", the victim has on his desk three pencils, a pencil eraser, and two more pencils. [[spoiler:He does this to indicate his murder is connected to the recent bombing that killed 302 people.]] Justified because that way the murderer thinks he's just fidgeting and not leaving a clue.

* ''Something Wicked'' by Alan Gratz: Duncan is found dead with his son's name, MALCOLM, written in his blood, but the hero realizes it's a frame-up because Duncan and everyone else called his son Mal.
* 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 ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'' [[spoiler: the victim did write RACHE, but she died before she could finish writing RACHEL, the password to her phone.]]
** In "Literature/AStudyInEmerald", a weird crossover between Sherlock Holmes and the Franchise/CthulhuMythos, the victim again wrote "RACHE" in the wall. [[spoiler:Turns out it was, indeed, actually the nickname of the killer.]]

** ''Thirteen at Dinner.'': After a young woman is murdered, Poirot and Hastings discover a note she had written detailing some kind of prank she was apparently playing at the titular dinner; a portion of the page has been ripped off, but it doesn't seem important, as the whole message is still legible. [[spoiler: Unfortunately, the killer deliberately tore the page in such a way that, in the portion of the letter hinting at who had put the victim up to the trick, the word "She" became "he," prompting the detectives to examine male suspects instead of focusing on the woman who was behind the whole plot.]]
* In the ''Literature/FatherBrown'' mystery "The Wrong Shape", the victim is found with a sheet of paper on their body which has typwewritten on it, "I die by my own hand; yet I die murdered!" with no quotation marks. The unusual shape of the paper (the upper left corner is snipped off, as it is on all of the sheets of paper in the room) and the presence of one less corner than sheets of paper leads Father Brown to realize that [[spoiler:a quotation mark was removed from a line of speech. The end of the story has a confession which indicates that the victim had been writing a story involving a man killed by hypnotism and the killer borrowed that last sheet to distract the investigators, snipped off the quotation mark, and burned the rest.]]

* ''Literature/JudgeDee'': [[spoiler:Sergeant Hong]] is murdered in broad daylight by the person he's having tea with. He tries to write the murderer's name in spilled tea, but the murderer notices and wipes it away contemptuously.

* Creator/ElleryQueen's "GI Story": A man is murdered by one of his three stepsons (Wash Smith, Linc Smith, Wilson Smith, named after the Presidents), leaves the message "GI". But all three were former soldiers. [[spoiler: He was trying to write "GEORGE" for George Washington Smith. But he died after completing the downstroke on the E.]]
* Ellery Queen's ''The Scarlet Letters'': Adulterer is shot by a jealous husband, writes the message "XY" before dying. [[spoiler: He and the husband were in a conspiracy to blackmail the wife. He was trying to write "XX" to signify a double-cross.]]
* Creator/EdwardDHoch's ''This Prize is Dangerous'' (rewritten into ''Leopold Lends a Hand''): There are three deaths related to the theft of some icons. The third victim dies in his apartment / office, making no effort to call police or an ambulance, instead writing out "Icon". [[spoiler: He'd committed the first two murders, and had been shot during the second. He tried to patch himself together, but when he realized it was hopeless, tried to write out "I confess to the murders of (victims)", but died after writing four letters.]]

* Parodied in ''The Big Over Easy'', the first of the Literature/NurseryCrime series, where the obnoxious ace detective mentions a case in which the victim pointed at an object which was an anagram of the first half of the killer's surname, and the detective regards this as an entirely reasonable combination of "the victim pointed at an object that related to the killer's name" and "the victim tried to say the killer's name but died halfway through".

* In Creator/DickFrancis's novel ''Flying Finish'', a soon to be murdered character, lacking anything to write with, frantically uses a sharp point of a nail to spell out a vital clue on a piece of scrap paper by punching out holes to make the letters and hides it before he's taken away to be killed. The protagonist later discovers it and is able to deduce the identity of the bad guys from the short message.

* ''Literature/RetiredWitchesMysteries'': In book 3, Makaleigh Verza whispers three words to Molly as she's dying, but Molly just thinks they're gibberish at first. It's not until a discovery spell identifies them -- "Aba. Mho. Ord." -- and Olivia recognizes them as runes some time later that their true meaning is found. "Aba" means "atone", "Mho" means "change", and "Ord" means "beginning". [[spoiler: It's eventually subverted when they turn out to be the words necessary to bind the witchfinder within his prison in the castle, and were meant to be used to summon him to solve Makaleigh's murder.]]

* Creator/ElleryQueen'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.]]
* Creator/ElleryQueen'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".]]
* A ''Seven Minute Mysteries'' had an incomprehensible dying message typed out on a keyboard that made sense once the detective realized [[spoiler: that the victim had swapped all instances of the letter "c" with "v" and vice versa]].
** An ''Literature/EncyclopediaBrown'' story did the same thing, but with the variation that the victim survived but had amnesia.
* In Creator/IsaacAsimov'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.
* In a novel by Creator/JohnDicksonCarr, the victim says before dying to the person trying to assist him "It was your gloves". [[spoiler:It had previously been established that the victim only spoke French and that a TranslationConvention was being used. In French, "your gloves" is "vos gants", which sounds similar to the murderer's name "Vaughan".]]

* In the ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'' story "The Boscombe Valley Murder", the victim and his son are alone in the woods at the time of his death and the son hears the victim say something about "a rat" before dying. What he was trying to say was "Black Jack of Ballarat", but the son only heard the last part. [[spoiler: The murderer was John Turner, a man who lived with the victim. Turner had spent his younger days in a gang called the "Ballarat Gang" and he had first met the victim when the victim was driving a stagecoach that the gang intended to rob. Turner had the opportunity to kill the victim then, but didn't. Years later, Turner encountered the victim again and the victim, without a penny to his name, threatened to tell the police what he knew about Turner if Turner didn't support him and his family. This was all well and good until the victim wanted to marry his son to Turner's daughter. Turner wasn't having it, so he killed him. Turner's name in the gang had been "Black Jack of Ballarat."]]
* In one short story, a detective looks into the murder of a rock singer. The singer grabbed his guitar as his final act and broke two strings. Questioning the singer's girlfriend, manager, and two of his band members turns up nothing. [[spoiler: The detective's partner offers to play a song on the broken guitar, except the E and D strings are broken. One of the band members is named Ed.]]
%% Anyone have the name of the above story?

* In the Literature/NeroWolfe 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.]]

* ''Literature/EightySeventhPrecinct'': In ''Lady, Lady I Did It'', one of the victims of a mass shooting manages to gasp the word "carpenter" before dying. Investigation by the 87th Precinct fails to turn up a suspect who is named Carpenter or who works with wood. It turns out [[spoiler:the victim was actually saying "car painter" (i.e. the man who had recently painted his car) but his thick accent turned it into "carpenter"]].

* One ''Literature/TheGreatBrain'' story has a murder victim gasp out "Butch" right before he dies, which causes those around him to assume the murder was Butch Cassidy. [[spoiler:TD realizes he was actually saying ''"Hutch"'', having spotted a scar on the killer's hand and realized an old friend of his was robbing him, forcing Hutch to kill him.]]

%% Administrivia/ZeroContextExample entries are not allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them.
%%* Creator/ElleryQueen's "E=Murder"
* In the Dr. Sam Hawthorne story, "The Problem of the Locked Caboose," the victim leaves the word "Elf" written in blood. [[spoiler: Turns out that he was writing the German word for eleven. The only thing that he knew about his killer was that they were in berth 11.]]

* Creator/ElleryQueen'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.]]
* And yet ''another'' Creator/ElleryQueen example, the short story "A Lump of Sugar". Ellery and Inspector Queen spend the whole story discussing the possible meaning of the dying clue -- a lump of sugar in the victim's hand -- with respect to each of the suspects, until they realize [[spoiler:the killer was simply the one mostly likely to have a sugar cube in his hand: the mounted police officer.]]
* In ''Literature/WhoCensoredRogerRabbit'', toons create word balloons when they speak (unless they consciously choose not to). A word balloon containing Roger's final words is found at the scene of the crime, but it's ambiguous without knowing the way the words were said.
* ''Literature/MaroonedInRealtime'' by Creator/VernorVinge 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 four-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 [[spoiler:the murderer is ''watching'' her the entire time, and would have destroyed anything that looked like a clue to his-or-her identity.]]

* ''Literature/TheSaint'':
** In a short story, the Victim writes "COP", with people suspecting that the murderer was a policeman until Simon Templar realized the victim's nationality-- in the UsefulNotes/CyrillicAlphabet "COP" = "sor". The killer's name was Soren.
** Similarly, in one of Isaac Asimov's ''Literature/BlackWidowers'' 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 ''TabletopGame/{{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.

* ''Literature/SimonArk'': In "The Witch of Park Avenue", a man who is dying trapped inside a revolving door knows he only has seconds to live and writes the name "MARIE" on the glass with a felt tip pen. Although this seems to implicate a woman named Marie who is involved in the case [[spoiler:Simon determines that the victim and Marie had never met, so he could not have known her name, nor would she have reason to kill him. The actual killer was Dr. Langstrom, who had just married the eponymous witch. Langstrom's name was too long for him to write in the time he had left, so he tried to leave a short word that would nonetheless implicate Langstrom. However, while dying, he instinctively reverted to his native language, French, and wrote "marie", the French for "bridegroom".]]

* In the ''Literature/KnownSpace'' book ''The Patchwork Girl'' the victim leaves "NAKF" written in his own blood on the rocks of the lunar surface. [[spoiler:He was trying to write "NAKED", indicating that his killer was naked: i.e., not wearing a space suit, which is quite a trick out on the surface of the moon.]]

* In Creator/LarryNiven's ''Literature/ThePatchworkGirl'', the victim leaves "NAKF" [[CouldntFindAPen written in his own blood]] on the rocks of the lunar surface. [[spoiler:He was trying to write "NAKED" indicating that his killer was naked: i.e. not wearing a space suit, which is quite a trick out on the surface of the moon.]]

* Creator/AgathaChristie's ''Literature/AMurderIsAnnounced'' 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''".]]

* Creator/AgathaChristie's ''Literature/DeathOnTheNile'' has the letter J written in blood at the scene of the crime, but Poirot dismisses it since Jackie, the obvious "J" person, had an airtight alibi and couldn't have possibly committed the murder, and in any case the victim clearly died instantly and wouldn't have left any clues. Poirot deduces that it was actually left by the murderer trying to frame Jackie. [[spoiler:Or, as it turns out, because they had a flair for the dramatic.]]
** Another Agatha Christie example appears in ''Thirteen at Dinner.'' After a young woman is murdered, Poirot and Hastings discover a note she had written detailing some kind of prank she was apparently playing at the titular dinner; a portion of the page has been ripped off, but it doesn't seem important, as the whole message is still legible. [[spoiler: Unfortunately, the killer deliberately tore the page in such a way that, in the portion of the letter hinting at who had put the victim up to the trick, the word "She" became "he," prompting the detectives to examine male suspects instead of focusing on the woman who was behind the whole plot.]]

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* In a short story of ''Literature/TheSaint'' the Victim writes "COP", with people suspecting that the murderer was a policeman until Simon Templar realized the victim's nationality-- in the UsefulNotes/CyrillicAlphabet "COP" = "sor". The killer's name was Soren.
** Similarly, in one of Isaac Asimov's ''Literature/BlackWidowers'' 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.