I recently watched an episode of the British crime series "Father Brown" which features a crime solving Catholic priest in a small English village in the late 1940s, early 1950s.
In this episode the supposed murder victim had actually framed someone by committing suicide. The method? Tieing the gun to a large stone and dangling the rope down the chimney. After the victim fired the gun he let go of it and the weight of the stone slid down the roof above pulling the weapon up the chimney. The stone and rope were obscured by the angle of the roof.
I thought to myself, where have I heard that idea before?