Robert Vasseur

In Mademoiselle Mac Ginty est morte, the France Televisions adaptation of Mrs McGinty's Dead, Robert Vasseur is the parallel of James Bentley from the original novel. Like Bentley, he is a prime murder suspect, except that in this adaptation, he is not actually arrested, tried and convicted. Robert Vasseur is also the estranged husband of Alice Avril whom he ropes in to help evade the police for most of the episode. Robert Vasseur is portrayed by Arnaud Perron.

Like James Bentley, Robert is a lodger of the murder victim, in this case Huguette Mac Ginty. A witness, Régine Molon sees him running out of Huguette's apartment with blood on his hands. Somewhat unlike Bentley, Robert is thoroughly unreliable. He had trouble with the police before and is frequently drunk. When he takes refuge at Alice's apartment, she tells him to stay indoors but he goes out and gets drunk and Alice has to drag him off the streets. There was a sum of money in his pocket, some with blood stains, obtained from under the floor board of the murder victim. He uses some of the notes to pay off Alice's back rent, thereby implicating her in the murder. Later, when the police come for him, he escapes by stealing Alice's scooter, leaving her to face the music. He then crashes the scooter trying to evade a police road block. When the case is finally concluded, Robert discovers that Huguette Mac Ginty really did leave her estate to him and apparently this amounts to quite an amount.

If Robert is the Bentley parallel, this makes Alice Avril a kind of Maude Williams parallel. The difference is that although she works to try to clear him, she has no affection for him. Nonetheless she does believe he couldn't have killed Huguette. He wouldn't have the guts. Alice tells Marlene that once Robert saw a pigeon get run over and he was sick for a week. One of the conditions Alice sets for helping Robert is that he signs the paper agreeing to a divorce. Indications in later episodes show that he probably agreed and signed. According to the police file seen in the episode, Robert was born in Vichy on 30 July 1930. He and Alice were married on 23 April 1950.

Although he only appears in episode 10, his existence had been hinted at earlier. As early as episode 3 Témoin muet, Alice mentions that she has been married before and that they broke up. She also says that she had been so desperate to get out of the orphanage that she married the first person who asked, regardless of how much of a loser he was. In episode 9 Un meurtre est-il facile?'', commissaire Laurence tells Alice that he knows who she was married to and also knws that she is not yet divorced.