Paul Courelle

In Albert Major parlait trop, the French Télévisions film adaptation of Agatha Christie's A Caribbean Mystery, Paul Courelle is the parallel of the character Tim Kendal in the original novel. Paul is a doctor at the Hôpital Saint Paul. He assists the head of the hospital Dr Grégoire Vidal (the Greg Dyson parallel) in operations and also in research and experimentation on the topic of heart transplants. Paul's wife, Dany Courelle is the parallel of Molly Kendal. Paul Courelle is portrayed by Pierre Khorsand.

Paul's role is very similar to that of Tim Kendal in the original novel. Like Tim, his actions are driven by greed for money, although in this case, it is specifically to accumulate enough wealth to set up a hospital in South Africa. Like his boss at Hôpital Saint Paul, Dr Grégoire Vidal, Paul dreams of being the first doctor to successfully perform a heart transplant. This would require harvesting organs from brain dead patients, a procedure which was illegal in France in the 1950s. The only country which recognised brain death at that time was South Africa, which explains Paul's plan to set up there.

Years before the events in the show, Paul had murdered his first wife. Like in the original, the Paul staged what he himself later described as the perfect murder. At a resort, he appeared to heroically save his wife from suicide. A few days later, the wife appeared to try again, and this time succeeded. No one thought of blaming Paul given what he had done in saving her earlier. The money from this first wife was not, however, enough for his plans. He then married Dany (we are not told if Dany had any money of her own which Paul wanted to get hold of or why else he married her). But soon, another opportunity to get money presented itself when a wealthy patient, Raymond Rafil moved into the hospital. An ailing old man, he made a secret will, leaving his estate to his secretary Esther. Paul happened to be asked to witness the will and so he realised he had an opening. First he had to kill Dany and then romance and marry Esther. Like Tim with Molly Kendal, Paul, started by drugging Dany, making her (and everyone else) think that she is becoming insane and so making it plausible that she might later commit suicide.

Unfortunately for Paul, around this time, the journalist Albert Major also checked into the hotel. He had been at the same resort as Paul years ago and had seen through what Paul had done and planned to write a book about "the perfect crime". Albert met Alice Avril in the hospital corridor and hinted to her about what he planned to do and show her his manuscript. We see Paul just down the corridor and presume he must have overheard. In any case, he soon realised Albert is a threat and moved to murder him quickly. Paul set this up by sticking a large syringe through Albert's eye, making it look like he was killed done by someone insane (suggesting Dany) but the pathologist Timothée Glissant found a small precise cut on the jugular, something that would have required a skilled surgeon. Worse for Paul, Victoria, a nurse thought she saw something and started to blackmail Paul so she had to be killed as well.

Interspersed with all these are attempts to stage Dany's suicide which were botched or foiled in time. In one case, he strangled a blonde woman but realised too late it is Lucette Vidal not Dany so he had killed the wrong woman by mistake. The final hitch to his plans comes when Raymond Rafil dies naturally. As commissaire Laurence would surmise later in summing up the case, this is much too early for Paul. Dany is not yet dead and he has not started romancing Esther in a serious way. To do so later, afther she inherits from Rafil would be too obvious or else Esther would move out of the hospital and be out of reach. Paul is forced to move quickly to poison Dany and also Alice Avril but by this time Laurence has seen through the entire plot and arrives in time to stop him in both cases.