Émile Deboucke

In Un meurtre est-il facile?, the France Télévisions film adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder is Easy, for the Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie TV series, Émile Deboucke is the parallel of Lord Whitfield in the original novel. Here Deboucke is the wealthy owner of a textile mill in Armentières. Émile Deboucke is portrayed by Philippe Nahon.

Like in the original, Émile Deboucke also has a fiancee, in this case, early in the episode, he asks Alice Avril to marry him. Although he is more than forty years older than her, Alice agrees and moves in with him at his chateau.

There are a number of distinctives about Deboucke that do not match the novel. Here all the people who are murdered work in his textile mill. They do not have functions, occupations or backstories which parallel those of the victims in the novel. While all the victims were people who offended him or annoyed him but some not very seriously. Sabine Toulemond, his secretary, for example, is just someone who cries too much. Secondly they die in manners which do not match the original.

However there are a number of plot elements which are transposed from the original. A knife from his collection is out on loan to some museum. It is intercepted and used by the killer. Secondly, Deboucke does mention that the deaths were divine justice since these people had offended him in some way. Third, the story of his alleged cruelty to a bird (in this case a swallow and not a canary) is used to malign him.

Unique to this adaptation, Deboucke is the one who has sustained a cut on his hand. But nothing further comes of this, no infection or anything.