Annick Devassène

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, Annick Devassène is the parallel of Honoria Waynflete in the original novel. Annick is portrayed by Anne Benoît.

Annick is a friend of Émile Deboucke, the Lord Whitfield parallel. She is a frequent visitor to his chateau and had once had a romance with him many years earlier. She is a librarian and an author. In this adaptation, she is also the cousin of Marlene's mother. After quitting her job as the secretary of commissaire Laurence, Marlene comes to stay with Annick, to be near to Deboucke's textile mill as she had decided to take up a job at the mill as the personal assistant of Alice Avril whom Deboucke had appointed as the mill's creative director.

Like in the original novel, Annick is the ultimate murderer of all the victims in the textile mill. According to what she told Alice towards the end, her motives are largely similar to what is found in the original novel. Annick said that Deboucke had used her rather than loved her. Her father was the original owner of the textile mill. Deboucke romanced her in order to gain possession of the mill. Once he achieved this, he no longer had any use for her and he terminated the relationship. Annick killed people Deboucke was thought to dislike so as to ultimately build up a case against him, leading him to be tried and executed for the multiple murders. Her efforts were helped by her having a key to a backdoor into the mill which she had from her father's time. She also employs the same story of a bird (in this case a swallow) to paint Deboucke as an evil person in the eyes of Marlene.

The manners of the killings largely differ from the original novel. Only a few are recognisable. The second one, of Josiane Lallin, the Lavinia Pinkerton parallel, is actually killed in a manner similar to that of Tommy Pierce. Annick's final act of violence is also fairly recognisable. This is against Alice Avril who is a kind of Bridget Conway parallel. Here the plot elements are distributed: Marlene gets poisoned (in the original this was intended for Bridget but she avoided drinking the poisoned tea). Alice is also offered some tea but avoids it. Then Annick attempts to stab Alice with a knife which is from Deboucke's antique knives collection. Alice had just left Deboucke and his chateau (kind of like Bridget breaking off the engagement) and so Deboucke would have a motive to kill her. However, there is no attempt to lure Deboucke to the scene to further strengthen the case against him. Annick is stopped and arrested in the nick of time by Laurence.

Just like in the orginal, Deboucke tells Laurence that the story of the swallow is actually the other around: he had seen Annick do it and he broke off his engagement with her.