Raoul Neuville

In Rendez-vous avec la mort, the French adaptation of Agatha Christie's Appointment with Death for the TV series Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie, Raoul Neuville is an examining magistrate in the city of Lille and an old friend of Ernest Tricard. He is the parallel of Lady Westholme in the original story. Raoul Neuville is portrayed by Stéphane Pezerat.

Like Lady Westholme, Neuville is a politician, or at least, he is aspiring to become the next mayor of Lille. There are various election posters seen in his office. In his present position as an examining magistrate, he is responsible for directing the investigations of the police into various crimes. He is self-important and pompous. In one scene he is angry that Arlette Carmouille had caused his car to be towed to the pound because he had parked illegally. He threatens Arlette that he will have her removed as a policewoman. His arrogance mirrors that of Lady Westholme in the original.

Like Lady Westholme, he also has a dark past which he will take pains to conceal. When he was 13, he had been convicted as a murderer and served a sentence at the juvenile prison at Belle-Île-en-Mer. Clémence Berg, the Mrs Boynton parallel, was a prison wardress there and remembered the name. Like in the original, Clémence Berg asked to meet Neuville, this time by a lake, after first having sent her family away on a walk. Neuville offered to pay Madame Berg off but she was not interested in a bribe. She told him she only wanted to "have fun" with him "like in the old days". His method of killing her differs from the original. Here, he grabbed a rock to strike her. She died of a heart attack from the fright but he continued striking her thereafter just to make sure. Much earlier, Neuville had also killed Madame Berg's maid Mélie Lacour in a case of mistaken identity because she was wearing her employer's coat.

Neuville was exposed simultaneously by commissaire Laurence and Alice Avril. In the case of Laurence, he had taken a train journey, presumably to check on the records of Belle-Île prison. He went in person rather than simply make a phone call, presumably for security reasons, since a telephone inquiry would involve third parties, and Neuville, being a magistrate, might well come to hear about it. In the case of Alice Avril, it appears that Madame Berg kept her own copious records of the people who had passed through her hands. By snooping into these notebooks, Alice was able to discover the link.

Neuville is taken away at the end of the show and did not, like Lady Westholme, commit suicide.