Mélodie mortelle (Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie)

Mélodie mortelle (Deadly Melody) is the 23rd episode of season 2 of the French TV series Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie. It was produced by Escazal Films and France Télévisions, directed by Christophe Campos and first aired on France 2 on 28 September 2018. It is a loose adaptation of Christie's The Sittaford Mystery.

Synopsis
Like the rest of the episodes of season 2 of this series, the original Christie detective characters have been replaced. The lead roles are taken by a French detective Commissaire Swan Laurence assisted by a journalist Alice Avril and Laurence's secretary Marlene. The action is set in Lille in the 1950s. In this episode, Marlene is president of the fan club of the popular yéyé singer Nicky. After a rehearsal, Nicky invites Marlene to join in a seance. Things get unreal when the session predicts the death of Mike, Nicky's guitarist and fiance and shortly thereafter Alice discovers Mike's body in the offices of the recording company.

Plot Summary
(may contain spoilers - click on expand to read) Marlene is president of the fan club of the popular yéyé singer Nicky. After a rehearsal at the television studio, Nicky invites Marlene to join her, songwriter Tony Constantin and pianist Jeff in a seance. Nicky calls on someone named "Iris" for a message and is stunned when the message typed out on the ouija board is "Mike is dead". Nicky is distraught that Mike, her fiance, might be in danger but Tony assures her he will go to the record company office to check that he is all right.

Meanwhile, Alice Avril, not a fan of yéyé music, goes to the record company to follow up on an interview of Mike which she had done earlier and promptly discovers that Mike is dead. Laurence initially surmises that it might be an accidental overdose, given a tourniquet around his arm and a history of drug taking.

Nicky is disconsolate and wants to cancel all her shows and engagements but Franck Soler, the head of "Disques Soler" record company says "the show must go on". Marlene "helpfully" suggests that Alice can sing well and so Alice is persuaded to dub Nicky for a show. It's a success and Franck offers Alice a recording contract, but she turns it down: she is a journalist and anyway hates yéyé music.

But now Glissant has discovered that Mike has been murdered by morphine injected into the back. Alice changes her mind. The recording contract is her way to infiltrate the group of suspects and investigate. Franck transforms Alice into the image of the yéyé singers he manages, complete with a new sickly sweet backstory--daughter of traders in a market who liked singing in public and dreaming of love. Just like the remade backstory for Nicky. Tricard, who is a fan of Nicky, knows the true backstory: far from the PR version of being the youngest child of a happy family, she had been placed in an orphanage at three.

Laurence follows up on two leads. Alice had seen the pianist Jeff hitting on Nicky just after Mike's funeral. Nicky had rejected him and accused him of killing Mike. Jeff admits that he loved Nicky but didn't kill Mike. He reveals that Mike had forced Nicky to have an abortion. He was a dislikeable man but didn't deserve to be murdered. Laurence's other leadi is Nicky herself, who was seen quarreling with Mike just before he died. Plus her file from the orphanage reveals a history of violence. Nicky admits the abortion but added that Mike promised they would have a child later when they were older.

Franck begins preparing Alice (now "Shirley") for her first show but Nicky is upset that she has stolen her gig. Alice commiserates and advices her that even though Laurence suspects her, her best bet is to cooperate with the investigation. She tells Alice there is at least one odd point. Mike and Franck had a big quarrel and Mike seemed to hate Franck but he never told her why.

Alice's first show is a big success. After the event, Marlon, the guitarist who stood in for Mike takes Alice to his room. He tells Alice that Franck handed out prescriptions for drugs to his artistes to keep them up to the stresses of show business. He shows Alice a song entitled "Morphine" which he thinks Mike wrote. It's on the back of a prescription. Alice hands it to Laurence who then hauls up Franck. He admits a doctor friend gives him prescriptions to use to help artistes out of their blues but the one Mike hand is not in his handwriting.

By now Nicky has reached bursting point. She staggers into the recording studio drunk and attacks Franck, saying she knows everything, she will tell the police. She then drives off and is killed in a car crash. The rescuers hear her last words: "It was Franck." Franck does not explain what she meant by that. He insists she must have been drunk an talking nonsense.

Laurence now discovers that Tony Constantin (or Siborny, his real last name) is Nicky's father. He abandoned her to an orphanage when she was three. Later when he saw Nicky sing on TV, he wrote to her, sent her some lyrics and ended up writing her songs. Laurence believes he might have a motive, since he is now Nicky's sole heir. But Tony corrects him. Franck, who wrote the contracts is a crook. Nicky was on a salary and got no royalties.

Meanwhile Alice has already started getting fan mail. There's a death threat but Laurence tells Marlene fanatics are usually harmless, but not to tell Alice about it for the time being. Another fan has also sent in the lyrics of a song.

Over at the recording studio, Alice, Tony and the band members come across a recording. It's of Mike and Franck quarreling. Mike wants Franck to pay up otherwise he will tell Nicky that Franck was the one who paid him to convince Nicky to have an abortion.

Alice does her next show. Her song starts with the sugary sweet themes Franck likes but then suddenly morphs into a rebellious song of youth where she says she is no longer a yes-girl and that "I am done with all your rules." (La poupée qui dit oui) It's a bit hit with the audience. Afterwards some women fans thank Alice for speaking out for them. Tony Siborny comes up to thank her--it turns out he was the fan who sent her the mystery lyrics. It was a song Nicky and he wrote together. She wanted to talk about a woman's fate. He really thinks Nicky would have loved how Alice handled it. They had earlier submitted it to Franck but he had angrily rejected the song and threatened to end Nicky's contract. Right on cue, Franck comes up and fires Alice and tries to strike her but Laurence appears and arrests him. Laurence has heard the tape of his argument with Mike: it's a solid motive for murder.

Comparison with the original story
(may contain spoilers - click on expand to read)
 * A seance is rigged and used to set up the alibi for a killing and time of killing just like in the original.
 * Alice Avril joining the record company in order to be in and among the suspects. This makes her a rough parallel for Emily Trefusis who moves in among the cottages of Sittaford to investigate. Only, there is no journalist like Charles Enderby helping her because Alice is the journalist as well.
 * Beyond these two points, there are almost no other parallels among the plot elements or characters.
 * Like in the original story, the victim "Mike" dies at around 5.25.
 * Also like in the original, the seance is rigged by the killer, Tony, to announce the death of "Mike", although the announcement here does not include the time of death. The alibi here is more a matter of inference. It depends on witnesses seeing Tony leave the television studio at 5.10. Going by car, it would be a roundabout route over a bridge across a river. He could not have reached the record company office by 5.25 when the Mike was killed.
 * The equivalent of the use of skis in the original is the use of a boat. Tony only needed to abandon his car and cross the river by boat, a 10 minute journey, giving him enough time to kill Mike by 5.25.
 * Unlike Sittaford, the television studio and the offices of the recording company Disque Soler the places where most of the action take place, are by no means remote. They are in the centre of town.

Cast

 * Samuel Labarthe as Swan Laurence
 * Blandine Bellavoir as Alice Avril
 * Élodie Frenck as Marlène Leroy
 * Dominique Thomas as Ernest Tricard
 * Cyril Gueï as Timothée Glissant
 * Roxane Bret as Nicky
 * Clément Moreau as Marlon
 * Natacha Lindinger as Euphrasie Maillol
 * David Ayala as Franck Soler
 * Arthur Defays as Mike
 * Pascal Vannson as Tony Sibony
 * Nicolas Cornille as Jeff (Jean-François Bouillot)
 * Camille Hersant as Ray
 * Laure Josnin as Chantal Lavigne
 * Eric Beauchamp as Flic Martin
 * Frédéric Lampire as television presenter
 * Bernard Debreyne as bouncer
 * Bubulle as Bubulle the goldfish
 * Uncredited actor as Bob

Filming locations

 * Salle des fêtes, Seclin - television studio
 * Douai Business School - externals of Disques Soler