Charlotte Salvan

In Murder Party, the French Télévisions film adaptation of Agatha Christie's A Murder is Announced, for the Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie TV series, Charlotte Salvan is the parallel of Charlotte Blacklock in the original novel. As in the original novel, she had a disfigurement of the neck caused by goitre and had a sister Leticia Salvan who who worked for a millionaire. In this case, the millionaire, Denis Sontag was also her lover and, being unmarried, left his fortune to her when he died.

The difference in this adaptation is that whereas in the original the two sisters were close, here, Charlotte hated Leticia and envied her happy life while she was housebound because of her condition. During a trip to Switzerland, Charlotte murdered Leticia (in the original, the sister died of natural causes). Charlotte then switched the names on the death certificate and then posed as Leticia and claimed the inheritance from the Salvan estate. She then used the money for an operation to remove the disfigurement. Coming back to France and settling down in the ranch, she then met Kurt Wengen, a waiter who had known the two sisters in Switzerland and so he had to be silenced. Then others had to be silenced in turn because they were on the brink of giving away the secret. Charlotte's secret was finally exposed by a number of clues: Odette, the sisters' childhood friend and Charlotte's companion at the ranch had clumsily mentioned her benefactor's nickname as "Lottie" to Alice Avril. Why wasn't it "Lettie?" The letters between Leticia and Sontag showed that Leticia hated horses whereas the owner of the ranch clearly had a passion for horses, which Charlotte had. Lastly, Charlotte had lied to Commissaire Laurence, telling him that Charlotte's disability was club foot but the Commissaire than discovered that Odette had done a painting of a woman with goitre with the name "Lottie" on the back.

Unlike the original novel and most other adaptations, the Charlotte here managed to kill herself at the end by grabbing a gun from the holster of a policeman who was conducting her to the police car.