Viviane Vasseur

In Meurtres en solde , the French adaptation of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot's Christmas for Season 2 of the TV series Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie, Viviane Vasseur is a former student at the Orphenlinat Saint-Cécile, the same orphanage that Alice Avril came from. Just prior to the events in the episode, she worked as a hairdresser at Marseilles. She is the parallel of Conchita Lopez in the original novel. Viviane is portrayed by Dorcas Coppin.

The mystery of Viviane starts right at the beginning of the episode when the dead bodies of a cognac salesman Victor Dubois and an unidentified woman are found at a car crash. From her cheap clothes, commissaire Laurence deduces that she must be a hitchhiker. In her pocket is a slip of paper with the address of Alice Avril. However Alice has disappeared. Looking through her diary, Laurence and Marlene discover a entry the day before she disappeared where she is scheduled to meet one "V V". Pursuing various leads, Marlene discovers that in Alice's former orphanage, there was a student named Viviane Vasseur, now a hairdresser in Marseilles but who had not reported for work for several days. Digging in the archives, Marlene turns up a photo of Viviane as a child.

To their surprise, the photo closely matches a recent one of someone else: Francesca Rochetti, who is the granddaughter of Simon Krepps, a wealthy department store owner who had been recently murdered. It turns out that Francesca had been a customer of Viviane at the hairdressing salon in Marseilles and the two had become friends. After Francesca's parents died in a fire, Viviane persuaded Francesca to turn to her grandfather for help. Francesca's mother had been driven out of Simon Krepp's house after she married an Italian communist. Francesca was too proud to now approach Simon.

Nonetheless, Viviane somehow persuaded Francesca to take a hitchhiking road trip with her and they went as far as northern France. Victor Dubois gave them a lift but lost control of the vehicle which plunged down a cliff. Viviane survived the crash but saw that Francesca was fatally injured. She admitted to hastening her death by strangling her. She then swapped coats with the dead Francesca (which explained Alice's address in the pocket of the dead woman).

Viviane then made her way to Lille and joined the Krepps family posing as Francesca where she enjoyed great success in impressing her grandfather who gave her a job at the Au Bon Temps department store. Things began to go wrong when she met Alice Avril who came to the store to do a story. Viviane tried to persuade Alice to go along with the deception--she could be the partner when she inherits the store, she tells her. Alice chided Viviane about her crazy plans while at the orphanage, and the current one was over the top. She grew even more alarmed when Viviane reassured her that the real Francesca would not turn up. Worried that Alice might give her away, Viviane struck her on the head with a pipe, an injury which left Alice amnesiac for a few days.

Viviane's path crossed with Alice later. Viviane, still posing as Francesca, sneaked into the department store offices after hours to try to steal a set of uncut diamonds. In her mind, they were hers as Simon had given them to her for a sales project. Albert Krepps, her uncle, had always resented the headway Francesca had made with Simon Krepps at his expense. He caught her red-handed. Viviane reacted quickly and knocked him out and was about to kill him with a second blow when Alice intervened. Alice had, by this time, got a job as a sales assistant at Au Bon Temps and had also just recovered her memory. She got back into the store after hours to fetch her purse when she heard the commotion upstairs in the offices and looked in. Viviane now turned on Alice and in a struggle, pushed her down the stairs. She might have next tried to kill her but commissaire Laurence and Marlene, who by now, had pieced the entire puzzle together, arrived in time to arrest Viviane.

While Viviane confessed to the deception and while she did try to kill Alice twice, she denied killing Simon Krepps. Both Laurence and Alice believed this, since she had no motive and did not benefit from his death.