Le miroir se brisa (Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie)

Le miroir se brisa (The Cracked Mirror) is the 18th 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 Rodolphe Tissot and first aired on France 2 on 8 September 2017. It is an adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side.

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, the double of a famous actress, Blanche Dulac, is poisoned on the film set. Commissaire Swan Laurence suffers badly when his girlfriend is killed in an aircrash. His investigation is affected by frequent bouts of depression. Alice helps out by getting hired as an assistant photographer in the studio. Marlene also gets some action when she is deployed as a personal bodyguard for Blanche Dulac.

Plot Summary
(may contain spoilers - click on expand to read) At a film studio, Blanche Dulac (the Marina Gregg parallel is shooting a film intended to be her comeback after a long absence from acting. With her is a younger actress Sylvia Franco (Lola Brewster) who is having an affair with Blanche's husband and director of the film Marc Borel. Blanche welcomes an extra, Simone Maupin who is to be her double and offers her a drink.

Alice Avril is assigned to cover the filming. She arrives at the studio finds Simone slumped on a chair. She dies moments later. It's a common trope in this series that Alice usually discovers the dead bodies.

Commissaire Laurence arrives but he is not in a state to work. He has just learnt that his girlfriend Euphrasie Malliol has died in an aircrash and this has thrown him into a prolonged state of depression. Alice tries to help. She picks up the glass Simone drank from. From this, the police forensic pathologist Timothee Glissant determines Simone had been poisoned by an unusual substances, a mixture of St John's wort, opium, marijuana and lavender.

Back at the studio, Laurence asks who prepared the drinks. Dr Mentchikoff, Blanche's personal physician says he remembers that Simone spilt her drink, leading Blanche to exclaim that she had given her drink to Simone after that. So the poison was meant for her!

Laurence is snapping photos of evidence in the studio and comes across a newspaper article of the air crash which sends him into another fit of depression. Mentchikoff sees him and gives him a bottle of "calmo"--a personal concoction of his which he says will be effective.

Meanwhile Fred, the studio photographer has taken a shine to Alice. They strike up a friendship and Fred offers to teach Alice how to develop photos. She also invites Alice to be her assistant so that she can move around the studio without suspicion. Alice develops a photo of Blanche looking stunned as though she has had a shock. Questioned about this, Blanche denies it is anything significant, only that she saw her husband with Sylvia Franco. Pressed further, she produces an anonymous note threatening to kill her.

Laurence makes all the close associates of Blanche write out the same words. All comply except Sylvia. However, the handwriting on all the notes do not match the original. Later Laurence sees a photo of an airliner and goes into another fit of depression. Alice sees him holding a bottle of calmo and takes it. She secrets it to Glissant who proves that this was the substance used to poison Simone.

At the studio, a light falls and catches fire near Blanche. Laurence wants to put Blanche under police protection but she wants it discreet. She has taken a liking to Marlene and suggests that Marlene be her bodyguard. The studio needs a double for her in anycase and Marlene could do both jobs.

Marlene becomes Blanche's constant companion and moves into her house. Late at night, she hears screaming and yelling and investigates. She heads for the room where the sound is coming from and discovers a boy in a fit of rage. She tries to calm him down. Mentchikoff arrives and takes over. Later he tells Marlene that the boy is Francois, Blanche's retarded son. It's a closely guarded family secret.

Meanwhile, Alice invites Fred over to her apartment. Fred confesses she is Blanche's adopted daughter. Blanche adopted her believing that she was sterile but when she became pregnant, she abandoned Fred and sent her off to a boarding school in England. She built up her career in photography and came back and got a job at the studio and realised that Blanche did not recognise her.

Over at the studio, Mentchikoff knows that he is the prime suspect since he is the supplier of calmo. He suggests that Laurence reconstruct the scene where Blanche was having drinks with Simone. Perhaps some of the witnesses might recall some important detail. The reconstruction goes ahead. Alice, playing the part of Simone spills her drink on cue. Then Mentchikoff calls to them to stop. He knows who the killer is! But he doesn't say the name yet. He is an asthmatic and needs a puff from his inhaler. He takes a puff and promptly falls dead!

Glissant anaylses the inhaler and finds that there is methanol in it. But Alice finds that methanol is freely available in the studio as it is used to clean lenses and equipment.

Meanwhile Laurence begins to suffer. He has become addicted to calmo but since Mentchikoff is now dead, his supply has been cut off. In desperation, he breaks into Blanche's house, knowing there must be calmo there. Marlene, hearing a noise, investigates and bumps into Laurence. They then hear the sound of a scream and head for Blanche's room to find her yelling at Fred, telling her to keep her distance. Laurence finds methanol in Fred's bag and arrests her. Fred's story does not add up. She had concealed her true identity. She told Alice that she got the job at the studio by chance but Laurence finds out that Fred was a photo journalist, and not a stills photographer. She had took leave from her magazine and begged the producer of the film studio to hire her.

Laurence sends Fred to the lockup and then berates Alice for concealing information. In the middle of this, he takes some more calmo and collapses. Alice, Marlene and Glissant smuggle him out of the police station and gets him home where Alice locks him in the house. After 24 hours of cold turkey, Laurence is back to his normal self.

Over at the studio, Sylvia Franco is getting impatient with Borel. He is supposed to get a divorce from Blanche but he is more concerned about finishing the film first. In the next scene Sylvia is supposed to shot Blanche with a prop gun. Frustrated with the lack of progress in her relationship with Marc, Sylvia switches the prop for a real gun. On set she threatens Blanche and then shoots but her hand is shaking too much and she misses. Sylvia is arrested. Laurence makes her write out the text of the threatening note but she makes several mistakes in spelling because she is not educated. Laurence realises she cannot have written the original note.

Over at the house, Blanche invites Marlene to watch some of her old movies. Marlene notices that the text of the threatening note is word for word the same as one of the props in the movie. Blanche was the actress who read the note and Marc Borel was the screenwriter. She calls Laurence urgently and he comes over and arrests Borel.

Meanwhile Alice wants to clear Fred and works in the darkroom developing photos. She looks in the wastebasket and finds a sheet of contact prints which she shows Laurence. Under a magnifying glass, they see a shot of Simone showing a picture to Blanche. Laurence questions Georges Maupin, Simone's son. He tells Laurence that Simone was an ardent fan of Blanche and often talked about an incident 14 years ago when she had ignored fever from German measles and gone to meet Blanche and ever got a kiss from the star. This is the final piece of the puzzle. Laurence arrests Blanche and then explains what had happened. While talking to Simone, Blanche realised how she contracted german measles which led to Francois' birth defects. As she used calmo routinely, no one noticed when she slipped a large dose into her cup. She then jogged Simone's arm, making her spill her drink and then gave her the cup with the poison. She faked the threats and attempts on her life to divert attention. When Mentchikoff wanted to reconstruct the scene, Blanche must have realised that the doctor suspected something and poisoned his inhaler.

Comparison with original story
(may contain spoilers - click on expand to read) The adaptation is remarkably faithful to the main premise of the original novel. Most of the main characters have parallels in the original. The first murder takes place in exactly the same way as in the original except that it takes place in a film studio and not at a village fete. The motive is the same. Blanche also diverts attention in much the same way, with a fake threatening note. Here, however, the faked attempt on her life is by means of a falling studio light and not arsenic in coffee.
 * Tennyson's poem "The Lady of Shalott" is not mentioned, nor are mirrors ever mentioned in the plot. The only time there is a cracked mirror in the episode is in a sideplot when Sylvia Franco shoots at Blache Dulac. She misses and hits the mirror behind her.
 * There is no parallel character of Ella Zielinsky and the entire blackmail sideplot is removed. Doctor Mentchikoff takes on some of the role of Ella (being an asthmatic, using an inhaler) and also part of the role of Gladys Dixon since he is the one who notices that Blanche deliberately made Simone Maupin spill her drink.
 * Calmo in this adaptation is not a tradename for a tranquilizer but a concoction made by Dr Mentchikoff comprising St John's wort, opium, marijuana and lavender.
 * Blanche does not commit suicide at the end. She is arrested to await trial.

Cast

 * Samuel Labarthe as Commissaire Swan Laurence
 * Blandine Bellavoir as Alice Avril
 * Élodie Frenck as Marlène Leroy
 * Anne Consigny as Blanche Dulac
 * Nicolas Briançon as Marc Borel
 * Luc-Antoine Diquéro as Jacques Mentchikoff
 * Camille Rutherford as Fred
 * Alice Vial as Sylvia Franco
 * Cyril Gueï as Timothée Glissant
 * Dominique Thomas as Tricard
 * Eric Beauchamp as Flic Martin
 * François Godart as Jourdeuil
 * Adeline Fleur Baude as Simone Maupin (as Adeline-Fleur Baude)
 * Anthony Bajon as Georges Maupin
 * Willy Delohen as François
 * Amaury Capel as Clapman (uncredited)
 * Emmanuel Dehaene as Directeur de la photographie (uncredited)
 * Uncredited actress as nurse

Film locations

 * Arenberg Creative Mine - the film studio