Gaston Beaujeu

Gaston Beaujeu is a non-canonical character created for the 1993 ITV adaptation of The Chocolate Box. He is a personal friend and neighbour of Madame Déroulard, the mother of Paul Déroulard.

During the time Poirot was in the Belgian police before the First World War, Poirot was asked by Virginie Mesnard, the cousin of Paul Déroulard's late wife to investigate the death of Paul. Although the official account was that Paul had died naturally, Poirot came to suspect that Paul Déroulard had been poisoned by some substance administered through the chocolates which he consumed. Part way through his enquiries, Poirot caught Gaston Beaujeu breaking into his apartment, trying to steal the fragments of chocolate which Poirot had collected.

Beaujeu tried to make his escape but came down with a heart attack. Poirot caught up with him in the street and Beaujeu asked him to urgently give him some of the trinitrine pills in his pocket. In hospital, Beaujeu told Poirot that he also believed Paul Déroulard had been poisoned, by trinitrine injected into his chocolates (a fact later confirmed by Poirot's friend the pharmacist Jean-Louis Ferraud). Beaujeu used trinitrine and had lost a bottle of this drug some days before Déroulard's death. But from Poirot's point of view, the facts only served to point the finger at Beaujeu. He used the drug and he had been caught trying to retrieve the crumbs of chocolate from Poirot's apartment which might have incriminated him.

Beaujeu then told Poirot that he worked for Belgian intelligence and his particular mission was to find out which senior figures in the Belgian government would collaborate with Germany in the event of a war. He had been using Déroulard to gather background information on his various government colleagues. Poirot subsequently dropped Beaujeu as a suspect since while he had the means he did not have any motive for killing Déroulard.

Beaujeu obviously served Belgian intelligence with distinction. When Poirot meets him again in the mid-1930s, Beaujeu had become a senior member of the Belgian order of chivalry, the Compagnon de la branche d'or.

Gaston Beaujeu is portrayed by David de Keyser. This character does not occur in the original story. There, another character, the Englishman John Wilson was the user of trinitrine and was staying in the house as a guest of Paul Déroulard.