Lise Protheroe

In L'affaire Protheroe, the French adaptation of Agatha Christie's The Murder at the Vicarage for the TV series Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie, Lise Protheroe is the parallel of Lettice Protheroe. Like in the original, Lise lives with her father Alexandre Protheroe and her step mother Anne. Also in a manner similar to the original novel, both Lise and Anne are in love with Tristan Julliard, the parallel of Lawrence Redding. The main difference between Lise and Lettice is that Lise actually loves her father very much and her father, despite being a thoroughly unpleasant person to others, actually loves her as well.

Lise attends an acting school and aspires to be an actress although her father objects to it. She is also a fan of the American celebrity actress Déborah Davis and is excited that she had come to Lille and encounters her on the street outside her father's office. She is excited to meet Deborah and wants her to have dinner with her family to hear about her Hollywood lifestyle. At that first encounter, She did not know that Deborah is her real mother. Deborah's original name was Maryse Finkelstein. She had been Alexandre's lover during the war and she had given birth to Lise. However, as she was Jewish, she had to be smuggled out of France to America. Alexandre retained custody of Lise. After the war, Alexandre refused to hand over custody of Lise and in fact cast Deborah off because he wanted to marry Anne. Through the years, Alexandre had lied to Lise that her real mother had died.

Lise actually witnessed Alexandre strangling his secretary Hélène Jouve but she did not come forward to tell the police because she loved her father. Later, her love for her father also caused her to react badly when Déborah told her that she was her real mother. Lise just could not accept that her father had been lying to her all the while. However, she later checked with government records and found that there was no death certificate for her mother and came to accept her.

The character of Lise Protheroe was played by Roxane Tessier.