L'Affaire Protheroe (Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie)

L'Affaire Protheroe (The Protheroe Affair) is the 14th 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 Olivier Panchot and first aired on France 2 on 9 September 2016. It is an adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel Murder at the Vicarage.

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. A secretary is found hanging at the premises of the advertising agency run by Alexandre Protheroe. It appears to be suicide but Laurence suspects murder and begins to invesitgate Protheroe's unsavoury background. Meanwhile Alice goes in undercover as the replacement secretary for Protheroe.

Plot Summary
(may contain spoilers - click on expand to read) Hélène Jouve, the secretary of Alexandre Protheroe is found dead, hanging from the ceiling in the offices of his advertising firm Agence Protheroe. It looks like suicide but commissaire Laurence is not convinced--it looks like murder, and this is later confirmed by the forensic pathologist.

Damien, Protheroe's chauffeur and a childhood friend of Alice seeks her out and asks for help. Hélène was his fiancee. The previous night she had suddenly broken off the engagement. He was seen arguing and manhandling her outside the Agence office and even struck down a passerby who tried to help Hélène. He is likely to become the prime suspect. Alice agrees and goes in undercover as the new secretary for Alexandre. She soon discovers what Alexandre is like as he starts demanding sexual favours from her. The commissaire confirms this by speaking to a former secretary Julie Boyer.

Meanwhile Marlene is all excited, as is Tricard, because of the arrival in Lille of the celebrity American actress Deborah Davis. As expected, Laurence pulls in Damien for questioning. The facts do not look good for Damien but at least in his account of the events, he says he did not drive Protheroe home early in the evening. It looks like both he and his wife had lied about his movements. But of course, when Laurence questions Protheroe he denies everything.

That evening, Protheroe, who likes blondes, approaches Marlene in the street. He had met her in Laurence's office. He tries to interest him in a screen test for an advert. Marlene agrees and fakes a family emergency to get herself excused from the office the next day.

Alice is surprised to see Marlene at the agency and warns her that Protheroe could be taking advantage of her. Marlene is annoyed but now Alice decides to take advantage of the situation. She asks Marlene to keep Alexandre occupied at her screen test for as long as possible. Meanwhile, she searches Protheroe's office and finds a note in his jacket pocket.

That night, Protheroe is found shot in his office. Laurence has all kinds of conflicting statements from witnesses. Lise, the Protheroe's daughter dislikes her step mother Annes and thinks she did it. Damien, the chauffeur says Anne was having an affair with a cameraman, Tristan Juilliard. Hélène had seen them together and was worried she might get fired. Anne and Tristan do not deny the affair but both insist the other would never kill Protheroe. For the momemnt, Damien looks like the most plausible suspect--he has no alibi and has a motive so Laurence locks him up.

Alice insists Damien is innocent and even lies to alibi him--they were at dinner together. Actually he had not turned up. Laurence is about to lock her up for perjury but then she produces the note she found in Protheroe's pocket. "DD ch 327". She reminds Laurence that Damien's surname is Martinez. Marlene, ever the movie fan, suggests that DD could be Deborah Davis. To support this, Alice reminds Laurence that Protheroe liked blondes like Deborah. So Laurence questions Deborah but she says Protheroe met her simply because he wanted her to represent a line of colognes.

Meanwhile Anne Protheroe's alibi begins to break down. Both Lise and the servants in the house say she wasn't home until 7.30 p.m. Her husband had a 9 mm gun and he had been killed by a 9 mm bullet. He usually kept a gun in his safe and only he and Anne knew the combination. Laurence asks her to open it and they find that the gun is missing. Things look bad for Anne and Laurence is about to arrest her when Tristan steps forward and confesses to killing Protheroe. Lise gives Tristan an alibi--he was in the lab with him but Tristan says she lied to protect him because she is in love with him. He insists he alone killed Protheroe as the only way to protect Anne who was suffering under her husband. He denies killing Hélène.

Things develop quickly. Now Anne Protheroe steps forward and confesses to killing her husband. Like Tristan, she denies killing Hélène but also insists she killed Alexandre without telling Tristan. She also says she doesn't know for sure but Deborah Davis could have been an ex-lover of Alexandre.

Anne and Tristan are both locked up but now a Dr Colas steps forward. He says that at the time of Protheroe's shooting, 7.10 p.m., Anne had a medical appointment with him. She had not mentioned him as an alibi because she wanted to protect him--he had once done an illegal abortion for her. Given all these conflicting stories and the existence of alibis, Laurence releases Tristan and Anne.

Meanwhile, Alice witnesses a strange event at the Agence. Deborah Davis causes a stir by turning up at the office. She speaks to Lise in private and Lise appears very upset and tells Deborah to leave. Later, Alice tries to comfort Lise but she also chases her out of the room. Alice calls her colleague at her newspaper and asks him to dig up all the background he can on Deborah Davis.

Marlene also has something interesting--on the night of Protheroe's death, Deborah had lied about being in her hotel room. Marlene and other fans had gathered in the hotel lobby and they saw her coming back late, looking very agitated.

Armed with the background information from Alice and Marlene's testimony, Laurence confronts Deborah. She tells Laurence that Lise is her daughter. She had been forced to leave France during the war just after giving birth to her. Alexandre had retained custody. After the war, he refused to hand over Lise and then cut Deborah off because he wated to marry Anne. The night before Alexandre was killed, they had met in her room and she had threatened to tell everything to Lise. Then on the night of his death, she had been waiting outside the Agence intending to see Lise. But she left when the police cars turned up. She heard a shot at 7.10 p.m. and she had seen a boy running away from the scene.

It's not the end of surprises for Alice. Damien knocks at her door and proposes marriage. He gives her a diamond ring. It looks real and expensive. Alice is suddenly frightened--how did he get so much money? She reports this to the commissaire. Laurence had meanwhile checked with Alice's landlord. The night of Protheroe's killing, Damien had not been at Alice's apartment. Pressed for answers, Damien confesses that Lise had given him a gift of 50,000 francs, half of which he had used to buy the ring. Laurence next questions Lise. She says she gave the money to Damien because she owed it to Hélène. Lise was there that night and saw her father strangling Hélène. She had not told the police because she loved her father. This also explained her reaction to Deborah at the meeting which Alice witnesed. Deborah had told her that she was her real mother. Alexandre had lied all the while that Lise's mother had died. She could not believe that her father was a liar and accused Deborah of being a liar instead.

Laurence gathers the suspects and now produces another witness, Martin, the boy Deborah Davis had seen running away from the scene. Martin says he was asked by Tristan to make a loud sound with a firecracker, simulating a gunshot at 7.10 p.m. He also shows the suspects some ballistic photos. The bullet used to kill Protheroe had been fired through a silencer. In fact, forensic analysis had determined that Protheroe had been killed at 6.30 p.m. Anne had killed him earlier at 6.30 with a silenced gun. Then Tristan had arranged for the sound at 7.10 p.m. to fake the time of killing. Anne confesses to the kiling and she and Tristan are taken away.

Lise also appears to be accepting Deborah. Only Damien walks off in a huff and rejects Alice's protestations that they are still friends. Not only had she rejected his proposal of marriage but she had turned him in to the police. Alice protests to Laurence that the case has just cost her one friend. But she is consoled when Laurence offers to take Marlene and her out for drinks.

Comparison with the original story
(may contain spoilers - click on expand to read) While the setting and names of the main characters have been changed, the adaptation is fairly faithful to the main premise of the original story.
 * Alexandre Protheroe runs an advertising agency. Like the original Protheroe, here he is also an unpleasant man who is highly disliked by his employees. He demands sexual favours from his secretaries. There is a side plot which occupies the beginning of the episode in which one of his secretaries, Helene, is found dead at the advertising agency, as though she had hanged herself. It was later revealed that Alexandre had strangled her when she threatened to report him to the police.
 * There is another side plot involving Damien, the chauffeur of the Protheroes. He is in trouble because Helene was his fiancee. He was seen arguing with her just before she died. He approaches Alice for help because they were friends from the same orphanage. There is no parallel to this in the original, unless Damien is a bit like Archer.
 * The main premise of the original is re-enacted faithfully: the two conspirators set up a fake time of murder by simulating a gunshot sound and then both confess to the crime. The police then release them because of the conflicting statements.
 * In the original, Miss Marple gives the alibi for Anne for the time the shot was heard, Here, the alibi is provided by her doctor, Dr Colas, who has no parallel in the original.
 * In this adaptation, the alibi for Tristan Juilliard (the Lawrence Redding parallel) is provided by Lise (the Lettice parallel)--he was with her in the photo lab developing photos of her. In the original, Redding's alibi is patrons at a pub.
 * Just like in the original, Deborah Davis (the Lestrange parallel) is a suspect because she had gone to see Protheroe the day before he died. Here she has a larger role because she was also outside the agency around the time of Protheroe's death. Her testimony was an important lead in the case.
 * There is no side plot of Hawes embezzliing, or that Protheroe had discovered this. There is no parallel to Hawes as a plausible suspect.
 * Just like in the original, the killing was done with a gun with a silencer and took place about half an hour before a loud gunshot sound is made to fake the time of killing. In this adaptation, however, the gun was already in Protheroe's safe and Anne knew the code. There was no need for Tristan to smuggle the gun in and hide it in a flower pot.
 * The way the double alibi between Tristan and Anne is broken is much more straight-forward and based on the testimony of Deborah Davis. The gunshot sound which faked the time of killing was produced by a firecracker operated by a boy employed by Tristan. Davis had seen him running from the agency around 7 p.m.

Cast

 * Samuel Labarthe as Commissaire Swan Laurence
 * Blandine Bellavoir as Alice Avril
 * Élodie Frenck as Marlène Leroy
 * Dominique Thomas as Ernest Tricard
 * Julien Boisselier as Alexandre Protheroe
 * Laure Marsac as Deborah Davis
 * Clementine Baert as Anne Protheroe
 * Sebastien Lalanne as Tristan Julliard
 * Roxane Tessier as Lise Protheroe
 * Theo Costa-Marini as Damien Martinez
 * Lyly Chartiez as Hélène Jouve (as Lyly Chartiez-Mignauw)
 * Karine Dubernet as Doctor Paulette Everest
 * François Godart as Robert Jourdeuil
 * Jack Claudany as Doctor Colas
 * Merlin Delariviere as Martin
 * Camille Dupond as Julie Boyer
 * Celine Verdier as The Secretary
 * Jean-Maximilien Sobocinski as The father
 * Justine Corrion as The mother
 * Eric Mondoloni as The pedestrian

Filming locations

 * Douai Business School - externals of Agence Protheroe