Jean Castor

In Un meurtre est-il facile?, the France Télévisions film adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder is Easy, for the Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie TV series, Jean Castor is the general manager of the textile mill owned by Émile Deboucke (the Lord Whitfield parallel). Jean Castor is portrayed by Alexandre Steiger.

Castor is an ambitious young man. He believes that his boss is old-fashioned while he is full of new ideas to make the mill a success. He tells Alice Avril that he graduated top of his class in university. In fact, his director of studies had told him that great things awaited him. His director, Castor says, was right, except for one thing: "I will not wait." Knowing that Alice will soon marry Deboucke, Castor even goes so far as to suggest that the old man would not live so long. Once he dies and Alice inherits the mill, they can form a partnership. She can hold the purse strings while he runs the mill and they share 50:50.

Later, Alice overhears Castor plotting to undermine Deboucke. Some hostile banks have been pressurising Deboucke to sell the mill to them. Castor has been secretly supplying them with confidential financial data on the mill to help them make their case. Alice promptly reports this to Deboucke. She also (secretly) reported to commissaire Laurence.

To Alice, it is almost certain that Castor is responsible for the string of murders happening in the mill. For one thing, Alice dislikes him because he is arrogant and dismissive of his workforce of mainly women workers. The murders merely serve to undermine Deboucke's position and make him more willing to give up. However, Marlene later finds Castor dead on the factory floor, having been poisoned with white phosphorus. How this phosphorus was administered to him is not stated. Castor's death then turns the spotlight back on Deboucke as the prime suspect, since all the deaths were of people who offended him or were hostile to him.

There is no real parallel to Castor in the original novel as there is no murder victim with similar characteristics such as working directly as Lord Whitfield's subordinate and plotting to undermine him.