Damien Martinez

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, Damien Martinez is the chauffeur of Alexandre Protheroe. He is also the fiance of Hélène Jouve who is Protheroe's secretary.

One night, Hélène meets Damien and breaks off her two-year old engagement with him. He is mystified and argues with her and even manhandles her. When a passer-by tries to intervene on behalf of Hélène, Damien, typically an unstable person, strikes him down.

When Hélène is discovered dead the next morning, Damien knows that he is in trouble and the prime suspect. Damien seeks out his childhood friend Alice Avril. She calls him Dam-Dam and he calls her Lili. They had been together at the Saint Cecile Orphanage and had been very close and even shared a childhood romance. They would often meet in the barn to plan how to escape from the orphanage. Alice actually credits him for saving her life (although she doesn't say how). He reminds her of the song they used to sing at the orphanage to the effect that though they had no father and no mother, they would be there for one another.

However Damien is unstable and prone to fits of violence and erratic behaviour. He storms into Alexandre's office and strikes him. blaming him for Hélène's death. He has a gun and wants to shoot Protheroe when he hears that Protheroe had tried to demand sexual favours from Alice who had gone in undercover as his new secretary. He even struggles with Alice when she tries to stop him. Not surprisingly, when Protheroe is found dead, Laurence pulls him in as the prime suspect. He did not have an alibi either--he might have had one had he turned up as arranged to have dinner with Alice. But he stood her up and never reveals, or insists he can't remember, what he was doing. Alice lies to give him an alibi but wonders whether she can trust him.

When Damien is later released, he shocks Alice by proposing marriage, and gives her an expensive diamond ring. Alice is frightened and alarmed that he should suddenly have so much money to be able to afford the ring and reports this to commissaire Laurence. It turns out that this money was a gift from Protheroe's daughter Lise. She felt she owed it to Hélène. She had witnessed her father strangling Hélène after she threatened to report him for his habit of demanding sexual favours from his secretaries.

At the end of the episode, Damien drives off in a huff, angry with Alice. He rejects her protestations that they are still friends. No only had she rejected his proposal of marriage, she had turned him in to the police. He drives off, refusing to take back the ring he had given her.

The character of Damien Martinez is played by Theo Costa-Marini. There is no parallel for this character in Christie's original novel, unless one counts the character of the poacher Archer but this is quite a weak link.