Mademoiselle Mac Ginty est morte (Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie)

Mademoiselle Mac Ginty est morte (Miss Mac Ginty is Dead) is the 10th 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 Didier Bivel and Eric Woreth and first aired on France 2 on 11 September 2015. It is an adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel Mrs McGinty's Dead

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. In this episode, Alice's estranged husband Robert seeks refuge in his apartment when he is suspected of murdering his landlady. Alice does not turn him in but before long both Alice and Robert are arrested by Laurence for the crime. Laurence doesn't think they are guilty and Marlene pleads with him to help but he has to move quickly because the case is going to be reassigned and Alice and Robert are being sent to Paris.

Plot Summary
(may contain spoilers - click on expand to read) Régine Molon, a resident of a block of apartments in Lille sees a neighbour Robert Vasseur running out of the building with blood on his hands. The neighbouring apartment belongs to a nosey old lady Huguette Mac Ginty who has rented a room to Robert. She also does cleaning for three other apartments in the block. The apartment is unlocked so Régine goes inside to find Huguette dead on the floor with her throat cut. She calls the police and tells them the killer must be Robert.

Robert is Alice's estranged husband. Desperate, he knocks on her door and asks for refuge. Alice isn't exactly sympathetic. What's worse, she finds money in his pocket--money which probably came from Huguette. It just makes his case worse. Robert is totally unreliable. Alice tells him to stay hidden indoors but he goes out and gets drunk and almost gets knocked down by a car. Alice has to drag him back.

Commissaire Laurence asks for background information on Robert. Marlene gets the file and sees that he is Alice's husband and quickly calls her friend. Alice comes over but can't take the file away so she splashes some ink over her name. However Laurence is not deceived. He knows Alice has been in, and the ink is still wet. He forces the truth out of Marlene.

It doesn't take long for Laurence to turn up at Alice's apartment. Robert escapes on Alice's scooter, leaving her to face the music. Worse, Robert has implicated Alice as an accomplice by using some of Huguette's money to pay for her arrears in rent. Alice is dragged to the police lock up protesting her innocence. But she is not alone for long. Robert tries to evade a roadblock and crashes the scooter and is also brought in. Alice beats him up violently for implicating her and smashing her scooter--without it she cannot do her job.

Tricard is delighted. The case has been solved quickly and two suspects have been arrested. Laurence is not so sure he has got the right culprits but Tricard tells him it will soon be out of their hands--the case is being reassigned because of political sensitivity. One of the residents of the block, Helen Schmit, is a fiancee of a member of parliament.

Laurence has to work quickly so he returns to the scene of crime. Fortunately there's a new lead. Régine Molon is a gossip. She had earlier called to tell Laurence that she had seen Alice go to the scene of crime. Now she calls again to tell him that a week earlier, Huguette had bought a bottle of ink, a strange event as she was not a writer. Laurence searches Huguette's apartment and finds a newspaper with an article cut out. He goes to the offices of "La Voix du Nord" and locates the correct article: it is about two former killers from long ago who had disappeared out of the public eye, and speculates about where they may be know. One, Lili Lanvin, was a child and would be a young woman now. The other, Eva Mauduis would be middle-aged now and had a daughter. Jordeuil, the newspaper editor remembers that Mac Ginty did write in. She must have recognised one of the two persons covered in the article, but which one?

Laurence visits the households which employed Huguette as a cleaner but doesn't make much progress. The Santinis are a middle aged couple. The mother might be Eva, and the young daughter seems to be the right age and is afraid of something but the father is more interested in probing into Laurence's childhood. Helene Schmit might be Lili Lanvin but she is more interested in making advances on Laurence which he rejects. No one can produce a photo of them from years ago which Laurence wants to compare with the news article. Brought to the crime scene to jog his memory, all Robert can remember in his druken stupor is that he heard a woman's voice.

Back at the station, Tricard tells Laurence that Helene Schmit has complained about Laurence harassing her. Anyhow, it doesn't matter. The case is being transferred and Alice and Robert would be moved to Paris the next day.

Laurence is running out of time. He springs Alice from her cell and hides her in his apartment. He also gives Robert some pills. Robert takes them and is sent to a hospital in what appears to be a case of attempted suicide. So he can't be transferred to Paris either.

Laurence gathers the three households and shows them the photos from the old article and tells them Huguette Mac Ginty must have seen something in one of their apartments and thought she recognised either Lili Lanvin or Eva Mauduis. Madame Doutrement, who lives with her son, a playwright named Michael Doutrement looks unwell but she tells Laurence it is nothing.

Michael Doutrement has been chatting up Marlene, convincing her that she has the talent to be an actress and he wants to cast her in one of his plays. He takes her for a date. Coming back to his apartment, the find his mother murdered. This time, it is certain it can't be Robert nor Alice.

Laurence compares the accounts of the events. Helene Schmit received a note to call on Madame Doutrement at 9 p.m. She knocked but got no answer so she left. The pathologist says Madame Doutrement died about 7 to 7.30 pm. Marlene insists that is not possible because she heard her through the door saying goodbye to Michael when they left for their date at 8 p.m. Meanwhile, Alice, now freed, goes back to research in the new archives and discovers that she gave Laurence the wrong information. Eva Mauduis had a son and not a daughter. Laurence now knows who the killer is but needs Alice to help to build up the evidence.

Alice is wired up to a listening device and sent to interview Michael Doutrement. She tells him she has found out that besides being a playwright, he was trained as an actor and was good at imitating voices. Could he give a demonstration? Michael says he can only do it for people he knows well. How about his mother, Alice suggests. Listening in to the bug nearby, Laurence realises Alice is pushing the interview too far too quickly. Michael also gets suspicious and discovers the wire on Alice. Laurence bursts in to the rescue but Michael grabs Alice and holds a knife to her throat. Laurence persuades Michael to let Alice go. Why kill the best journalist in the world? She could give good coverage of his trial. It would be a sensation. It might even be made into a great film. Michael relents and is taken into custody. He tells Laurence his real mother Eva Mauduis died when he was three. Madame Doutrement adopted him when he was twenty. Huguette Mac Ginty found an old photo of his and tried to blackmail him. He couldn't take the risk of his adoptive mother finding out so he killed Huguette. The voice Robert Vasseur had heard, and also the voice Marlene had heard at the Doutrement's apartment was Michael imitating his mother.

Robert gets good news. Apparently Huguette did make a will and actually left all her money (which amounted to quite a lot) to him! So should Alice go back to him? Both Alice and Marlene think not. At least Laurence has had her scooter repaired.

Comparison with the original story
(may contain spoilers - click on expand to read) Like most of the adaptations in this series, the plot is remarkably faithful to the original story, notwithstanding the substitution of Swan Laurence and Alice Avril as the investigators. Marlene is usually given a side plot but this is also woven in to fit the main flow of the plot in the original Christie novel. The names of all the characters are changed and there are adjustments to their backstories but most are essentially parallels of the those in the original.
 * Unlike the original novel which takes place in a small village, all the action here takes place within a block of apartments in Lille. The prime suspect, Robert Vasseur (the James Bentley parallel) rents a room from Huguette Mac Ginty who does cleaning for three other tenants which parallel those in the original novel. The Doutrements parallel the Upwards. Helene Schmit is an MP's fiancee and parallels Eve Carpenter. Leopold Santini is a psychiatrist and he could be a vague parallel of Dr Rendell.
 * There's a local gossip, Régine Molon, who discovered Huguette's body. She also keeps Laurence updated about what's happening in the building. For example, that Michael Doutrement is showing Alice the crime scene, or that Huguette bought a bottle of ink a short while before she died. In some ways, that's the role of Mrs Sweetiman in the novel.
 * Marlene is chatted up by Micheal Doutrement. She is asked out on a date by Michael to establish his alibi. Later she discovers the body of Mrs Doutrement. Her role here is the same as that of Ariadne Oliver in the novel.
 * It's not surprising that Alice's newspaper, "La Voix du Nord" was the one Mac Ginty wrote to. The newspaper had carried the article about where two former criminals had disappeared to. In fact Alice wrote the article herself. Like in other adaptations, to simplify matters, there are two rather than three persons covered by the story.
 * Alice is the one who discovers the crucial fact that the child of Eva Mauduis was a boy and not, as everyone thought, a girl. This is not by an insight that the name Evelyn can be given to both boys or girls. It is simply a matter of checking old articles in the newspaper archives.

Cast

 * Samuel Labarthe as Commissaire Swan Laurence
 * Blandine Bellavoir as Alice Avril
 * Élodie Frenck as Marlène Leroy
 * Arnaud Perron as Robert Vasseur
 * Gilian Petrovsky as Michael Doutremont
 * Christine brücher as Louise Doutremont
 * Serge Riaboukine as Leopold Santini
 * Jeanne Bournaud as Helene Schmit
 * Eleanor Joncquez as Régine Molon
 * Dominique Thomas as Ernest Tricard
 * François Godart as Jourdeuil (as François Godard)
 * Annette Lowcay as Deborah Santini
 * Melissandre Fortumeau as Beatrice Santini
 * Eric Beauchamp as Flic Martin
 * Adrien Mauduit as Newspaper seller
 * Stephanie Cliquennois as Aunt Lanvin
 * Juliane Francois as Lili Lanvin
 * Bubulle as Bubulle the goldfish
 * Francesco Codispoti as Laurence as a child
 * Francois Caccivio as Cauderlier, landlord of Alice
 * Uncredited actress as Huguette Mac Ginty
 * Eva Mauduis
 * Ernest Mauduis