Alice Avril is a non-canonical character which appears in Season 2 of French TV series Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie. She is a reporter working for La Voix du Nord. Alice is one of the only characters that appear in all the 27 episodes of the second season.
A theme present in all the episodes is how Avril gets involved in the cases, either deliberately or by accident. In some cases, commissaire Swan Laurence himself helps Alice Avril to go undercover.
When Alice is first introduced, she is the writer of an agony column in the newspaper, writing under the name of Marie-Chantal. She is later made a reporter in the episode Murder Party.
Biography (partial)[]
Èmilie Beauregard is her mother, who had left Alice in an orphanage. Alice grew up at the orphanage, and was friends with Damien Martinez. To get out of the orphanage, Alice had married a man named Robert Vasseur whom he later divorced (Mademoiselle Mac Ginty est morte). Alice's mother was later poisoned with strychnine (La Mystérieuse Affaire de Styles).
In episode 1, she tries to investigate about Pierre Montauban's death going undercover as a maid and meets Commissaire Laurence. She has the idea of writing an anonymous letter to the killer in which she claimed to know everything. In the next episode, she replaces Elvire Morenkova who had recently been killed and takes some of the role of Chloe West from the original novel. In Episode 3, she becomes acquainted with Laurence's mother Alexina. When the latter is almost poisoned to death Alice goes to visit her in her hospital bed.
In the fourth episode of Season 2, she goes undercover at the Delavallée house under the fake name Greta. Hpshe stages a car crash hpnear the household, which is done by Lady Frankie Derwent in the original novel. In the next adaptation, she becomes Commissaire Laurence's 'eyes' since the latter was left temporarily blind. In Cartes sur table, she provides Laurence with an alibi for Ferdinand Jouve's death. In Le crime ne paie pas, Alice goes undercover as a waitress and replacement of Ginette Tassin. In the Murder is Easy adaptation, she is briefly engaged to Émile Deboucke which makes her a plausible parallel of Bridget Conway.
Robert Vasseur, Alice's ex-husband, does not appear in person until the tenth episode Mademoiselle Mac Ginty est morte. Here he is the James Bentley parallel so Alice goes into custody for hiding him in her apartment. In Le Cheval pâle, she acts as one of the victims of the murder-for-payment scheme which killed Francine Marchal (“Tommy Tucker”). In L'Affaire Protheroe she replaces the deceased Hélène Jouve.
In the fifteenth episode, Alice Avril is almost killed as she was the heiress of Èmilie Beauregard's fortune. She later finds herself by accident in the crime scenes in the episodes Albert Major parlait trop, Le miroir se brisa and Crimes haute couture. Alice also takes the place of a teacher and educator in the Christmas special of the series.
The identity of Alice's father isn't revealed until the last episode, Un cadavre au petit déjeuner. Her father was Arthur Grignan, a wealthy invalid man.
She is portrayed by Blandine Bellavoir.