Teresa Reviews “Cat Among the Pigeons” (2010)

Teresa reviews “Cat Among the Pigeons” (2010), the French TV episode Le Chat et les Souris (The Cat and the Mice) from Les Petits Meurtres d’Agatha Christie and loved it.

Fidelity to text: 3 butcher knives

It’s a police procedural so Poirot’s gone, the rebellion in Ramat takes place offstage, and Princess Shaista becomes who she says she is.

Quality of film on its own: 4 butcher knives

Funny but with a point, well-paced, and all the loose ends tie up in a bow.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movie on her podcast.

As always with foreign adaptations, when I can, I’ll stick with the novel’s names for clarity.

In Cat Among the Pigeons, Agatha inserted Poirot almost as an afterthought to satisfy her readers and her publisher. He doesn’t come onstage until late in chapter 17. Julia Upjohn, a budding Nancy Drew, works out where the diamonds must be hidden, knows who the great detective is (she met Maureen Summerhayes of Mrs. McGinty’s Dead who told her), and flees the posh girl’s boarding school for London to seek his aid.

Between Julia, Detective Inspector Kelsey, and Miss Bulstrode, they could have solved the mystery on their own.

Since Poirot’s off in London three-quarters of the time, this is one novel where it’s easy to remove him completely and turn the book into a police procedural. Except what do you do with your stars? That would be Commissaire Jean Larosière (the Poirot substitute) and his sidekick, Inspector Émile Lampion (the Hastings substitute). They have to show up within the first few minutes no matter what the novel says.

And so, the scriptwriter found a solution that appears to have nothing to do with the later events, yet proves to be significant. A little girl hunting mushrooms in the forest with her father discovers a woman’s nude body, partially buried in the leaves. The location is critical to the story because the mushroom-laced woods surround a former monastery which has been converted into a posh girls’ boarding school named Meadowbank.

Larosière and Lampion arrive on the scene, throwing Miss Bulstrode (the headmistress), the teachers, and the students into a tizzy. Men in the building! Quelle horreur! The only male allowed in Meadowbank is Victor the skeleton. The presence of a woman’s body out in the woods is minor compared to the presence of male gendarmes in the hallways.

Larosière assigns the dead woman’s case to Lampion. The question quickly becomes “who is she?” She’s nude so there’s no identification. The coroner (a very creepy guy) says she was knifed. He also says that her face was smashed in after her death, not before. It takes time for Lampion to work out why, but Larosière is very patient. He also cracks jokes, discomfiting Lampion.

This was a great moment and proof that season one of The Little Murders of Agatha Christie is far superior to season two. Lampion is having a tough time with Larosière’s gallows humor, but as Larosière tells him, they have a hard, often horrible job. If grim humor helps them get through it, then it served their higher purpose which is to get justice for that woman and her family. The coroner tells Lampion that her body speaks to them, trying to tell them who she is and what happened. Lampion mans up and takes pictures of a port wine stain. It’s large, but it’s also at the woman’s waist so only a close family member will recognize it. He gets the local newspapers to print the pictures and, eventually, the letters come flooding in.

Most of them are fraudulent as Larosière predicted. But one of them isn’t.

Meanwhile, Larosière interviews the teachers and encounters his past at Meadowbank. The housekeeper, Christine Boisseau, (the film’s highly altered version of Matron Johnson) knows him, oh very well indeed. She’s also unhappy to see him, and he doesn’t understand why. She has an unhappy daughter, Juliette, who’s being educated with the rich girls as a perk for mom cleaning up after them.

But nothing comes of the investigation and they leave, only to return a few days later when another woman is murdered. This time, they know precisely who got shot at close range in the locker-room. It’s the sadistic, prying, and annoying Miss Springer, games mistress. Unlike the body buried in the leaves, there’s no question about her identity. The crimes seem unrelated but Miss Bulstrode is well-connected, her students even more so, so this murder must be solved at once.

Events ramp up. We get wonderful scenes of the students avidly discussing the crimes whenever they’re out of the teachers’ earshot. The mean girls are led by Solange, an important government official’s daughter. She’s got a hate on for the housekeeper’s daughter because why should the children of servants be educated? Juliette’s going to spend her life on her knees, scrubbing Solange’s floors. She doesn’t need to read or write. Solange also goes after pudgy and plain Émilie. Luckily, Cassandra, who’s got the second sight, foresees not just more murders. She knows that Solange is going to get what’s coming to her.

There’s also Princess Shaista. In this film, she’s exactly who she says she is: the daughter of the recently murdered crown prince of Ramat. All the Ramat scenes take place offscreen and are only alluded to in newspaper stories or dialog. Princess Shaista quickly makes friends with Annabelle, showing her the dagger she keeps in her luggage. Shaista is very clear. If she ever learns who murdered her father, she’ll execute that person with her own hands. Shaista shows a bit of kindness to Juliette, giving her an unwanted tennis racket. It may have poor balance but it’s better than anything Juliette and her mother can afford.

The teachers are a seething stew of secrets. The headmistress Miss Bulstrode suffers from a serious bone disease, needing a cane whenever no parents are around and regular morphine injections from Miss Chadwick. Miss Chadwick turns out to be having a lesbian relationship with Miss Mauger, the French teacher. Miss Davis, the English teacher (the film’s version of Mlle. Blanche) is a nosy parker, eager to pass along gossip. Soeur Simone is the head nun and like Solange, doesn’t believe in educating the servants of children. They’ll get above their station in life and put on airs.

Events heat up, Soeur Simone is bashed in the head with a shovel, and the girls go wild, wilder, wildest. Solange attempts to seduce Lampion, then claims he tried to rape her when they’re caught together. Larosière knows it’s not true as girls are not Lampion’s cup of tea. Nonetheless, it’s a serious accusation and has to be faced or they’ll both become traffic wardens if they keep their jobs at all.

Solange is knifed in the shower, a scene that might remind you a bit of Psycho. Lucky for her, Lampion stumbles into the locker-room after he walks into a tree, stumbles into the bath to stop his bloody nose, and rescues her before she bleeds out.

And that disfigured body in the leaves? Lampion learns who she is and why she had to have her face damaged. She was the real Ann Shapland, replacement secretary to Miss Bulstrode. She was killed by the woman impersonating her to take her place and steal the diamonds.

This isn’t the novel, scene for scene. But it works beautifully, with the plot elements as tight as a well-strung tennis racket.