Alain D’Anjou

Alain D’Anjou is Georges D’Anjou’s eldest son, Isabelle D’Anjou’s older brother, and a criminal lawyer in the family’s multigenerational legal practice. He is presented as sharp, controlled, and combative: in family discussions he presses for facts, while in public he uses the law to challenge accusations against the D’Anjous. His trajectory follows the family’s unraveling from the suspicious disappearance of Roger Bolduc to the death of Lucille D’Anjou and the eventual sale of the firm that had carried the family name.

Family Position and Temperament

Alain’s hostility toward Roger predates the disappearance. He had never liked his brother-in-law, and when the family gathered to discuss Roger’s clandestine trip to New York City and his absence after the September 11 attacks, Alain disparaged the Bolduc family. The reaction drew knowing amusement from the room, where relatives remembered how Isabelle’s determination to marry into a family long hated by the D’Anjous had caused deep conflict. Alain’s contempt is therefore not a detached judgment about the evidence: it is rooted in the old feud and colors the family’s interpretation of Roger’s actions.

Yet Alain does not rely only on that inherited antagonism. As a criminal lawyer, he asks what can actually be established. When Georges explains that Roger had arranged to meet a man named Patrice Desbois in New York on September 11, Alain asks whether the appointment was at the World Trade Center complex. Once he learns that the meeting had no recorded location, he recognizes the possibility rather than treating it as proof. Later, after Georges reports that Roger’s appointment appeared to place him on the 99th floor of the North Tower, where the first plane struck, Alain asks whether the list of Berkshire Funds victims can be checked for Desbois. When no one by that name appears, he raises the possibility that Desbois was using an alias. His questions show both professional method and the family’s desperate effort to make Roger’s disappearance legible.

The Cameo Dispute

The missing family cameo turns suspicion inward. With Isabelle under pressure from relatives, Alain asks how Roger could have gained access to the safe. When Georges says the key had been kept in his office safe, Alain clarifies whether he means the office at home or at the law practice. Georges replies that the location does not matter: anyone who took the key would also have needed the safe combination. The exchange gives the inquiry a practical focus—access, key, combination—without resolving how Roger obtained what he needed.

Alain’s questions sharpen the atmosphere around Isabelle, whose marriage had crossed the family’s old political and social divide. But the account does not establish that Alain discovers her role in obtaining the combination. Instead, her concealed complicity and his suspicion remain part of a wider family crisis in which the missing object, Roger’s unexplained journey, and the D’Anjous’ inherited hostility become entangled. The cameo investigation thus exposes the limits of Alain’s legal-minded interrogation: he can identify the unanswered questions, but the family’s secrets do not yield simply because they are put in order.

Succession and a House Under Strain

Georges expects to retire and hand leadership of the family firm to Alain, who is already a senior figure in the practice. The prospect is unsettled by the damage the cameo affair has done to Georges’s immediate family and by his fear that retirement will leave him alone with regret and an empty life. The professional succession that might have seemed straightforward becomes inseparable from the family’s distress.

Years later, as Georges considers leaving the large ancestral house on Grande-Allée and moving with Lucille to a smaller residence, he offers to leave the house to Alain. Alain declines. He already has a fine home in Sillery, with a view toward the river, and his household has no desire to move into the old residence, which Georges and Lucille’s advancing age and troubles have made increasingly difficult to inhabit. His refusal is practical, but it also marks a break in the presumed continuity of the family home: the property cannot simply transfer its old role to the next generation.

Defending the Family in Public

After Lucille is found dead in the snow on the Plains of Abraham, rumor turns toward Georges, Isabelle, and the family as a whole. The fact that Georges is a judge intensifies the public interest, while Lucille’s illness and Isabelle’s struggles with alcohol and drugs become material for hostile speculation. Alain responds with legal pressure, issuing warnings and threatening defamation proceedings against media outlets that circulate what he regards as baseless insinuations about his father and family.

The inquiry nevertheless proceeds. Police return to the Grande-Allée house, take statements from Georges and Clémentine, consult medical personnel familiar with Lucille’s condition, search the house, and reconstruct Lucille’s route. Alain tries to stop searches he considers abusive because they presume guilt, but the effort fails. Investigators find an unlicensed pistol in Georges’s library, and the possibility of criminal prosecution hangs over him for weeks. Alain’s defense is therefore not an easy victory: he fights the public narrative while the investigation continues and the family’s reputation is already being dragged through the press.

The decisive forensic finding is that the fingerprints on the door belong to Lucille: she opened and closed it herself. Georges is ultimately cleared, although some observers react with skepticism and disappointment that the sensational case has ended. The accusation leaves a lasting stain even after it is dismissed. In defending his father, Alain can contest the evidence and challenge the media, but he cannot restore the family’s former standing in Québec City or prevent the scandal from taking its toll.

Retirement, Sale, and Narrative Role

By the time the family’s accumulated misfortunes have worn him down, Alain—already in his sixties—chooses early retirement and sells D’Anjou and Sons. The firm is absorbed into another practice and will eventually lose the family name. This decision closes a professional lineage that had been built over generations: the practice founded by the Founder’s son had become one of the city’s most prestigious, but Alain no longer continues it under the old name.

Alain’s role is less that of an investigator who solves the family mysteries than of a lawyer trying to contain their consequences. He seeks evidence when Roger vanishes, confronts the practical questions raised by the missing cameo, and uses legal threats and argument to protect Georges after Lucille’s death. Each effort has limits: the questions about Roger remain unresolved, the family’s private history becomes public scandal, and the firm itself disappears into a larger organization. His retirement and sale give institutional form to the D’Anjous’ decline, turning a family’s long inheritance into something that can no longer be maintained simply by carrying its name forward.