Francesca Boutron was an international supermodel who posed for the artist Hedley Shale. She attempted to start a relationship with him, but he rejected her in favour of another of his models, Katrina Toplis. Enraged, she hatched a plot to kill him and make her more well-known for being present at the scene of the crime, allowing her to sell her story. She practised firing a gun with her feet while wearing tape over her eyes, using Shale's portrait of her as a target.
She then snuck into Shale's house, threw jewelry out of the window to fake a robbery and tied herself up. She shot Shale with her feet as he entered his bedroom, then she dropped the gun on the floor and slipped off the elastic band that held it to her feet. She was found, and told the police that she was Shale's lover and she was tied up by the intruder.
She later attended a magic show by Adam Klaus, and was picked by him to be his assistant for the trick. She met Jonathan Creek backstage. After the show, Maddie Magellan pretended to be an old friend and offered her crisis therapy. During the therapy, Maddie suggested that Shale's wife Serena could be the killer, although she was in her office all day. Jonathan Creek came round to drop off a dress from Adam Klaus, and Francesca suggested that he would be the person to work out how someone could sneak out of an office without anyone noticing.
Francesca then had dinner with Adam and Jonathan, and she was asked to be Adam's new assistant. Adam found out about the painting that had been done of her, and insisted on seeing it. When they went down to the basement, they saw the bullet holes in the picture. Francesca then pretended to be scared, and told Adam she thought the killer was after her. He had her protected in her dressing room at the magic show by Rhino. However Jonathan stole her weighing scales, and had her footprint matched to the prints on the murder weapon. He and Maddie confronted her, and D.S. Owen Davey had her arrested.