The Red Collar (7 page)

The jailer grumbled to himself as he turned the key in the lock, and the two men went out into an area the size of a tennis court. Grass and mounds of moss between the paving stones were yellowing under the effects of the midsummer heat. They would have the whole rest of the year to soak up moisture. The surrounding walls were of rough-hewn stone and the thick pointing in crumbling cement gave the whole thing a medieval look. Over this charmless, ageless courtyard hung the canopy of an indigo sky with small, orangey clouds drifting slowly overhead. The top of a larch appeared above the wall.

Morlac looked very happy to be breathing in the open air. Lantier got the impression that his imprisonment didn't trouble him so long as he could see the sky.

They cut diagonally across the yard, then started strolling around the outside, as prisoners do the world over.

“I don't want there to be any misunderstanding,” Morlac said, “as a result of this report you're writing. That's why there's something I have to say right away: You're wrong about the mention I received.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, so, if you'll forgive the expression, you're beating about the bush. You keep asking me questions about my dog. You're trying to get me to say I love him, that he's my comrade-in-arms. I can see where you want this to go.”

“It's in your interest, I've already said that.”

Morlac had stopped in his tracks and turned to face the officer. He'd reverted to his solemn, stubborn expression. The fresh air certainly hadn't had an effect on him for long.

“I don't want you to find attenuating circumstances for me.”

“Don't you want to get out of here?”

“I don't want what I did to be misrepresented. You won't hush up what I have to say.”

“Well, this is your opportunity to explain yourself clearly. Because I'll readily admit I don't understand what you did, nor your determination to be heavily penalized.”

Morlac didn't seem concerned by this admission. He started walking again.

“Do you remember what happened in 1917, sir?”

Lantier glanced at him anxiously. 1917, the darkest year of the war; the year of the disastrous Nivelle Offensive at the Chemin des Dames, and of widespread mutinies; the year of despair and contradictory upheavals; the Americans arriving and the Russians retreating; the defeat of the Italians and Clemenceau's accession to power. This was not looking good.

Luckily, Dujeux was standing by the door jangling his keys. The excursion into the yard hadn't altered the rest of the routine, and it was food time. For once, Lantier was pleased with himself for starting the questioning so late. They'd have plenty of time the next day to embark on what promised to be no pleasure ride for the officer.

 

* * *

 

On his way back to the hotel, Lantier thought about making a detour to go and pet the dog. It grieved him to see the animal barking again, utterly exhausted, propped against a stone post at the far end of Place Michelet.

But it was late afternoon and people were coming back outside. A cart was heading up the hill from the abbey-church, creaking over the paving stones. A laborer in a black jacket whistled on his way with a ladder on his shoulder. Lantier didn't want to run the risk of spawning rumors in town about his sentimentality, his compassion for animals. He crossed the square in a dignified manner and set off along the Rue du 4-Septembre.

A little further on he went into La Civette to buy some tobacco. This was in anticipation of the next day's interrogation. He smoked little himself, but Morlac had taken to asking him for cigarettes, and he was keen to have this card in his hand for the round they were about to play.

As he came out of the smoke shop, he met the squad commander of the local police force. He'd been wanting to meet him since he arrived but had been told the man was away.

“Squadron Sergeant-Major Gabarre,” the policeman announced in a gravelly voice, standing to attention.

Short and ruddy-faced with a protruding stomach, he was every inch the country bumpkin. He must have been born to farming but joined the force because an opportunity arose. That decision probably derived from the same pragmatic reasoning that made a peasant sow his field with lucerne rather than oats, depending on what the market was doing. From what Lantier had gathered in his conversations with the only other policeman (because the squad in this quiet town comprised all of two men), Gabarre had spent his entire career here.

“I've just returned from a funeral twenty miles away, sir. I'm so sorry I wasn't here to help with your inquiries.”

The police officer couldn't have served in the war. He was quaking at the sight of this major and hadn't acquired the ironic aloofness with which regular soldiers now tempered their demonstrations of obedience.

“At ease, sergeant. Everything is going perfectly well, thank you kindly. Do you have a moment?”

“I'm at your disposal, sir.”

“In that case, come with me to the Place Étienne-Dolet, I think that's the name of the little square over there, where there are chairs under the trees.”

They walked over together in silence. The policeman had a slight limp. It was more likely gout than a war wound. When they reached the square they sat down on a couple of chairs around a small enameled table. Gabarre put his kepi on his knee, fiddling nervously with its shiny visor. The waiter came to take their order and brought out two glasses of beer.

The streets were steeped in the beginnings of purplish shadow although the sky was still light, striped with pink clouds. The air was cool and all the damp of months of rain seeped from the walls. But the chairs and the ground were still warm and lent this part of the evening a sensuality that was all the more precious because it was so obviously fleeting.

“I've been to the prison every day. My interrogation of the accused is almost over.”

The police officer took this statement as a reproach.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

But Lantier couldn't see how the other man's absence had inconvenienced him, and reassured him it hadn't.

“Did you know him, this Morlac, before he stirred up this commotion?”

“By sight, like anyone else,” Gabarre said and then added knowingly, “strange fellow.”

“In what way strange?”

“I couldn't put it into words, sir. He was someone you never really saw. He had no friends, no family. When he came home from war, the mayor arranged a ceremony for the troops. He came, sat alone in his corner, drinking, and then left without saying anything to anyone. The town clerk was convinced he'd made off with some silver cutlery. They thought about carrying out a search. In the end, bearing in mind his services to the country at the front, they abandoned the idea. But he did it almost openly, as if he already wanted to create a scandal then.”

“Do you know Valentine, the mother of his child?”

Gabarre had relaxed slightly. He'd finished his glass of beer, and the major gestured to the waiter to bring another.

“She's a whole other story. We have an eye on her.”

“I thought she never left her house. I went to see her. She lives practically in the middle of the woods.”

“She doesn't go out but there are people who pay her visits.”

“What sort of people?”

The police officer leaned forward and glanced around warily.

“Workmen, people on the run,” he slipped the words out in a muffled voice. “She thinks we don't know. That's deliberate, to keep them coming. But we're actually watching them, and when they leave her we pounce on them.”

He gave a sly smile like a poacher revealing where he's set his traps.

“Do you know her family?” he asked Lantier, sure of the effect this would have.

As he expected, Lantier looked surprised.

“I thought she had no family left. They all died of disease. She told me so herself.”

“They may well be dead, but they once lived,” countered Gabarre, proud of his logic.

“I'm perfectly prepared to believe that. And so?”

“So she didn't tell you who her father was.”

“No.”

“She doesn't brag about it. You see, her father was a German Jew, on close terms with that Rosa Luxembourg who was assassinated in Berlin last winter. He was a member of the Workers' International. He was an agitator and a rabid pacifist. He was arrested and died in prison in Angers. Apparently he had TB.”

“And her mother?”

“She was a local girl. Her parents sent her to Paris to train as a seamstress in one of the large stores. That's where she met the émigré. She fell madly in love with him and they were married. She came from a good family, mind you, livestock merchants who owned land in the area. She inherited a small share of it but most of it went to her brothers. Luckily for her, that was after her husband had died, because he would have made her sell the lot to raise money for the cause.”

With the second glass of beer, the police sergeant had completely relaxed. Lantier was surprised to find him so sprightly of mind and so well informed. He'd guessed he might be playing his cards close to his chest, but not to this extent.

“The poor woman never benefited from her inheritance,” Gabarre went on. “She was taken just after by an epidemic, and her older daughter along with her. All that was left was this Valentine who apparently looks exactly like her father, and is just as fanatical as he was.”

“She doesn't look it, though.”

But as he said this, Lantier suddenly remembered the girl's hard eyes and the way she talked about the war.

“She's crafty, that one. She was taken in by an aunt of her mother's, a half-feral creature who'd set up home in that back of beyond place so she didn't have to see anyone. She must have taught her her witch's spells.”

“Do you know why Morlac didn't go back to her after the war?”

The police officer shrugged.

“Can anyone work out what people like that are thinking? They probably had a fight.”

“Did she meet someone else?”

“Like I said, plenty of people go through there. The revolutionaries use her house as a hideout for guys who're in trouble with the police. As for knowing whether she had something going with one of them, I couldn't tell you.”

It was now completely dark. The waiter had lit oil lamps around the tables, and two gas lamps, one on either side of the square, cast a mauve light on the paving stones. Lantier looked at his watch. It was time he went back to the hotel, if he hoped to find some supper there.

“Would you like to make yourself useful, sergeant?”

Gabarre suddenly remembered who he was talking to. He sat up and said a loud, “Yes, sir.”

“Right, well, try to find out whether Morlac has seen his son since he's been home.”

“It won't be very easy, but . . . ”

“I'm counting on you. Come and see me when you can, if you find anything.”

Lantier left a few coins on the table and stood up. The police sergeant wanted to give him a military salute, but the major shook his hand.

As he walked back to the hotel, he thought he heard the dog's barking carried on the wind from time to time. But it was weak and very irregular.

V
alentine didn't want to go inside. She was standing by the door to the hotel. Although he was of no use to anyone before he'd had his coffee, Lantier had no trouble recognizing her. He wasn't expecting her to visit, at least not so soon and not so early in the morning. But she must have been thinking all night, not had a moment's sleep, and now here she was, her face unreadable, her mind made up.

“Good morning, Valentine,” he said, coming out onto the doorstep. “Come in and have some coffee.”

She was carrying a basket with both hands, holding it at arm's length, with an embarrassed expression. Lantier thought of her father, the political agitator, whom Gabarre said she resembled. He was most likely the same sort of character, capable of setting fire to a bourgeois house but intimidated by an invitation to enter one. In the end he persuaded her and she went inside.

As he followed her along the hotel's corridors, with their painted wallpaper and pictures on the walls, he grasped what held her back. At home, she was in keeping with her surroundings. Here, her coarse dress and wooden clogs made her look like a slattern.

He showed her to the back of the building, onto a small terrace where there were some garden chairs. She was less out of place in this outdoor setting than in the lounges with their decorative moldings.

He ordered a coffee. She didn't want anything. This refusal seemed to demonstrate a determination not to accept anything from anyone she considered her enemy. Had it been more moderate, this principle might have seemed respectable and even formidable. Pushed to extremes and applied to the most insignificant things, such as a cup of coffee, there was something laughable and puerile about it.

She'd put her basket on the ground and was pretending to rifle through it, just to have something to do. When the serving girl had brought Lantier's coffee and they were left alone, she glowered at Lantier and, with no preamble, cut straight to, “Actually, I do want to see him. And I want him to know.”

“I've suggested it to him but . . . ”

“That's for sure, he'll say no. But you mustn't just ‘suggest' it.”

She imitated the fluty way Lantier had said the word. This intonation alone was a gauge of the violent feelings that gripped her at the thought of the army.

“What exactly would you like me to say to him?”

“That I
have
to see him. It has to happen. And I want to.”

“Leave it with me. I'll come to your house to bring you the answer myself if he changes his mind.”

“That won't be necessary.”