The Red Collar (5 page)

Hearing a man's voice, a child had come out onto the doorstep. With a brusque wave, Valentine told him to disappear. The child took off toward the forest.

“What do you want from me?”

During the four years of war, a visit from a soldier had always signaled death. That had left its mark. Lantier forced a smile and tried to look friendly. He gave her his name and credentials. The words “investigating officer” made the young woman wince.

“What have I . . . ”

“Do you know Jacques Morlac?”

She nodded, glancing over to the edge of the woods, as if to check the child was no longer there. The sun was already high in the sky and the heat had invaded the last strongholds of cool air. Lantier could feel the sweat trickling from his armpits.

“Is there somewhere we could talk?”

He wanted to say, “In the shade.”

“Come,” she said, leading him toward the house.

The door stood wide open. As he stepped in from the sunlight, Lantier took a moment to acclimatize to the darkness inside. He tripped on the irregular floor tiles and steadied himself on the corner of a large sideboard. Valentine offered him a chair, and he sat down with one elbow on the table. She brought over a pitcher of water and a bottle of cordial. The cork was crusty with sugar and Valentine waved aside the flies.

Without being too obvious, Lantier studied the room and was surprised. It wasn't a peasant's home. This was the country, of course: Bunches of dried herbs hung from the ceiling; the shelves beside the chimney breast were full of glass jars, jellies and jams of every sort; cheeses and salted meats gave off their distinctive smell from behind the wire mesh of a larder. But added to these were details that clashed. Firstly, the walls were covered with reproductions. They were mostly illustrations cut from reviews. The damp had corrugated the paper and the inks had smudged. But there were recognizable masterpieces such as Michelangelo's
David
and
The Battle of San Romano
. There were also less well-known images, faces, nudes, landscapes, and in prominent positions there were even paintings by an avant-garde cubist Lantier couldn't abide.

But more particularly, an entire wall was taken up with books.

The major had a furious longing to get up and go over to look at their spines, to see what they were. From this distance he could already tell they weren't frivolous romances. They mostly had austere dust jackets in drab colors rather than the gaudy covers of mass appeal publications.

Valentine sat down herself and turned all her attention on him. She was smiling but the serious look in her eyes stole all the warmth from her smile. Lantier took a sip of his cordial to gather his composure.

I
am conducting an investigation into a soldier who is imprisoned in town, and whom you know.”

Valentine understood perfectly but her only reaction was to blink. She was very self-composed.

“His name is Jacques Morlac.”

It was rather stupid to name him because they both knew what this was about. The major was irritated with himself for playing this game, and to prove he could cope without it, he skipped a round and went straight to, “How did you meet him?”

“His farm wasn't far from here.”

“I thought . . . ”

“Yes, by road it's quite a long way. But there's a path that cuts through the ponds and gets you there in ten minutes.”

“So you've known him all your life,” Lantier stated rather than asking.

“No, because I wasn't born here. I was fifteen when I moved here.”

“I've heard your family was decimated by a measles epidemic.”

“Only my sister and my mother.”

“And your father?”

She looked away and clutched the fabric of her dress in her lap. Then she lifted her head and looked the officer squarely in the eye again.

“An illness.”

“Is measles not an illness?”

“A different one.”

He could tell there was an embarrassment, a secret here, but didn't want to push her confidences too far. After all, this was a meeting, not an interrogation. He had nothing to gain from putting her even more on the defensive.

“So you came here after your parents died. Why were you sent here?”

“My parents owned land in the area. And one of my great-aunts lived in this house. She took me in. When she died, two years later, I stayed on alone.”

A fragrance hung in the air, not entirely successfully smothering the smell of saltpeter and of a wood fire gone cold. It was an eau de cologne, probably homemade, the sort you might associate with old maids and convents.

“Where did you live with your parents?”

“In Paris.”

So that was it. Her misfortune was not to be living meagerly out here in the country, but to have experienced and hoped for another life. She was in exile in this isolated place. The books and reproductions were things she'd managed to save when the ship went down.

“How old were you when you met Morlac?”

“Eighteen.”

“And how did you meet him?”

Judging from her reaction, she thought this question intrusive. But she made herself answer it, as she had the others. Lantier got the impression she was a seasoned player at this game, and that her honesty was merely a screen, intended to hide what really mattered.

“I still had livestock at the time, and I needed straw. I went to him to buy some. I guess we . . . liked each other.”

“Why didn't you get married?”

“We were waiting for me to come of age. And then the war came along and he left.”

“With the dog?”

Valentine burst out laughing. Lantier wouldn't have guessed she could laugh like that, with such abandon and with a fleeting but very visible look of delight on her face. He thought she must love with the same intensity, and found the idea unsettling.

“Yes, with the dog. But what difference does that make?”

“You know what he's been accused of?”

“Oh, that,” she shrugged. “He's a hero, isn't he? I don't see why he's being pestered over a trifle.”

She said the word “hero” in an unusual way, as if using vocabulary borrowed from a foreign language.

“It's not a trifle,” Lantier replied tartly. “It's an outrage to the nation. But, granted, his merits in combat could be taken into account and the slate wiped clean. And that's exactly what I've gone to considerable lengths to suggest to him. But we
would
need him not to be against the idea.”

“What do you mean?”

“He needs to apologize, to minimize the incident, to say he was drunk or find some other explanation.”

“Is he refusing to?”

“Not only is he refusing but he's aggravating his case with irresponsible comments. You'd think he
wants
to be condemned.”

Valentine sat with unseeing eyes and gave a strange smile. Then she jerked her arm abruptly, as if wiping something off the table with the back of her hand. In the process she knocked over the bottle of cordial, which fell to the ground. This unleashed a flurry of activity. She stood up and Lantier did too. She went to fetch a floor cloth from under a cupboard, and gathered up the pieces of glass with a broom. The officer wanted to make himself useful but couldn't think how to. In the end, he let her get on with it and, because he was on his feet, took the opportunity to go and look at the books lined up on the shelves on wall brackets.

He read a few titles at random, on the larger volumes. There were several Zola novels. He also spotted Rousseau's
La Nouvelle Héloïse
and, on another book, although he couldn't be sure, he thought he saw the name Jules Vallès.

“There we are,” Valentine said. “I'm so sorry. Everything's fine. Now, what were we saying?”

She was edging him toward the table and seemed particularly keen to get him away from the bookshelves. He went and sat back down and thought at some length before speaking again.

“The fact is,” he eventually began, “the case involving Morlac is very likely one of the last I will handle. I'm planning to leave the army and go into civilian life. I'd like to end on an uplifting note, to have good memories of my position, so to speak. If I could succeed in stopping this defendant from going to his death, it would give me tremendous satisfaction and I could leave less heavy-hearted. As you can see, it's very selfish.”

He was ashamed to admit he had a personal interest in the case. But she'd already more than grasped the fact.

“Morlac is indeed a hero,” he went on. “We owe our victory to men like him. I'd like to save him. But that can only be done against his will, because he's determined to be condemned to death, and I don't understand why. That's why I'm here.”

She looked at him steadily, unblinking, waiting to hear what would come next.

“Could I ask you a rather prying question but one I believe to be of key importance?”

She didn't reply and, as she'd expected, he didn't wait for an answer.

“Is your child his?”

She knew he would come to this.

“Jules is his son.”

“For him to be three years old, he must have been conceived . . . during the war.”

“Jacques came home on leave and, while he was here, we made love almost continuously.”

Lantier felt himself flushing but he was too driven by the subject to falter at this obstacle of propriety.

“Has he recognized him as such on the local register?”

“No.”

“He could have done.”

“Yes.”

“But he didn't.”

“No.”

Lantier sprang to his feet and walked to the door. He hovered on the doorstep for a moment, his eyes wide and scorched by the sun. The child was back. It was a little boy dressed in mud-colored scraps of cloth stitched together. He'd caught a mole and was prodding it with a stick, without any spite but without any mercy either.

“Have you seen him since he came back?” Lantier asked.

“No.”

“But he came back here for you.”

“I don't think so. If he came home, it must be for his farm.”

“Except he hasn't set foot on the place. He was lodging in a furnished room in town.”

This was one of the pieces of information that featured in the policemen's report. Morlac's land had been farmed by his brother-in-law since his sister's marriage. Morlac hadn't even been to see them when he returned. He'd moved into a family-run boardinghouse under a false name, but the woman running the place had recognized him immediately. She'd put this anomaly down to the traumas of war.

“I didn't know that,” Valentine said.

“Did he try to see his son?”

“Not that I know.”

“Would you allow him to?”

“Of course.”

“Would you permit me to tell him that?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Are you going to visit him in prison?”

“I've no idea.”

It was clear she'd been considering this for a long time. Something was holding her back, and Lantier didn't have the heart to ask her what.

As he pedaled back on his bike, the sun beat down on him mercilessly. He watched the front wheel wobbling under the effects of tiredness and the heat.

And was annoyed he hadn't asked more questions.

 

* * *

 

The abbey-church clock was striking two when Lantier put the bicycle back into the hotel's yard. He went up to his room for a quick wash and to change his shirt. Then he headed for the dining room where Georgette had left his lunch on a table. On a plate covered with a white cloth he found a burbot tail and pureed oyster plant. Two rashly consumed glasses of Bordeaux forced him back upstairs for a half-hour siesta.

It was almost half past three when he set off for the prison. The heat had dropped slightly. It was now colored by the hint of an easterly wind bringing in cooler air and smells from the forest. There were times, like this, when Lantier already felt very close to civilian life, and he was gripped by anticipatory nostalgia for the military. He thought he would miss it. He derived genuine physical pleasure from walking through this town strapped into the uniform he would soon stop wearing.

As he turned onto Rue Danton, he walked out into the glaring sun on the square facing the prison. He almost tripped over a body lying across the sidewalk. It was Wilhelm, Morlac's dog. He was lying on one side with his tongue lolling right out, almost down to the street. He looked exhausted by the days and nights spent howling. His eyes were bright with fever, and sunken in their sockets. He must have been appallingly thirsty. Lantier went over to a fountain in the shade of a linden tree in one corner of the square. He grasped the crank and worked the pump. Hearing running water, the dog clambered to his feet and came over to the fountain. His tongue worked methodically as he drank while Lantier continued turning the small creaking bronze handle.

When the dog had slaked his thirst, the major sat down on a bench by the fountain, in the same patch of shade. He wondered whether Wilhelm would go back onto the square and start barking again. But instead the animal stood steadfastly by the bench with his eyes pinned on the major.

Close up, the dog was a painful sight. He really looked like an old warrior. Several scars on his back and sides were evidence of wounds from gunshots or shrapnel. It looked as if they hadn't been tended to, and the flesh had managed to knit together as best it could by forming ridges, hardened patches and calluses. One of the dog's hind legs was deformed and when he sat down, he had to lay it at a diagonal to avoid falling over on his side. Lantier reached out a hand and the dog moved closer to be stroked. His head was uneven to the touch, as if he were wearing a dented helmet. The right-hand side of his muzzle was pale pink and smooth of hair, the result of a severe burn. But in the middle of this ravaged face shone two eyes full of pathos. Wilhelm stood motionless while he was stroked. He gave the impression he'd been trained not to fuss, to make as little noise as possible, except to raise the alert. But his eyes alone expressed everything that other dogs display with their tails and paws, by whining or rolling on the ground.