The Red Collar Read Online Free Page A

threadbare. The only pleasant time in the establishment was breakfast. The owner, who was a war widow, kept a farm with her sister on the outskirts of town. The butter, milk and eggs came from this farm. She baked her own bread and made her own jams.
    At half past seven in the morning it was already obvious it would be a hot day. Lantier had breakfasted by a wide-open window. He thought about this wretched man and his dog. Truth be told, he hadn’t stopped thinking about him since the previous day.
    He’d had to leave him abruptly. He couldn’t allow himself to be insulted, taking into account what he represented. But personally, he was peculiarly fascinated by this stubborn little character.
    During the course of that endless war, Lantier had been through every kind of emotion. He’d started out as a young idealist typical of his social standing (solidly middle-class despite the lesser nobility suggested by his family name). All that mattered at first was his country and the high-blown ideals that went with it: Honor, Family, Tradition. He thought individuals and their pitiful personal interests had to be subjugated for their sake. And then, in the trenches, he’d lived at close quarters with these individuals, and had sometimes taken their side. Once or twice he’d reached the point where he wondered whether their suffering was owed more respect than the ideals in whose name it was inflicted on them.
    After the armistice, Lantier saw his appointment to the military justice system as serendipity. The relevant committees must have felt he was ripe for this difficult responsibility: protecting the military institution, defending the interests of the nation and also understanding men’s failings.
    But this prisoner was different. He belonged in both camps: he was a hero, he had defended his country, yet at the same time he loathed it.
    Lantier spent the whole morning strolling about town. He’d stopped at a bistro outside the abbey-church, and had organized the notes he’d taken the previous day in the prison.
    He didn’t intend to see Morlac again before the afternoon. He had to give him time to calm down and think, even if he didn’t really believe Morlac would.
    When the church bell struck noon, the streets were in a state of complete torpor. Lantier cut across town to have lunch in a restaurant he’d spotted near the covered market. The shutters were closed on all the houses to keep the rooms cool. Behind metal doorways he heard women’s voices and the clink of plates coming from gardens: People were getting ready to eat outside.
    The restaurant was deserted, except for one table at the back where an elderly man was seated. Lantier du Grez settled himself at the far end of the banquette, toward the window. The room had a high ceiling with stucco yellowed by grease on the walls and tall, badly flaking mercury mirrors. The owner had wound the canvas awning down over the terrace and opened everything he could—windows, doors, transoms—to create a draft. But the steam laden with a smell of frying that came up from the kitchen defeated all these efforts, and it was very hot.
    The food on offer was the same all through the year, essentially comprising hearty dishes suitable for rainy weather. Lantier ordered rabbit chasseur, hoping against his better judgment that the sauce wouldn’t be too fatty.
    He asked for a newspaper and the owner brought him one that was two days old. He read the headlines, which were mostly about the prowess of the aviator Charles Godefroy, who’d flown his plane under the Arc de Triomphe.
    â€œYou’re here for Morlac, aren’t you?”
    Lantier looked over at the old man who’d called across to him. The latter rose slightly from the banquette with a sketchy wave of the hand.
    â€œNorbert Seignelet, attorney-at-law.”
    â€œMy pleasure. Major Lantier du Grez.”
    There’d been an attorney-at-law in his section