Firmin Labarthe

Firmin Labarthe is 58 and has been the factory's night watchman for twenty-one years. Born in Muret, the son of a blacksmith, he served in the Resistance when the city was occupied and keeps the pride of someone who has seen worse. Grumpy and loyal, he distrusts engineers and foreigners in equal measure, and says he fought the Germans in this city so no one would now ask him to open the door to a spy.

He lives in a little workman's house in the Saint-Cyprien district, with a coal-stove kitchen, a wicker armchair with a patched cushion and a hallway that smells of cabbage soup. He is Yvette's neighbor and so knows more about her life than he would like. He sleeps by day, eats at five in the afternoon and leaves for his rounds at seven, with his lunch pail wrapped in a checkered cloth.

He is stocky and broad-shouldered, with a red, wrinkled face and a thick gray mustache. He wears a watchman's cap with a winged emblem, a dark blue uniform coat with metal buttons, a wool scarf and a large ring of keys on his belt. He carries a metal flashlight in his hand and writes everything in the round log with a primary-school handwriting that he himself admires.

About the rounds, his account is one of rigid routine: at 6 he checks the bags at the gate, at 8 he locks everything up and stays only at the truck gate, in the gatehouse, and every hour he makes a round with the flashlight and writes a line in the log. Of the engineer, he says he leaves late with a bulging briefcase as if carrying bricks. Of the brasseriebrasserie French restaurant-café serving simple meals and beer, usually open all day. where they arrested the Soviet, he only knows the facade.

Firmin knows the watchman who holds the keys to the whole factory is the first suspect of any open door. When the detective says he opened the reprographicsreprographics Department or machine that makes copies of technical drawings and documents. room for a spy, his red face turns purple, he recalls that he fought the Germans in the city and tells the other man to measure his words. It could be the offended loyalty of an old fighter. It could be someone who will defend himself from a small embarrassment with great anger. The detective will have to decide which.