Philippe Noiret credited as playing...
Inspector Morand
- Major Grau: One of them is a - a murderer.
- Inspector Morand: Only one? But murder is the occupation of Generals.
- Major Grau: Then let us say what is admirable on the large scale, is monstrous on the small. Since we must give medals to mass murderers, let us try to give justice to the small - entrepreneur.
- Inspector Morand: Welcome, Colonel Grau, to the spider's web.
- Major Grau: How did you know it was me?
- Inspector Morand: What other German Colonel would enter unannounced?
- Major Grau: Any SS Colonel would.
- [In the years after the war, Inspector Morand can be seen talking with former General von Seidlitz-Gabler]
- General von Seidlitz-Gabler: You must have noticed, my daughter and wife are not on good terms. In fact, they haven't spoken to one another since the war.
- Inspector Morand: That's sad.
- General von Seidlitz-Gabler: I myself only see my daughter once or twice a year. And very briefly at that. She lives on a farm near Munich. We meet in a railway station with her child. It's the only way I can get to see my grandson.
- Inspector Morand: Your daughter is married?
- General von Seidlitz-Gabler: Yes. To a farmer named Luckner. She was never the same after the war. Poor girl. Something happened to her, I don't know what. It's hard to help children, isn't it? Particularly if one's wife... well, it was impossible after Paris. Anyway, that's all I see of her. But why do you wish to see her?
- Inspector Morand: In Paris, many years ago, she knew a young man.
- Major Grau: When things were going well, the generals enjoyed the war quite as much as Hitler. Now that we're losing, they want to save their own skins.
- Inspector Morand: That's natural.
- Inspector Morand: Oh, a girl. A crime of passion, as we say.
- Major Grau: Passion, yes, but only in the sense of your distinguished Marquis de Sade.
- Inspector Morand: Oh, a sex crime, I see. Is that why this case excites you?
- Inspector Morand: Gabler is something of a sexual athlete. He picks up girls in the Bois de Boulogne, but as far as we know, he hasn't tried to kill one.
- Major Grau: Inspector, I'm interested in just one General who killed a girl and thought, because he was a General, he could play God in bed as well as in battle. Well, I'm going to demonstrate to him that he is not - God.
- Inspector Morand: And - that you are?
- Major Grau: My madness is on a smaller, more secular scale. I simply want to see justice done.
- Inspector Morand: Tanz seems to have no human interests. Takes to the bottle from time to time. Bit of a voyeur, I should say.
- Inspector Morand: Any day's a good day to catch a murderer.
- Inspector Morand: Even - doomsday?
- Major Grau: Particularly doomsday.