La Basse-cour

Police officers practice shooting in a training room under the instructions of Inspector Bartoletti who insists on safety instructions. His wife Elizabeth joins him and they embrace tenderly when it comes to the drama. A policeman, believing his weapon empty, shoots. Elizabeth collapses struck to death. She leaves behind a desperate husband and baby boy. Some time later, the widowed dad was transferred to Courteplaine in the north of France to train police inspectors at the ECPJ, a police school more commonly known as the "poultry yard".