Eric Ambler - The Schirmer Inheritance

I have given some thought to your problems in Germany and it seems to me likely that Father Weichs, the Bad Schwennheim priest, will be among those with whom you will be getting in touch at an early stage. But when I tried to recall what I had said to you about my interview with him, it seemed to me that I had left out several important things. My diary, I know, gives only the barest facts. It was my last interview in Germany and I was in a hurry to get home. But , as you may imagine, I remember the occasion vividly. A more detailed account of it may prove of some service to you .

As I told you, he informed me of Friedrich Schirmer’s death and I gave him a cautious account of my reasons for inquiring about the man. We then had some conversation which, as it concerned Johann Schirmer to some extent, I will give you as I remember it .

Father Weichs is, or was, a tall, fair man with a bony face and sharp blue eyes. No fool, I warn you. And nothing passive about him. My halting German set the muscles of his jaws twitching impatiently. Fortunately, he speaks English well, and after the courtesies were over, that was the language we used .

“I hoped you might be a relative,” he said. “He spoke once of an uncle in America whom he had never seen.”

“Had he no relatives here? No wife?” I asked .

“His wife died about sixteen years ago, in Schaffhausen. She was a Swiss. They had lived there for over twenty years. Their son was born there. But when she died he returned to Germany. During his last illness he used to speak of his son, Johann, but he had not seen him for many years. Johann was married and he had lived with the couple for a time, but there had been a quarrel and he had left their house.”

“Where did they live?”

“In Germany, but he did not tell me where. The whole subject was very painful to him. He spoke of it only once.”

“What did they quarrel about?”

Father Weichs hesitated at this question. Evidently he knew the answer to it. What he said was: “I cannot say.”

“You don’t know?” I persisted .

He hesitated again, then answered very carefully: “Friedrich Schirmer was not, perhaps, as simple a man as he appeared. That is all I can say”

“I see.”

“De mortuis … the old man was very sick.”

“YOU have absolutely no idea then, Father, of the whereabouts of Johann?”

“I regret, none. I looked among the old man’s things for the address of someone to tell of his death, but I did not find anything. He lived at the sanatorium for old people. The woman director there said that he received no letters, only his annuity every month. Will the son receive the legacy now?”

I had been prepared for the question. At one moment I had thought of trusting this priest, but the habit of caution was very strong. I answered evasively. “The money is in trust,” I said, and changed the subject by asking what had happened to his belongings .

“There was little more than the clothes he was buried in,” he said .

“No will?”

“No. There were a few books and some old papers-records of his army service, such things. Nothing of value. I have charge of them until the authorities tell me they may be destroyed.”

Naturally, I was determined to go through these things myself, but tact was necessary. “I wonder if I might see them, Father,” I said. “It would be fitting, perhaps, if I could tell his relatives in America that I had done so.”

“Certainly, if you wish.”

He had made a package of the papers and put the dead man’s rosary in with them. I looked through them .

It was, I must tell you, a pathetic collection. There were old Swiss concert programs and catalogues of Swiss electrical trade exhibitions, an accountancy diploma from a commercial college in Dortmund, and the autographed menu of a banquet held in 1910 for the German employees of the Schaff hausen plant he had worked in. There were letters from business houses all over Germany replying to applications for book-keeping posts. Dates from 1927 and on. The applicant had written from Dortmund, Mainz, Hanover, Karlsruhe and Freiburg, in that date order. There were the army papers and the documents connected with the annuity he had purchased with his savings. In expansive moments I have been known to contend that the apparently unimportant things a man keeps, the private souvenirs, the clutter he accumulates during his lifetime, are an index to the secrets of his soul. If this is so, then Friedrich Schirmer must have led a singularly uneventful inner life .

There were two photographs-the one you have seen of Johann and Ilse and another of the late Frau (Friedrich) Schirmer. I knew that I must have the one of Johann at all costs. I put them down casually .

“Nothing of interest, you see,” said Father Weichs .

I nodded. “But,” I said, “I wonder if it would not be a kindly action for me to take some remembrance of him back to his relatives in America. If these things are to be destroyed, it seems a pity not to save something of him.”

He thought for a moment but could see no objection. He suggested the rosary. I immediately agreed and only brought up the matter of the photograph as an afterthought. “If, by any chance, it should be wanted, I could always copy it and return the original to you,” I said .

So I took it with me. I also had his promise that in the event of his learning anything of the whereabouts of Johann Schirmer, I should be informed. As you know, I have never heard from him. In the early hours of the following day, the German army crossed the frontier and began to advance into Poland .

Well, there it is, my boy. My wife has been good enough to type it all out for me and I hope it will be of some use to you. If there is anything else I can do, let me know. And if you feel that you can, without betraying your firm’s confidence, let me know how you get on, I shall be more than pleased to hear. You know, the only one of all the Schneiders and Schirmers I got to know about that I really liked was that old Sergeant Franz. I imagine that he was quite a tough proposition. What happens to blood like that? Oh yes, I know that only certain physical characteristics get transmitted, and that it’s all a matter of genes and chromosomes; but if you do happen to run across a Schirmer with a beard like Franz’s, let me know. Good luck anyway .

Sincerely ,

ROBERT L. MORETON

George refolded the letter and looked at the accompanying sheet of paper with the answer to his questions. As he did so, the telephone by his bed buzzed harshly and he turned to answer it.

“Mademoiselle Kolin to see you, sir.”

“All right. I’ll come down.”

This was the interpreter who had been recommended to him by the Embassy.

“Miss Kolin?” George had said. “A woman?”

“Sure, she’s a woman.”

“I assumed you’d get a man. You know I’ve got to travel all over the place staying at hotels. It’s going to be awkward if-”

“Why? You don’t have to sleep with her.”

“Isn’t there a man available?”

“Not as good as Miss Kolin. You said you wanted someone we could vouch for if it came to getting the interpreter’s testimony accepted in an American court. We could vouch for Kolin all right. We always use her or Miss Harle for important rogatory commissions, and so do the British. Harle’s on another job in Geneva right now, so we got Kolin. You’re lucky she’s available.”

“All right. How old is she?”