Eric Ambler - The Schirmer Inheritance

“Thank you.”

A further thing he had discovered about Miss Kolin was that, although she probably consumed, in public or in the privacy of her room, over half a bottle of brandy every day, she did not seem to suffer from hangovers.

It took them nearly two weeks to find out what the German army knew about Sergeant Schirmer.

He had been born in Winterthur in 1917, the son of Johann Schirmer (mechanic) and Ilse, his wife, both of pure German stock. From the Hitler Jugend he had joined the army at the age of eighteen and been promoted corporal in 1937. He had been transferred from the Engineers to a special air training unit ( Fallschirmjäger ) in 1938 and promoted sergeant in the following year. At Eben-Emael he had received a bullet wound in the shoulder, from which he had satisfactorily recovered. He had taken part in the invasion of Crete and had been awarded the Iron Cross (Third Class) for distinguished conduct. In Benghazi later in that year he had suffered from dysentery and malaria. In Italy in 1943, while acting as a parachutist instructor, he had fractured a hip. There had been a court of inquiry to determine who had been responsible for giving the order to jump over wooded country. The court had commended the Sergeant’s conduct in refraining from transmitting an order he believed to be incorrect, while obeying it himself. After four months in hospital and at a rehabilitation centre, and a further period of sick leave, a medical board had declared him unfit for further duty as a paratrooper or any other combat duty which entailed excessive marching. He had been posted to the occupation forces in Greece. There, he had served as weapons instructor to the Ninety-fourth Garrison Regiment in a Lines of Communication Division stationed in the Salonika area, until the following year. After an action against Greek guerrillas during the withdrawal from Macedonia, he had been reported “missing, believed killed.” The next of kin, Ilse Schirmer, Elsass Str. 39, Köln, had been duly notified.

They found Elsass Strasse, or what was left of it, in the remains of the old town off the Neumarkt.

Before the stick of bombs which had destroyed it had fallen, it had been a narrow street of small shops with offices above them, and a tobacco warehouse halfway along. The warehouse had obviously received a direct hit. Some of the other walls still stood, but, with the exception of three shops at one end of the street, every building in it had been gutted. Lush weeds grew now out of the old cellar floors; notices said that it was forbidden to trespass among the ruins or to deposit rubbish.

Number 39 had been a garage set back from the street in a space behind two other buildings and approached by an arched drive-in between them. The arch was still standing. Fastened to its brickwork was a rusty metal sign. The words on it could be read: “Garage und Reparaturwerkstatt. J. Schirmer-Bereifung, Zübehor, Benzin.”

They walked through the archway to the place where the garage had stood. The site had been cleared, but the plan of the building was still visible; it could not have been a very big garage. All that remained of it now was a repair pit. It was half full of rain water and there were pieces of an old packing case floating in it.

As they stood there, it began to rain again.

“We’d better see if we can find out anything from the shops at the end of the street,” George said.

The proprietor of the second of the shops they tried was an electrical contractor, and he had some information. He had only been there three years himself and knew nothing of the Schirmers; but he did know something about the garage site. He had considered renting it for his own use. He had wanted to put up a workshop and storeroom there and use the rooms over his shop to live in. The ground had no street frontage and was therefore of little value. He had thought to get it cheaply; but the owner had wanted too much and so he had made other arrangements. The owner was a Frau Gresser, wife of a chemist in the laboratories of a big factory out at Leverkusen. When women started bargaining, you understand, it was best to.… Yes, he had her address written down somewhere, though if the gentleman were considering the property, he personally would advise him to think twice before wasting his time arguing with …

Frau Gresser lived in an apartment on the top floor of a newly reconstructed building near the Barbarossa Platz. They had to call three times before they found her in.

She was a stout, frowzy, breathless woman in her late fifties. Her apartment was furnished in the cocktail-bar-functional style of prewar Germany, and crammed with Tyrolean knickknacks. She listened suspiciously to their explanations of their presence there before inviting them to sit down. Then she went and telephoned her husband. After a while she came back and said that she was prepared to answer questions.

Ilse Schirmer, she said, had been her cousin and childhood friend.

“Are the Schirmers alive now?” George asked.

“Ilse Schirmer and her husband were killed in the big air attacks on the city in May 1942,” Miss Kolin interpreted.

“Did Frau Gresser inherit the garage land from them?”

Frau Gresser showed signs of indignation when the question was put and spoke rapidly in reply.

“By no means. The land was hers-hers and her husband’s, that is. Johann Schirmer’s own business went bankrupt. She and her husband had set him up in business again for the sake of Ilse. Naturally, they had hoped also to make a profit, but it was goodness of heart that motivated them in the first place. The business, however, was theirs. Schirmer was only the manager. He had a percentage of the takings and an apartment over the garage. No one could say that he had not been generously treated. Yet, after so much had been done for him by his wife’s friends, he had tried to cheat them over the takings.”

“Who was his heir? Did he leave a will?”

“If he had had anything to leave except debts, his heir would have been his son, Franz.”

“Did the Schirmers have any other children?”

“Fortunately, no.”

“Fortunately?”

“It was hard enough for poor Ilse to feed and clothe one child. She was never strong, and with a husband like Schirmer, even a strong woman would have become ill.”

“What was the matter with Schirmer?”

“He was lazy, he was dishonest, he drank. When poor Ilse married him she did not know. He deceived everyone. When we met him he had a prosperous business in Essen. We thought him clever. It was not until his father went away that the truth was known.”

“The truth?”

“It was his father, Friedrich, who had the business head. He was a good accountant and he kept the son properly under control. Johann was only a mechanic, a workman with his hands. The father had the brains. He understood money.”

“Did Friedrich own the business?”

“It was a partnership. Friedrich had lived and worked for many years in Switzerland. Johann was brought up there. He did not fight for Germany in the first war. lise met him in 1915 while she was staying with friends in Zurich. They married and remained in Switzerland to live. All their savings were in Swiss francs. In 1923, when the German mark failed, they all came back to Germany-Friedrich, Johann, Ilse, and the child, Franz-and bought the garage in Essen cheap with their Swiss money. Old Friedrich understood business.”

“Then Franz was born in Switzerland?”

“Winterthur is near Zurich, Mr. Carey,” said Miss Kolin. “It was mentioned in the army papers, you remember. But he would still have to apply for Swiss nationality.”

“Yes, I know all about that. Ask her why the partnership broke up.”

Frau Gresser hesitated when she heard the question.