The Schirmer Inheritance

Messrs. Moreton, Greener and Cleek, as attorneys for the administrator, had properly hastened to deny the contention; but instead of pointing out, more or less simply, that, as Amelia’s first cousins on her mother’s side had all been dead for years, the Smith family of New York did not qualify in law as heirs, they had stuffily contented themselves with quoting the act as saying that “there could be no representation admitted among collaterals after the grandchildren of brothers and sisters and children of aunts and uncles.” This unfortunate sentence, quoted derisively under the subheading “Double-Talk,” was the only part of the statement that had been printed.

Most of the partners’ subsequent statements had suffered the same kind of fate. From time to time some of the more responsible papers had made serious efforts to interpret the intestacy laws to their readers, but never, as far as George could see, had the partners attempted to assist them. The fact that, as Amelia had had no close relatives living, the only possible heirs were any nephews and nieces of the late Hans Schneider who had still been alive when Amelia died, was never explicitly stated by the partners. The nearest they had come to clarity had been in a statement suggesting that it was unlikely that there were any “first cousins of the intestate decedent who had survived the decedent” in America, and that if any did exist they would most probably be found in Germany.

They might have saved themselves the trouble. The suggestion that the legal heir to the estate might be in Europe instead of somewhere like Wisconsin had not been interesting to the newspapers of 1939; the possibility of his not existing at all they had preferred to ignore altogether. Besides, the enterprise of a Milwaukee paper had just then given the story yet another twist. With the help of the immigration authorities, this paper’s special investigator had been able to discover the number of families named Schneider who had emigrated from Germany in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The number was large. Was it too much to suppose, the paper had asked, that at least one of the Old Forty-niner’s younger brothers had followed his example in emigrating? No indeed! The hunt had been on again, and squads of special investigators had gone forth to pad hopefully through city records, land registers, and state archives in the footsteps of the immigrant Schneiders.

George repacked the parcel with a sigh. He knew already that he was not going to enjoy the next few weeks.

The total number of claims made was just over eight thousand and he found that there was a separate file for each. Most had only two or three letters in them, but many were quite thick, while some had parcels to themselves and bulged with affidavits, photostats of documents, tattered photographs, and genealogical tables. A few had old Bibles and other family souvenirs in them, and one, for some inexplicable reason, even contained a greasy fur cap.

George set to work. By the end of his first week he had been through seven hundred of the claims and was feeling sorry for Messrs. Moreton, Greener and Cleek. Many, of course, had come from lunatics and cranks. There was the angry man in North Dakota who said that his name was Martin Schneider, that he was not dead, and that Amelia Johnson had stolen the money from him while he lay sleeping. There was the woman who claimed the estate on behalf of a Californian society for the propagation of the Cataphrygian heresy, on the grounds that the spirit of the late Amelia had entered into Mrs. Schultz, the society’s honorary treasurer. And there was the man, writing in multi-coloured inks from a state hospital, who said that he was the legitimate son of Amelia by a secret first marriage to a coloured man. But the majority of the claimants seemed to be persons who, while not actually insane, had rudimentary notions of what constituted evidence. There was, for instance, a Chicago man named Higgins who had evolved an elaborate claim from the memory of having heard his father say that Cousin Amelia was a wicked old miser; and another man had pressed for a share of the estate on the strength of an old letter from a Danish relative named Schneider. Then there were those who warily declined to send evidence to support their claims lest it should be stolen and used to prove the case of another claimant, and others who demanded travelling expenses in order that they might present their cases in person to the administrator. Above all, there were the lawyers.