The Schirmer Inheritance

“Yes, he was dead.” Mr. Moreton looked out at the garden as if he hated it. “I don’t mind telling you, my boy,” he said, “that I was feeling pretty old and tired myself by then. It was the last week in August and there wasn’t very much doubt, from what the radio was saying, that Europe was going to be at war within the week. I wanted to go home. I’ve never been the sort of man who likes being in the thick of things. Besides, I was having trouble with the interpreter. He was a Lorrainer, France was mobilizing, and he was afraid he wouldn’t have time to see his wife before he was called to his regiment. It was getting difficult to buy gasoline for the car, too. I was tempted to forget about Friedrich Schirmer and get out. And yet I couldn’t quite bring myself to go without just making a final check-up. Twenty-four hours more, that was all I needed.”

“And so you did check up.” Now that he had the facts he wanted, George was getting impatient with Mr. Moreton’s reminiscences.

“Yes, I checked up. But without the interpreter. He was so darned scared that I told him to take the car, drive it to Strasbourg, and wait for me there. That was a lucky thing, too. When the Gestapo got hold of him later, he knew no more than that I’d gone to Bad Schwennheim. Real luck. I went there by train. Do you know it? It’s near Triburg in Baden.”

“I never got down that way.”

“It’s one of those scattered little resort towns-pensions, family hotels, and small villas on the edge of the fir forest. I’d found that the best person to make for on those inquiries was the priest, so I set out to find him. I could see the church-like a cuckoo clock it was, on the side of the hill-and I had just about enough German to find out from a passer-by that the priest’s house was beyond it. Well, I sweated up there and saw the priest. Luckily, he spoke good English. I told him the usual lies, of course-”

“Lies?”

“About its being a trifling matter, a small legacy, all that stuff. You have to play it down. If you go telling the truth on a job like that you’re a dead duck. Greed! You’d be surprised what happens to perfectly sane people when they start thinking in millions. So I told the usual lies and asked the usual questions.”

“And the priest said Friedrich Schirmer was dead?”

“Yes.” Mr. Moreton smiled slyly. “But he also said what a pity it was that I’d come too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“For the funeral.”

“You mean he’d survived Amelia?”

“By over ten months.”

“Had he a wife?”

“She’d been dead for sixteen years.”

“Children?”

“A son named Johann. That’s his photograph in the box you have. Ilse was the son’s wife. Johann would be in his fifties now.”

“You mean he’s alive?”

“I haven’t any idea, my boy,” said Mr. Moreton cheerfully. “But if he is, he’s certainly the Schneider Johnson heir.”

George smiled. “ Was the heir you mean, don’t you, sir? As a German, he could never receive the estate. The Alien Property Custodian would vest himself with the claim.”

Mr. Moreton chuckled and shook his head. “Don’t be so certain, my boy. According to the priest, Friedrich spent over twenty years of his life working for a German electrical manufacturer with a plant near Schaffhausen in Switzerland. Johann was born there. Technically, he’d be Swiss.”

George sat back in his chair. For a moment or two he was too confused to think clearly. Mr. Moreton’s pink, puffy jowls quivered with amusement. He was pleased with the effect of his statement. George felt himself getting indignant.

“But where did he live?” he asked. “Where does he live?”

“I don’t know that either. Neither did the priest. As far as I could make out, the family returned to Germany in the early twenties. But Friedrich Schirmer hadn’t seen or heard from his son and daughter-in-law in years. What’s more, there was nothing in the papers he left to show that they’d ever existed, barring the photograph and some things he’d said to the priest.”

“Did Friedrich make a will?”

“No. He had nothing to leave worth troubling about. He had lived on a small annuity. There was scarcely enough money to bury him properly.”

“But surely you made an effort to find this Johann?”

“There wasn’t much I could do right then. I asked Father Weichs-that was the priest-to let me know immediately if anything was heard of or from Johann, but the war broke out three days later. I never heard any more about it.”

“But when the German government claimed the estate, didn’t you tell them the situation and ask them to produce Johann Schirmer?”