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.