Haunted Christmas

by Pat Herbert

  “Well, they’re the children I saw today in the forest, or I’m a Chinaman. Something bad has happened to them.”

  Bernard was speechless for a moment. He began thinking fast. Could this mean that Robbie had seen the ghosts of these children? It seemed the only possible explanation. He remembered now what his friend had told him on the day they had first met: that he was psychic. If Robbie was speaking the truth, and he had no reason to doubt him, then it looked very much like some awful disaster had befallen these children. Otherwise, why else would their pictures be on the front page of a newspaper? It was always bad news there.

  “We need to find out what it says, Robbie,” said Bernard calmly, “before we start jumping to conclusions.”

  “You’re right. Maybe the hotel manager will oblige?”

  “That’s a good idea. But he’ll probably be off duty by now. It’s gone eleven. Let’s ask him in the morning, before we leave.”

  Robbie folded up the newspaper carefully and put it in his suitcase. “All right,” he agreed. “But you do know what all this means, don’t you?”

  Bernard eyed his friend carefully. “You mean you think you saw and heard their ghosts?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. I told you I was psychic, didn’t I?”

  Bernard swallowed hard. He had never been a believer in the occult or rather had never wanted to believe in it. Ghostly visitations and the like filled him with horror. He liked a good ghost story like anyone else, but he was a man of the cloth and his only belief, or faith, was in God. He believed in a force for evil, that went without saying. There were demons as well as angels. It was the stuff of his religion. But seeing apparitions of children in dark forests. No, that only happened in fairy tales.

  Bernard slept fitfully that night, an indecipherable newspaper headline featuring heavily in his dream-filled slumber. When he woke with a start, he could hear Robbie snoring. Nothing, it seemed, could keep his friend awake. Not even the possibility that two dead children were, in some way, haunting him.

  

  The next morning dawned dazzlingly bright. The sun poured in through the shutters of their bare little room as the two friends finished their packing and prepared to go down to breakfast.

  “Have you got the newspaper?” Bernard asked, as they left the room.

  “Here,” he replied, “in my jacket.” Robbie tapped his breast pocket. “Now, we’ll know the truth, eh, Bernie?”

  “I suppose so,” said his friend, secretly worried where all this was going to lead them.

  After their breakfast of cold meats, flabby cheese and bread, they approached the hotel manager, who was on duty at reception.

  “Ah, gentlemen,” he greeted them cheerfully. “You’re checking out today, yes?”

  “That’s right,” said Robbie. “We’re just going up to our room to get our cases. But, before we do, would you please do me a favour?”

  “A favour?” The man didn’t seem to understand what Robbie meant.

  “I mean, would you translate something for me? From Norwegian into English?”

  “By all means,” said the polite young man, “my pleasure, sir.”

  Robbie took the newspaper out of his breast pocket and unfolded it carefully, laying it flat on the counter before him. Suddenly the look on the man’s face changed; instead of his previous pleasant smile, there was a dark frown furrowing his brow.

  “We would like to know what this is all about. Just who is this young woman and these two pretty children? And why are they on the front page?” Robbie pointed to the photos, while the man glanced cursorily at them.

  He coughed politely. “Er, it is hard to translate directly from our language to yours, sir,” he began. “But, basically, it is about this widow whose children were saved from drowning in the lake.”

  Robbie stared at him in disbelief. “You mean to tell me that this major headline in your national newspaper is just about two children being saved from drowning? I thought they had been murdered.”

  “Murdered? Oh, dear me, no. They were saved from drowning, as I said.” The man began to shuffle his feet nervously.

  “But why such a big headline, man?” persisted Robbie. “It’s a nice story, but not the stuff of major news, surely?”

  “Oh, we here in Norway pride ourselves on being crime-free. We have no ‘murders’, as you put it, to report. We are a peaceful, law-abiding nation.” And with that, the man turned towards another hotel guest, cutting off any further chance of interrogation by Robbie.

  “Well I never,” said Bernard, as they made their way up to their room. “He seemed quite put out, didn’t he?”

  “Hmm,” Robbie muttered, turning the key in the lock. “Very put out, I’d say.”

  As they gathered their things together, Bernard smiled encouragingly at him. “Anyway, at least we know that those children you thought you saw can’t be ghosts.”

  Robbie glared at him as he snapped his case shut. “What on earth are you talking about? The man was lying, it was obvious.”

  “But why would he do that?” asked Bernard, puzzled.

  “Could be any number of reasons,” muttered Robbie, taking a last look around the room. “Have you packed everything? Got your toothbrush?”

  Bernard smiled. “Yes, thanks. I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything this time.”

  As they boarded the coach that was to take them to the port for onward ferrying back to London, Robbie turned to his friend.

  “I’m not giving up on this, you know, man,” he said. “I know someone who can give me the real translation of this newspaper article.”

  “You do?” Bernard sighed. His friend was like a dog with a bone. He’d been told that the children had been the subject of a rescue from drowning, but he didn’t believe it or, rather, didn’t want to believe it. Why on earth would that hotel manager have lied? It didn’t make sense to him at all.

  “Yes. I know a professor of linguistics. I met him at university,” said Robbie. “Carl Oppenheimer – he’s an American. But he speaks dozens of languages. If he can’t translate this, then no one can.”

  “I see,” said Bernard. “So, when this friend tells you what is says, and he says it’s about a rescue not a murder, will you believe him?”

  “Naturally,” said Robbie, seating himself at the back of the coach, squashing up to make room for his companion. “But he won’t tell me that, Bernie, I know he won’t.”

  Bergen, June 1948

  Torrad Heglund looked at his wife in horror. She returned the same look and exploded into hollow sobs. Edda Heglund was a woman in her late sixties, who looked at least twenty years older, bent double as she was with osteoporosis. Her husband, also in his late sixties, looked about fifty. They were an ill-matched couple as they sat together opposite the Politimester, the Chief of Police, in Bergen police station.

  The Politimester, who wasn’t the most tactful of men, had broken the news of their daughter’s death almost brutally. Edda Heglund had clutched at her eyes as if she wanted to tear them from their sockets. Her husband had tried to pull her hands away, but she turned them on him, pummelling his chest so hard, he had trouble catching his breath.

  When she had calmed down slightly, the Politimester coughed and continued. “It would seem,” he said, eyeing them carefully, “that Mrs Dahl had been dead for some time.” He paused and watched their reaction carefully. “Did you not keep in regular touch with your daughter? A widow with two small children?” If there was a note of censure in his tone, Torrad chose to ignore it.

  “We did as much as we could,” he said. “But we had lost touch since she took up with some man, some peasant,” he spat the last word. “We told her we didn’t want anything to do with her if she continued to see him.”

  “Do you know who this man is?” The Politimester leaned back in his chair, eyeing them now with palpable dislike. They were obviously prudes as well as snobs.

  “No, we had no idea. Only that he was some working man from the
next village, although I think he was more of a drifter. The kind of person who didn’t belong anywhere.”

  “So, are you saying that your daughter took up with him?”

  “She told us he was only helping out on the farm, but we knew she was sleeping with him from what Halle and Birgitta told us. They said he never went home, so we drew our own conclusions.”

  “Halle and Birgitta are your missing grandchildren?” It was more or less a rhetorical question, but it didn’t do to skimp on the facts. Not in a case of cold-blooded murder.

  “That’s right. Then, when Marianne realised they were telling us things she didn’t want us to know, she stopped bringing them to stay with us.”

  “So, you’ve had no contact with your daughter or grandchildren for – how long?”

  Torrad shrugged. “Not since last Christmas,” he said.

  His wife broke in at this point. “What are you doing about finding our grandchildren, Politimester?” she demanded, still sobbing.

  “We are doing all we can,” he told her. “We have a search team out scouring the area all around your daughter’s farm. We have organised posters to be put up at strategic points in the city and outside and appeals for information have been published in the national newspapers and on the wireless. I’m sure we will find them soon.”

  Torrad could see, by the man’s expression, that he wasn’t hopeful. Halle and Birgitta had been missing since their mother’s death over two months ago. What hope was there of finding them now?

  As they left the police station, the grieving couple were met with a barrage of flash bulbs as reporters, anxious for a story, fired questions at them. Torrad pushed a particularly annoying reporter down the station steps as he ushered his wife into the waiting police car. The news of the terrible murder was all over the city; a city that was usually serene and pleasant was now turned upside down. The populace was baying for blood, and anyone’s would do. Someone had to pay. But there was no one. Marianne’s mystery man had gone to ground. No one knew who he was or where to begin looking for him.

  Edinburgh, June 1948

  Professor Carl Oppenheimer had just finished his final lecture of the day and was enjoying an early evening sherry before supper in halls. The American scholar had taken up a full-time teaching post at Edinburgh University, after gaining his Master’s Degree in Linguistics. He wasn’t really sure that this was where he wanted his life to go, but it would do for now. Brooklyn-born and bred, he had no intention of returning to that hell-hole but, on the other hand, university life in an austere post-war Britain was something he hadn’t envisaged for himself, either.

  As he was contemplating his life and wondering what to do with it, the telephone bell rang. “Hello?” he said.

  “Hello?” came the echo.

  “Who is it? Can I help you?” the Professor asked. The voice on the other end of the line seemed very far away. Tasmania, at a guess.

  “Is that you, Carl?”

  “Yeah, that’s me. Who wants to know?”

  “It’s me, Carl. Robbie MacTavish. Remember? I always promised to look you up, and now I am.”

  “Well hi, old buddy!” exclaimed Carl, genuinely pleased to hear a voice from his distant past. “How are you? Long time, no hear. How long’s it been?”

  “A good few years. Too long. How have you been keeping?”

  “Oh fine, fine. I’m teaching here now, on a sort of semi-permanent basis while I decide where I want to settle and what I want to do with the rest of my life. That kinda thing.”

  “Good for you. Are you enjoying it?”

  “Some. But I need a change. Perhaps I should do some travelling before I fossilise here.”

  Carl could hear his friend laugh at the other end of the long-distance line, but it was very faint. “Hey, buddy, I can hardly hear you. This line’s none too good. Where are you calling from? Timbuktu?”

  Robbie spoke up. “No, not quite that far. London.”

  “Gee, London! Now I haven’t been there in a while. Say, can we meet?”

  “That’s just what I was about to suggest. Can you get away? Come down here for a bit? I’d come up to you, but I can’t leave my practice at the moment. Having been away for two weeks, my patients will lynch me if I take any more time off.”

  “You been travelling, man? Gee, I envy you.”

  “Well, that’s sort of the reason I’ve got in touch, Carl. I’ve been to Norway, among other places, and I need your linguistic skills to help me translate a newspaper article that’s in Norwegian. It’s one of your languages, isn’t it?”

  “Sure is. How interesting. What’s the angle?”

  “Angle? Oh, you mean, why?”

  “Yeah, why. Why do you need me to translate this newspaper article?”

  Carl could hear his friend cough nervously down the ever-fading line.

  “It’s a long story. Can you come down soon?”

  “You try and stop me. Just give me your address, and I’ll be on my way. I’ll cancel my lectures for the next few days. Nobody comes to them anyway.”

  This wasn’t strictly true, however. Never mind, he could sort something out before he went. No problem. This call from his old university pal seemed like the answer to his prayers. He couldn’t wait.

  London, June 1948

  It was cold for June, feeling more like early April, as Robbie paced up and down the platform at King’s Cross station, two days after his telephone conversation with his friend, Professor Oppenheimer. The train from Edinburgh was due in two minutes, at six-fifteen a.m. precisely, and he couldn’t wait to see him again.

  He hadn’t told Bernard about Carl’s impending visit, sensing that he might be a bit jealous of his earlier friendship. He was also aware that Bernard still didn’t entirely believe that Robbie had seen the ghosts of two children under a fir tree in Bergen. He would probably have been annoyed, or at the very least, sceptical, of the lengths Robbie was prepared to go to prove him wrong.

  Whether or not Bernard would approve of Robbie’s American friend, especially the reason for his visit, didn’t matter. When he got confirmation of what was in that newspaper story, then he could tell Bernard he’d told him so and, hopefully, they could heal the slight rift that had developed between them.

  Why the hotelier had lied about the article was a puzzle, of course. Maybe the man was worried about the effect it would have on his trade. Robbie thought it would have the opposite effect, himself. Tourists would flock to the place, if he was any judge of human nature.

  He saw his old friend’s head poking out of the train window as it puffed its way into the station. Carl waved at his friend and Robbie rushed up to open the door for him as the train slowed to a halt.

  “Hi ya, old pal!” greeted his friend. Robbie’s hand was outstretched to him, but he handed him his suitcase before realising he was meant to shake it instead. He thumped him on the back. “Sorry,” he said, taking his case back. “I forgot about your quaint old English custom of shaking hands. You’re looking great, by the way.”

  “You too,” said Robbie, looking into his friend’s fresh, open face and round, clear blue eyes which made him look younger than his years. However, the medical man in Robbie noted a certain pallor in his cheeks, and he had lost quite a bit of weight since he’d last seen him. Still, that was to be expected. There weren’t many overweight people knocking about these days. The lack of proper food during the lean years of the war had seen to that. He also noticed dark circles under Carl’s eyes and wondered if he had been overdoing it.

  “It’s so good to see you again, Robbie,” said Carl affectionately. “I missed you.”

  “Me too. Come on, I’ve got a taxi waiting.”

  “Wow! A taxi! You must be doing well,” observed Carl, as he followed his friend out of the station.

  “Oh, I’m doing all right, I suppose,” said Robbie, smiling. “But I don’t go about in taxis every day of the week.” The fare had made a bigger dent in his finances than he had bargained for,
but he was collecting his little second-hand car from the dealer in a few days, so he would be able to drive his friend back to the station, at least.

  “Gee! Thanks, pal,” smiled Carl.

  “Well, I can’t have you struggling with your luggage on the blasted tube.”

  Once Carl was settled into the spare room and given breakfast by Lucy Carter, Robbie left him to attend to his morning surgery, promising his friend a pub lunch and an interesting story about his Norwegian holiday.

  

  Lucy was pleased to have another man to look after, especially an American. She had had some fun with the Yanks during the war, and had even become engaged to one of them, a man with the impossible name of Hiram B. Finkelman the Third. He was from Oklahoma and had promised her an exciting, open-air life on his ranch when the war was over. But he was killed in the D-Day landings, and that was that.

  She had been heartbroken for a time, but she wasn’t the only one to have lost a sweetheart to the war. It had been almost the norm to see the telegraph boy cycling down the street, the occupants of the houses praying he would pass them by for another day. Now she had two men to fuss over, so things weren’t so bad. You got over everything in the end, she supposed.

  And Carl was happy to be left in the charge of Robbie’s rather plump but pretty housekeeper. He had begun flirting with her outrageously from the first moment he met her.

  “Hi there, Lucy. My, my, you’re a sight for sore eyes. Robbie’s a lucky man.”

  Although she had been pleased that he obviously found her attractive, she didn’t let him see how she felt. She soon let him know she wasn’t to be trifled with. He was charming and handsome, there was no denying that, but she had her dignity and pride. Besides, he would probably only stay for a few days and be off, she knew not where.

  It would, however, be nice while it lasted, she thought.