The Crocodile Bird by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online Page A

tiptoe back across the landing to Mother’s room.
    From here, you could see the bats that lived in the barn roof on the other side of the lane and swooped after moths and gnats. Sometimes she saw the great cream-colored owl with a face like a cat’s in a book. She had never seen a real cat. It was a little too early for owls this evening. Down below her, in the little patch of front garden, as twilight came, the color began to fade from the red and pink geraniums and the tobacco flowers began to gleam more whitely. If the window had been open she could have smelled them, for their scent came out at dusk.
    Just as Liza was thinking nothing would happen, it would get dark without anything happening, the front door opened and Mother came out in her green and purple and blue skirt and purple top, her green beads and gold earrings, with a black shawl wrapped around her. She opened the gate in the wall that ran around the garden, unlocked the door of the little castle, and the dogs came rushing out. Mother said, “Quiet. Sit,” and they sat, though trembling and quivering, Liza could see, hating this enforced stillness.
    Mother said, “Off you go,” and the pair of them began gamboling about, jumping up and trying to lick her, leaving off when she didn’t respond. She walked around the side of the gatehouse out of sight, the dogs following, but Liza knew she wouldn’t go far because she never did in the evenings.
    Liza ran back into her own bedroom, climbed onto the bed, and pressed her face against the window. Outside a bat swooped, so close that she jerked her face back, though she knew the glass was there. Rudi and Heidi were in the back garden playing, grappling with each other and making mock growling noises and rolling over and over. Mother wasn’t with them, Mother must have come back into the house.
    Back on the landing, Liza listened, but she couldn’t hear Mother down there. She ran into Mother’s room and up to the window. Mother was sitting on the wall, listening to the music coming out of the band around her head and holding the little black box in her hands.
    Where were the dogs? No longer in the back garden, she discovered as she bounced back onto her own bed. They must have gone out through the opening in the fence and into the wood, as they sometimes did. But they were well-trained, they always came back at a call.
    It would get dull now if nothing more happened than Mother sitting on the wall, waiting for the dogs to finish their play. Liza never considered getting back into bed and trying to sleep as an alternative to this roving from room to room. Either she fell asleep when she happened to be on her own bed or Mother found her asleep on the landing floor or in the chair by the front bedroom window. She always woke in her own bed in the mornings. But she didn’t want to be there now, she wasn’t tired.
    Perhaps Mother had decided to do something different. Liza ran back to check. Mother was still there, still listening. It was nearly dark but not too dark to see the man with the beard come along the lane from the bridge direction. The man looked just the same except that this time he hadn’t got his backpack with him.
    His footsteps made no sound on the sandy floor. Mother wouldn’t have heard them if they had with that thing on her head and the music that was called Wagner flowing into her ears. Liza began to be frightened. Mother had said the dogs would protect them but the dogs weren’t there, the dogs were a long way away in the wood.
    Liza couldn’t look.
    Why hadn’t she banged on the window to warn Mother? She hadn’t thought of that till afterward. The first time the man came she had got under the bed, the second time she had fetched him a drink of water. This time she put her hands over her eyes. They were talking, she could hear their voices but not what they said. Very cautiously she parted her fingers and peeped through them, but they had gone, Mother and the man, they had come too