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

near the gatehouse for her to see or else they had walked around the back. She ran to the back and as she jumped on her bed, Mother screamed.
    “What was he doing to her?” Sean said.
    “She never told me, she never said a word about it, not then and not later. I know now, of course I do. When she screamed I was so frightened I covered up my ears, but I could still hear, the window was open. I thought the man would catch her and—oh, make her his prisoner or something—and then come and get me.
    “You were only a little kid.”
    “And there was no one else for miles and miles. You know that. There never was. If there had been it couldn’t have happened, none of it could.”
    It wasn’t dark but the beginning of the long midsummer twilight. When Mother’s scream died away she heard the man laugh but she couldn’t hear what it was he whispered. She looked out of the window, she had to look, and Mother was on the grass path and the man was on top of her. He was trying to hold her there with one hand and with the other he was undoing his jeans.
    Liza was so frightened she couldn’t make a sound or do anything. But Mother could. Mother twisted her head around under the man’s arm that pinned her neck and bit his hand. He jumped and pulled up his hand, shouting that word Matt had used on the doorstep, and Mother screamed out, “Heidi, Rudi! Kill! Kill!”
    The dogs came out of the wood. They came running as if they had been waiting for the summons, as if they had been sitting among the trees listening for just that command. In the half-dark they no longer looked like nice friendly dogs that licked your face but hounds of hell, though that was before Liza had ever heard of hounds of hell.
    They didn’t jump at the man, they flew at him. All eight powerful black legs took off and they were airborne. Their mouths gaped open and Liza could see their white shining teeth. The man had started to get to his feet, but he fell over on his back when the dogs came at him. He covered his face with his hands and rolled this way and that. Heidi had half his great yellow beard in her jaws and Rudi was on him biting his neck. The dogs made a noise, a rough, grumbling, snorting sound.
    Mother jumped up lightly as if nothing had happened and dusted down her skirt with her hands. She stood in that way she had, with her hands on her hips, the shawl hanging loose from her shoulders, and she watched them calmly, the dogs savaging the man and the man screaming and cursing.
    Then, after a little while, she said, “All right, dogs, that’ll do. Quiet now. Still.”
    They obeyed her at once. It was clever the way they stopped the moment she spoke. Rudi had some of the man’s blood on his face and Heidi a mouthful of beard. The man rolled over again, his head on his arms, but he had stopped screaming, he didn’t make a sound. Mother bent over him, looking closely, she didn’t touch him with her hands but prodded him with one small, delicate foot.
    Liza made a little sound to herself up in her bedroom, a whimper like a dog whining behind a closed door.
    Sean said hoarsely, “Was he dead?”
    “Oh, no, he wasn’t dead. ”
    “What did she do?”
    “Nothing. She just looked at him.”
    “Didn’t she get help? There was a phone in Shrove House, you said.”
    “Of course she didn’t get help,” Liza said impatiently.
    Mother took hold of the dogs by their collars and put them in the little castle for the night. Liza saw her do that from the other window and heard her come into their own house and shut the front door after her. She went out onto the landing and listened. In the sitting room Mother was moving a chair about and it sounded as if she had climbed on the chair and jumped off it. Liza scrambled across the bed to have another look at the man on the grass. He was still there but not lying face-downward anymore.
    It was really dark now, too dark to see much but the shape of the man sitting there with his head on his knees and his