Read Online The Chandelier Ballroom by Elizabeth Lord - Free Book Online

wood.
    Finally it burst inward and there she was, crouched on the tiled floor, still naked but for a thin towel across her body as a flimsy protection.
    ‘Don’t hurt me!’ she was begging, but he hardly heard her as he stood over her, she cringing from the blind rage on his face. ‘He made me … don’t hurt me, please. I …’
    Her plea broke off to a sharp shriek of terror, like that of a rabbit he’d heard caught by a fox as he whipped the towel from her grasp, taking one end in each hand to encircle her half-raised head with it, the ends wrapping around her neck to drag them together and pull with all his might.
    How long he pulled he had no idea, but coming finally to his senses he saw that her body had gone limp. Her beautiful grey eyes were bulging. The delicate skin of her face was suffused and swollen – her beautiful face. Slowly he let go the towel as if fearing to hurt her more, saw the head flop lifeless.
    He heard his own cry of agony as he fell to his knees to shake her awake. ‘Cee! Oh God! Cee, wake up! Cee, please, please wake up!’
    How long he called for her to wake up he didn’t know, kneeling beside the limp body, clasping it to his chest, rocking it back and forth. It was like holding a piece of foam.
    How long he remained there he had no idea, but slowly came the realisation that he had lost her, and then that he could not leave her there. It took a long time for any real thought to come into his head as to what to do next.
    Crying, choking, he began dragging her from the bathroom into the bedroom. There he lifted her up and laid her on the bed. Her limbs flopped as he laid her down. Not knowing what to do next, her lifted her into his arms again and went out into the hallway, going down the main stairs as if in a dream, a nightmare of a dream that seemed to move so slowly, like someone sleepwalking. Soon he would wake up. Somehow he found himself in that place he had once so happily called the ballroom, the light still on and there the body of the man he had pummelled, as still as death.
    Kneeling by the sofa he lay Cee on the floor, all the while blubbering, ‘Forgive me, I didn’t mean to do it. Please forgive me, my beautiful darling, I didn’t mean this to happen,’ over and over.
    Slowly insanity began to wane, a seed of reality returning and with it renewed hurt. And anger. Played for a fool, the woman he’d stupidly thought had given her whole heart to him had proved herself to be no more than a damned cheap gold digger and he, fucking idiot, had fallen for it, had had the piss taken out of him. It was that more than finding her with some other man that now got him; robbed of his self-esteem, knowing himself to have been made a fool of, damn them to bloody hell, the pair of them!
    His tears evaporating, he felt her wrist. Nothing. She was dead, the only one he’d ever really loved in his life. He truly believed that. Pushing away a new wave of remorse, he rose to his feet to check the man’s pulse. He half expected him to groan, but there wasn’t a flicker. He felt a satisfaction in this death, wishing he’d taken it slower, killing the bastard, seeing him suffer, begging pathetically for mercy …
    The grandfather clock in the passage struck, making him start.
    Three o’clock! Was that all it was? Something had to be done about these two, and quick. His mind raced now with the thought of where to dispose of the bodies. In the grounds somewhere … but they could be found there.
    This Ronny Peckham, what if he would be missed, traced here? It came to him that there’d been no friend called Sylvia. They’d made it all up and he’d let himself believe it. To trump up the tale of a friend with cancer – it was despicable.
    And Cee, she had no family, but any curious acquaintance might look for her, enquiries made, police suspecting foul play, digging up the grounds, questioning. He could already see his world falling apart.
    The frantic debate ceased abruptly when he