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the husband live right over there." She pointed through the kitchen window, across the expanse of shed roof to a dingy-looking window on the other side. |
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"You knew the Salem woman well?" |
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The woman hunched her already too narrow shoulders in a noncommital shrug. "We wasn't exactly what you would call close friends. But she was a real nice lady, a lady that was kind to me." |
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"In what way, Mrs. Markle?" Machino's voice was gentle and nonthreatening. |
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Rosemary Markle hesitated. She had never told anyone about Fred. Only Cappy knew about that, and even she wouldn't have known if she hadn't discovered the Markle woman huddled on the shed roof, without a coat, shivering, the victim of her husband's grim determination to punish her. |
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"Mr. Markle scolds me sometimes," she admitted. "Cappy, saw me sittin' out there on the roof. She was kind enough to bring me in out of the cold." |
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"So is that how you discovered all of this? Trying to get in out of the cold? Let me ask it this waywas Mr. Markle punishing you when you looked in the window?" |
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"Tell me what you saw, Mrs. Markle." |
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"Well," she hesitated, "I'd been out there for a while, and I had to go to the bathroom. I |
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