“I care,” I promised her.

“Only because you want to save your own flesh. No, don’t make a protest. There’s no harm in it. Walter was nothing to you while he yet lived. There’s no reason you should trouble yourself of his death but that his death has troubled you.”

I looked into her coal-gray eyes. “Walter Yate saved my life. Had he not acted valiantly in his last minutes, I should be dead now too. Finding the man who killed him is more to me than my own safety.”

She nodded slowly, as though the news that her husband had saved my life were the sort of thing she heard all the time.

I took the blank look upon her face as permission to proceed with my inquiry. “Did Mr. Yate ever say why he thought Dogmill had decided to pursue him in particular in this charge of socking? It is, as you say, something done by nearly all porters.”

She laughed. “It were obvious, weren’t it? Walter wanted to rally the men so that Dogmill couldn’t abuse them no more. He wanted to make his peace with Greenbill Billy and try to get the wages to rise, but Dogmill wouldn’t have none of it. I said to him it were better he worried about his family than the porters, but he said he had to do his duty, and so he put them before us, and he ended up the way I always knew he would. There are things made for great men, and small men oughtn’t to bother with them.”

“Such things as labor combinations?”

She nodded.

“Did he trouble himself with other affairs of great men? For example, had you ever known your husband to demonstrate an interest in political matters?”

“He said once that he would have liked to have made enough money to pay his scot and lot and then vote in an election.”

“But was he involved in any way in the election that has only now commenced?”

She looked down so that I could not see her face. “Not that I ever heard of.”

I took a moment to collect my thoughts. “Do you know what has happened to his gang of porters since his death? Have those men joined with Greenbill, or have they found a new leader?”

Mrs. Yate looked up once more, and even in the dim light of the room I could see the blood rush to her face. She opened her mouth but could not speak.

“They will never join with Greenbill,” a man called out, answering in her stead, “and so they have a new leader.”

I nearly started from my chair. In the darkness of the threshold stood a tall figure, ruggedly built, silhouetted by the cheap tallow that burned behind him. It took only a moment for me to recognize him as John Littleton, looking far more self-assured than he had in Ufford’s kitchen.

I half rose and bowed in greeting.

He nodded at me. “Rest assured,” he said, rather jauntily, “that Yate’s boys will stand firm against Greenbill Billy- and against Dogmill too.”

“And whose boys are they now?”

He laughed with an easy confidence. “Why, they’re Littleton’s boys now. There’s one or two other things what were Yate’s that are now Littleton’s. We do what we can to honor the man.” He winked at me with evident humor. Whatever had happened to make him the gang’s leader, it had turned Littleton into a new man.

Mrs. Yate met my eyes for an instant, a silent pleading for my understanding. I attempted, by means of my facial expression, to show her compassion, though I fear I only showed indifference.

“Go to the other room, lass,” Littleton told the widow. “The baby is stirring and wants its mother.”

She nodded and retreated, softly closing the door behind her.

“Good to see you looking so healthy,” Littleton told me as he lowered himself into his chair. Behind him, I noticed, were a series of wicker cages that appeared, as I squinted in the dusk of the room, to hold rats. Littleton, I recalled, had mentioned that he earned some coin as a rat catcher. I knew now that he employed that all too common trick of unleashing his own rats that he might be employed to remove them, which a skilled ratman could do with little more than a whistle. Such men could earn a nice bit of silver catching the same rats dozens of times over.

“Good to see you looking so prosperous,” I said dryly.

“Aye,” he answered. “There are those what would call me callous, taking up Water Yate’s place among the men, taking his place with his pretty wife. But someone had to step in, do you see? I couldn’t let Greenbill Billy have his way with those boys. Would Yate have wanted that? I don’t think so. And I could not let any cruel bastard have his way with Anne.”

“You are surely generous,” I said dryly.

“I see what’s happening behind those shifty Jew eyes of yours, Weaver. You think maybe I helped in getting rid of Yate so I could have his woman and his place too- that I’m a wicked godgel-gut who would take what isn’t his any way he can get it. Well, you were there, and you know it ain’t true. I had nothing against Yate but that I thought his wife was pretty, and I never fancied myself as leader of the gang until the boys insisted I become so. It was right moving. We sat in a little gin house down by the quays and talked about what would happen next. One fellow stood and suggested we throw our lot in with Greenbill, but he was answered with many fine blows to the face, I can tell you. Then another stood and said that I should lead them, that of all the men there only John Littleton knew aught about labor combinations. I tell you, Weaver, I had a tear in my eye.”

“It sounds very stirring.”

“Oh, you may mock if you like, but it was powerful touching. And you think it were easy for me? I was beat nearly to death once for standing at the head of a labor combination, and I vowed never again. All I wanted was to earn my shillings so I could eat my dinner and drink my pot. But this is bigger than me. I’ll be beat to my death this time if I have to. That’s my resolve, so you had better say nothing to me of your suspicions.”

“I did not say I suspected anything of you.”

“Well, I would if I was you,” he said, with a devilish grin. “I’d think me a bastardly stallion, out to get the doxy and the socket. But you oughtn’t to, ’cause I had nothing to do with what happened with poor Yate, the Lord rest him.”

“Do you, by any chance, know who did?”

“Of course I know who bloody well did. It was Dennis Dogmill, who else? Meantime, Greenbill Billy stands by and laughs because now his gang will be in better shape for the next job, or at least that is what he hopes. But the two of them will run afoul of each other before long, I promise you. It’s only a matter of time before Dogmill gives Greenbill what Yate got.”

“It may be that Dennis Dogmill had Yate killed; he surely did not come down to the quays and beat the fellow with a metal pipe. Who did?”

“I would not put anything past that one. It could well be he did the work himself, though I haven’t heard about it this way or that.”

“What about this Greenbill? Might he have thrown his lot in with Dogmill?”

Littleton let out a snorting sort of laugh. “Not likely, friend. They may both of them rejoice to see Yate dead, but they could hardly have come to terms on the execution of such a monstrous deed. Of course, anything is possible, isn’t it. And now that I think on it, I haven’t heard of Greenbill showing his poxy marketplace in the past couple of weeks.”

“It seems as though he may be hiding, then.”

“He might be doing just that.”

“Any thoughts on where a fellow like that would hide?”

“Might be anywhere, you know. This basement or that garret. So long as he has a punk to fetch his food and drink for him, he don’t need to see the light of day for a while, now, does he?”

“And if he is not guilty of killing Yate, why should he fear to see the light of day?”

“He might be guilty of far more- or far less, for that matter. Just different, is all. Most likely, if you ask my opinion, he’s afraid that what killed Yate will get him next. Dogmill, he might reckon, will want to do away with the both of them, and the gangs be damned.”