Part 15 (1/2)

The door I sought was on the third landing, and when I knocked a distractingly pretty woman, small in stature but finely shaped, answered without hesitation. She wore a loose-fitting gown that did little to conceal the treasures of her form. Her hair, which tumbled out beneath her bonnet, was so pale as to be almost white, and the features of her face were rounded and delicate. She looked as much a doll as a breathing woman.

”Do I know you?” she asked me. Her voice was sweet and soothing, but it quivered, too, when she spoke. Her eyes, of a gray so dark as to be on the cusp of black, focused on nothing in particular, as though she were afraid to look too much at my face.

”I beg you, allow me in and we shall talk of it,” I answered. I had expected her to want more persuading than that, but to my surprise she stood back and let me step inside.

The room was dark, with one lamp lit, but there was enough light for me to see that it was cluttered and ill kept. I could smell old beer and sour wine, and older and more sour clothes. I stumbled my way to an old chair, whose originary legs had all been replaced with mismatched wood, and sat in response to a lazy flick of her hand.

”You do not recognize me now?” I asked her, as I stepped into the light of her single flame. She stared at me while lowering herself into an old barrel that had been adapted into a chair.

”I do,” she said. ”I do now, and I'm not surprised to see you, for I believed you must come at last.”

”I did not kill your husband,” I said, holding my palms upward in a gesture of-I don't know what. Something benevolent, I suppose. ”I had never met him before, and I had no reason to wish him harm.”

”I know it,” she said softly. She looked to the floor. ”I never thought you had done. I was at your trial and heard all.”

”I am glad that you say so, for I would be very grieved if you thought me guilty. You must know that we are all of a single purpose. We both want justice for your husband.”

She shook her head. ”There can be no justice. The world ain't right, Mr. Weaver. I see that now. I once reckoned it was, but that was just foolishness. A woman like me don't have a chance, and Walter never had a chance neither. I thought he did before. I thought that Judge Rowley was a kindly man to do Walter such a turn, but I see he is no less wicked than the rest of us.”

I leaned forward. ”I don't understand you, madam. What good turn had Rowley ever done your husband?”

”What good turn? Why, he saved him from the gallows is what he done. Not a year and a half ago, sir, when Walter stood before Rowley on charges of socking tobacco. That Dogmill said Walter took two s.h.i.+llings' worth, though he never done no more than what every man who worked his s.h.i.+ps done: collect the gold dust, as they call the loose leaves that fall out of the hogshead. And maybe now and again he'd dip in with his hand, but what of it? That's the way it's always been done-since time immemorial, he always said. But then Dogmill has Walter taken by the constables, and a month later he is facing trial for his life. They wanted to hang him, they did, for two s.h.i.+llings' worth of tobacco sc.r.a.ped from the deck of a s.h.i.+p.”

I blinked hard, as though to banish the confusion. ”But Rowley sided with Mr. Yate?”

”He did, sir. Dogmill sent a thousand witnesses to lie, sir, saying that Walter was a bad man who wanted nothing but to steal so he could be lazy, but Rowley looked after Walter, the way the law says he should have done for you-but he didn't.”

It would appear that Rowley once took his responsibilities as a judge more seriously than he had at my trial, all the more surprising because, in the case of Walter Yate, he sided against a Whig like Dogmill-particularly when it appeared he had sided against me because because of Dogmill. Could it be that he was less of a political creature then, or that now the imminent election made his obligations to party stronger than his obligations to the law? ”Do you have any idea why the judge behaved toward me as he did?” of Dogmill. Could it be that he was less of a political creature then, or that now the imminent election made his obligations to party stronger than his obligations to the law? ”Do you have any idea why the judge behaved toward me as he did?”

”I don't have no ideas at all. Not anymore. When Walter got set free by the jury, I thought all was right in the world. We had two little boys then, and my husband was at liberty and clear of the law. But that don't last. Now both those boys is dead and our new baby has no true father, for Walter's been struck down and no one cares who done it.”

”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-a.s.sured than he had in Ufford's kitchen.

I half rose and bowed in greeting.

He nodded at me. ”Rest a.s.sured,” 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 compa.s.sion, though I fear I only showed indifference.

”Go to the other room, la.s.s,” 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 unleas.h.i.+ng 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d have his way with Anne.”

”You are surely generous,” I said dryly.

”I see what's happening behind those s.h.i.+fty 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 G.o.dgel-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 s.h.i.+llings 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.dly 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?”