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natural life.”
    Young sank back in his chair. There was an expression of relief on his face. He soon was taken away, and as soon as the doors leading to the prison pen had closed on him, Justice Herrick made his explanation to the jury.
    “It is only right,” said Justice Herrick, “to tell you gentlemen that the court advised the defendant’s counsel to tender this plea, and that the court also advised the District Attorney to accept it. The man’s mental condition was the cause for the action taken. You are aware that this man has been under medical observation. The experts reported this man legally sane, but insane from a medical point of view. He therefore is supposed to know the difference between right and wrong and should be held responsible. But as his insanity has been reported to me as being of the progressive order, it is difficult to tell where one line merges into the other.”

7
    E
lling,
Hooper Young had named his accomplice. Lael believed Elling existed, so he now claimed, but Rudd still did not: Elling was a figment or an excuse—there was only Hooper Young.
    “If he existed, they would have found him,” said Rudd.
    “They found Young only by luck. Besides, if you have one man in custody, certainly involved, why admit to the press a second man, not in custody, is also involved? It just complicates matters.”
    “Hooper Young was avoiding responsibility for—”
    “—he was trying to share responsibility with the other person involved. People never act alone. They always drag others along with them.”
    “You have no evidence—”
    “—neither do you.”
    “I’ve got the district attorney.”
    “I’ve got Hooper Young.”
    “He’s biased.”
    “So’s the attorney. And both of them are not only biased: they’re dead.”
    They had hardly argued before, Rudd always giving in, but now for some reason he found himself unwilling to back down. Thinking it over later, he couldn’t understand why it mattered to him to insist that Young had acted alone. Even when, ten days after reading the articles, Lael claimed to have found among the microfiche of genealogical records at the church library one Charles Elling, of Connecticut, born 1840, excommunicated 1898, no death date recorded, he continued to argue.
    “That would make Elling sixty-three at the time of the murder,” Rudd said.
    “It’s still possible.”
    But Rudd would not admit it. He could not imagine Hooper Young being accosted in the park by a sixty-three-year-old deviant, then somehow, despite the difference in age and (at least putatively) in sexual orientation, making friends with the man. He could not see a rheumy-eyed sixty-three-year-old, his hand gnarled and liver-spotted, bashing Anna Pulitzer’s skull hard enough to kill her.
    “Sixty-three isn’t so old,” said Lael. “And the paper said the blows were weak.”
    “It’s old.”
    “Depends on the man,” said Lael. “At least admit it’s possible.”
    But Rudd would not admit, and the more he refused to admit, the more interested Lael seemed to be in forcing an admission from him. Lael got closer and closer to Rudd, looking into his eyes steadily until Rudd broke the gaze.
    “You’ll admit,” said Lael. “Sooner or later. You always do.”
    He started writing his research paper, despite Lael’s warnings not to do so. According to Lael it was a mistake: Mrs. Madison would read Rudd into it.
    “What do I have to fear?” asked Rudd. “She can read me into it all she wants: I’m not there.”
    She would treat him differently, Lael said, would ask him how things were at home, would look at him strangely. Eventually, he himself would become different as a result.
    “You don’t even know her,” said Rudd.
    Lael shook his head. He knew enough, he said. He knew how people were.
    Rudd shook him off, wrote his pre-paper summary. He wanted to prove to Mrs. Madison that his glass was half-full. It was simple, a research paper, all he had to do was develop a