It was Saturday morning. Sally & Tom had arrived late the night before and had given themselves to the luxury of their own beds. Sally found herself regretting slightly being alone again, but she had more than that on her mind. It was time to learn a few things about this. She wasn't going to scream the place down and then find out she was wrong.
So she was going to talk to someone about plagiarism, and Mrs. Templeton was the logical choice. She had to stay completely clear of the university, she knew no one there she would trust to keep quiet about it, especially if she were wrong. But Mrs. Templeton was a professional librarian, and they know something about plagiarism.
She was waiting on the bench in front of the library when Mrs. Templeton came to open up at 9:55.
"Pardon me, Mrs. Templeton, but I wonder if we could talk. I want your opinion on something."
"I know you, you're..." she hesitated.
"Sally McDougal," Sally responded.
"Oh, yes. We spoke the day of the, well, accident. At least, that is what people are calling it. You wanted to talk to me? Come back behind the counter to my desk. We can talk there, and I can keep an eye on the door. I'n not expecting much custom, but one never knows."
When they had relocated to the furtherest corner of the room, Sally began, "I want to talk about plagiarism. I need to know exactly what it is. The plagerism I'm thinking of is going to be pretty serious."
Mrs. Templeton looked directly at Sally and then began. "It often is. As you certainly do know already, plagerism is presenting someone else's written work as one's own. When one reads something, one supposes that the author wrote it himself or herself. If he or she did not, he or she is usually required by custom to say so, to divulge the fact that he did not originally write the section, and who did, if he knows that."
"Plagerism is often very difficult to prove. You can't commit it by accident, you must intend to copy someone else's work. It requires establishing that sentences, paragraphs, or even larger bodies of text have been copied exactly, or paraphrazed very closely, and on purpose. It isn't plagerism for two people to write the same thing generally. The easiest to prove is an exact copy of some considerable lenth of text."
"But this isn't about the subject of plagerism, fascinating as you and I might find that subject, is it? I don't suppose it would do me the least good to ask what specifically you have in your mind, would it?" Mrs. Templeton asked.
"Not right now. I'm sorry. I can't tell you right now what it's about, but I do appreciate your confirmation of what I thought I knew."
"I'm not a lawyer. Are you sure you don't need one? I wonder why you don't you ask someone on the faculty at the research station? They will know right enough. Most of the plagerism I deal with is rather obvious. In most cases the original writer died before the plagerizer was born."
"I hate to bother you with this, but I can't go to the university, and I can't say why, either."
"I won't press you, my dear. You must show that the copy came after the original. You must show duplication of text far beyond what could be expected to occur naturally. And I would see a lawyer before I made any accusations. And I would tell the lawyer far more about it than you have told me."
"Thank you, Mrs. Templeton, you've been very patient with me."
Sally didn't intend to see a lawyer, but she did intend to make sure that she could show that the original really did come first, and that the murderer hadn't somehow written the draft himself before he wrote his own disertation.
For her part, Mrs. Templeton knew that Sally was Bob's very good friend, that Sally did not for a minute accept either suicide or accident, and that she had been gone from Goose Cove without explanation for several days, possibly a week. And now here she is back with talk about plagiarism. What could it all mean?
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