Antidote To Murder by Felicity Young Page B

all but gasped.
    Everard must have noticed her look of shock. “Care for a look?” he asked with aggravating nonchalance.
    She snatched the paper from his hand and leafed through it. Over the weeks he had openly quizzed her about her research paper. Once she had even caught him riffling through a draft copy she had left on a bench top, an act she’d put down at the time to harmless interest. She needed only a quick glance now to see that although the presentation was slightly different, much of the text was blatantly paraphrased from her own. More fool her for thinking her own profession above such deceit. No wonder Everard had orchestrated getting his paper to Spilsbury first.
    Using all her powers of restraint, she managed to halt the accusation before it spilled from her lips. An altercation in front of their mentor would do more harm than good. Besides, it would be almost impossible to prove that she had come up with the idea first. She couldn’t hand her proposal in now. What could she do?
    Spilsbury said, “I can’t guarantee that Dr. Eccles, our primary researcher in tumours, will be interested, but it is a feather in your cap, Everard, well done. As for your paper, Dr. McCleland, you may hand it in if you wish; otherwise, hang on to it until I come back.”
    “I might just as well keep it for a bit longer, sir,” Dody said.
    “Suit yourself.”
    Out of the corner of her eye she saw Everard smirk.
    She whirled to face him. Now she understood Borislav’s strange reaction to her paper; it was because Everard had shown him his first. That her old friend might have labelled her as the plagiarist was almost as upsetting as the crime itself.
    “Yes, Dr. McCleland?” Everard challenged. When she failed to respond, he said, “Save us the suspense, then. Tell us something about your proposal.”
    She straightened and attempted to cover her inner fury with an outer aspect of cool dignity. She could not think clearly when she was angry and this answer required a quick, calm head.
    After a brief pause, she said, “Mine also involves rats, only I am interested in seeing if the creatures can be trained to sniff out the tuberculosis bacilli.”
    Johannes Fibiger was also investigating the correlation between cancer and TB. The sniffing talents of rats had been but a passing thought of Dody’s during the course of her reading and the idle observations of her new pets.
    The question now was, could she really assemble the information and put the proposal together before Spilsbury’s return? She had no choice. She had to.
    Spilsbury shook his head in apparent wonder. “Marvellous, Dr. McCleland, marvellous. A cheap method of diagnosis that has the potential to reach masses.”
    Praise indeed! Dody could hardly believe her ears. For a fleeting moment she wondered if Spilsbury knew more about the conflict between his assistants than he revealed.
Playing us off against one another,
she supposed,
is one way of bringing out our best—or our worst.
    “Bravo,” Everard said drily. “What interesting reading. I can hardly wait.”

Chapter Six
    T he paper had taken several weeks to produce and now Dody had only two weeks to start and finish the new one. Despite the pressure, the more she thought about it, the more excited she became about her off-the-cuff proposal. The new challenge filled her with an electric charge she counted on to keep her going through the busy days ahead.
    But there were still the day-to-day activities to contend with, and the first of her priorities was a visit to the Kent family. Accompanied by Florence, Dody descended the stone kitchen stairs to consult Cook.
    Annie looked on in horror as, under Cook’s supervision, Dody placed a large basket on the scrubbed kitchen table and packed it with a family-sized pork pie, ginger beer, a seed cake, four crisp apples, and a sweating chunk of cheddar.
    “I thought we were having that pie for our lunch tomorrow, Mrs. C,” Annie complained.
    “By then it