“Good Lord,” she said, “do you think any woman would go and swallow a lot of cyanide of potassium for an accusation that wasn’t true?”

“The coroner seemed to think it was possible. Your brother, too—”

Aimée interrupted me.

“Men are all alike. All for preserving the decencies. But you don’t catch me believing that stuff. If an innocent woman gets some foul anonymous letter, she laughs and chucks it away. That’s what I—” she paused suddenly, and then finished, “would do.”

But I had noticed the pause. I was almost sure that what she had been about to say was “That’s what I did.”

I decided to take the war into the enemy’s country.

“I see,” I said pleasantly, “so you’ve had one, too?”

Aimée Griffith was the type of woman who scorns to lie. She paused a minute—flushed, then said:

“Well, yes. But I didn’t let it worry me!”

“Nasty?” I inquired sympathetically, as a fellow sufferer.

“Naturally. These things always are. The ravings of a lunatic. I read a few words of it, realized what it was and chucked it straight into the wastepaper basket.”

“You didn’t think of taking it to the police?”

“Not then. Least said soonest mended—that’s what I felt.”

An urge came over me to say solemnly: “No smoke without fire!” but I restrained myself. To avoid temptation I reverted to Megan.

“Have you any idea of Megan’s financial position?” I asked. “It’s not idle curiosity on my part. I wondered if it would actually be necessary for her to earn her living.”

“I don’t think it’s strictly necessary. Her grandmother, her father’s mother, left her a small income, I believe. And in any case Dick Symmington would always give her a home and provide for her, even if her mother hasn’t left her anything outright. No, it’s the principle of the thing.”

“What principle?”

“Work, Mr. Burton. There’s nothing like work, for men and women. The one unforgivable sin is idleness.”

“Sir Edward Grey,” I said, “afterwards our foreign minister, was sent down from Oxford for incorrigible idleness. The Duke of Wellington, I have heard, was both dull and inattentive at his books. And has it ever occurred to you, Miss Griffith, that you would probably not be able to take a good express train to London if little Georgie Stephenson had been out with his youth movement instead of lolling about, bored, in his mother’s kitchen until the curious behaviour of the kettle lid attracted the attention of his idle mind?”

Aimée merely snorted.

“It is a theory of mine,” I said, warming to my theme, “that we owe most of our great inventions and most of the achievements of genius to idleness—either enforced or voluntary. The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself—and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results.

“Besides,” I went on, before Aimée could get in another sniff, “there is the artistic side.”