CHAPTER 22Inspector Stoddart's visit left an atmosphere of uneasiness at the lodge.
Miss Delauney's antagonism to His Majesty's police force, developed during a career that had more than once been within bowing acquaintance with the Law Courts, was instinctive and ineradicable. She distrusted policemen, from the man on point duty to the Chief of the C.I.D. In her opinion they were a prying, meddling crowd, making a still more difficult problem of life, which Providence, or some other potent authority, had already made sufficiently complicated.
It might have afforded her a modicum of consolation had she known that she had puzzled the inspector. It was true she had not claimed ownership of the vagrant bead, but neither had she denied it. His knowledge of the subject had remained exactly wh
