JEREMY PAXTON HAD TOLD them that Cedric Barmforth had retired early owing to ill health, but when Rafferty and Llewellyn went to see him, he seemed bursting with vitality. Mr Barmforth was in his early sixties, with a great bush of grey hair. He was well over six feet and was firmly built. He certainly had a physical presence, and Rafferty could well imagine that he had kept his former pupils in line with ease and a disregard for pettifogging rules. Rafferty took to him immediately.
He told them he lived alone, having never married. Certainly his ramshackle bungalow was untidy, with half-read books scattered on the furniture and a Cromwellian army in the process of being painted, laid out on the dining table.
‘Great man, Oliver Cromwell. Pity his son was so useless. “Falling down, d**k”,
