At the head of the column of Armed Quick Response Teams (AQRTs) hurtling towards the Middenhall that morning, Inspector Rascombe was not exactly himself. Sleepless nights in the Communications Centre, and the sounds of rifle fire ahead of him, and the urgency of his mission to save the little kiddies from having their throats cut on an altar by the queen of the night in drag, or whatever it was in the frock, had awakened in the Inspector's mind a new vision of himself. He saw himself not as a mere police inspector of the Serious Crime Squad but (and this may have had something to do with a book he had been reading by Alan Clark about the war in Russia, called Barbarossa) as Standartenführer Sigismund Rascombe of the Waffen SS Sturmgruppe AQRT acting under orders from the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht to storm the Middenhall or die in the attempt. It was a most unfortunate delusion to possess or be possessed by. Inspector Rascombe did not lack the fanatical fervour of a Standartenführer if anything he had about as much of it as would have made him a thoroughly obedient SS mass murderer in Russia, though at the lowest possible level of command. None at all would have been better. He'd have made a bad cook or baggage-handler. He lacked any degree of intelligence or capacity for organizing anything other than a major catastrophe.
He not only didn't have the faintest clue what he was leading his men into, he hardly knew where the Middenhall was. He had never seen it, it was no more than a mark on the Ordnance Survey map in his borrowed British Telecom van (here he muddled up Standartenführers with General Montgomery who worked from a sort of caravan) and his Surveillance Units hadn't bothered to try to describe it to him. It was in any case beyond description. (Even Sir John Betjeman hadn't attempted that awesome task and had retired to his hotel room in Stagstead for two days to recover after only looking at it for ten minutes from the bottom of the drive. ) When finally the Inspector did see the great building it was not what he had expected.
The Armed Quick Response Team leaping from their vehicles with rifles weren't what Buffalo Midden had expected either. He had just managed to get his Union Jack to the top of the flagpole when they arrived, and he drew the worst possible conclusion. He thought he had fought off the attack of the Muslim-Zionist-Black-IRA terrorists, but he had been over-optimistic. The sods had come back in force. Buffalo hastily withdrew from the rooftop and hurried to his room to collect his shotgun, a revolver and a fresh supply of cartridges for the Lee Enfield. Then, to distract the bastards below and mislead them as to his eventual firing position, he put a bullet through the front tyre of each of the vehicles, holed the radiator of the lead one and retreated to the second floor where he could command the back and front of the Middenhall by scurrying to the turrets so conveniently equipped with arrow slits on the four corners of the building. Nobody in his, her or its right mind, not even Black Midden at his most megalomanic, had ever supposed those slits had any military purpose. They were mere ornamentation on the hideous building. Buffalo Midden knew better. From his warped point of view they were perfect for picking off the enemy. As the Armed Quick Response marksmen ran for cover he shot three of them, each in a different part of the garden and the anatomy, and then turned his attention on the relief party that was trying to reach the remaining and groaning Surveillance man still alive behind the pig-pen. By the time he had finished there were three wounded policemen behind that pen and he had pinned another eight down behind the rockery. It was time to change tactics.
He hurried down the curved staircase to the ground floor to deal with any terrorist trying to infiltrate the kitchen. There was no need. The cook and the entire domestic staff had already taken shelter in the cellar and the other guests, with the exception of Consuelo, were milling about in the corridors and hall asking each other what was happening. Buffalo Midden added to the confusion by shouting that they were being attacked by IRA terrorists and must fight to the death. Mrs Devizes already had died, though whether she had been fighting or merely peering shortsightedly out of the window when she was shot by a police marksman was a matter of some debate at the inquest. The police marksman was not there to give evidence. His moment of satisfaction had been shortlived. Buffalo, firing from behind the library sofa, took him out through the open window and then scuttled through to the breakfast-room to put paid to another dark-overalled figure who was sneaking round to the back door. Mr Joseph Midden, the retired gynaecologist, had been killed trying to enquire from a wounded policeman what he was doing lying on the drive. His wife's attempts to save him from falling out of the window had been in all likelihood misinterpreted.
As bodies began to accumulate, Inspector Rascombe's military fantasies evaporated. So had most of the Armed Quick Response Team. Those who had survived Buffalo's murderous fire had taken refuge in various secluded parts of the garden waiting to get the bastards in that fucking house, and the Inspector was cowering behind the leading vehicle unable to coordinate the next phase of Operation Kiddlywink because his walkie-talkie was lying out in the open and he had sufficient sense not to try to reach it. It was Constable Markin, on the far side of the lake, who made the call for help. There's a bloody massacre going on here,' he yelled into his mobile. 'Blokes are dropping like flies. For fucksake do something.'
It was a mistake to have shouted. The Dean had just decided it would be prudent to get the Mission children and Miss Turnbird away to a place of greater safety he didn't give a damn what happened to that foul woman in the cat suit, if that's what she was when Phoebe heard Detective Constable Markin's plea for assistance and drew her own conclusions about men in camouflage jackets lying under piles of leaves. They were as wrong as his conclusions about her sex (actually gender was, for once, a better word for Phoebe Turnbird's state of nature sex she hadn't) but, in the circumstances, understandable. Being the brave woman she was, and one who had never in a lifetime of hunting allowed the horse she was riding to refuse a fence or a drystone wall with a ditch on the other side (one or two had tried and had learnt better), Phoebe Turnbird brought all her unrequited passion for men to bear on Detective Constable Markin. Sexual frustration lent weight to her fury.