“Mum, like, duh, I did go to school. I went into math class and proved that there actually is a highest number, and then I helped Derek in the chemistry lab to make a new type of quick-setting PVC substitute from potato starch and an enzyme readily grown on onions. During the break I figured that Janice Lovegrove was up the duff and probably by Scooter Davis, that Debbie Trubshaw is now putting it about in a big way, and that Sian Johnson’s new hairstyle was pinched from page nine of the Swindon edition of Vogue.”

“Anything regarding Gavin Watkins?” I asked, considering that Friday was destined to murder him on Friday and had yet to have a motive.

“He didn’t offer me any money to see my boobs again.”

“That’s good.”

“No, he said he’d give me five pounds for sex.”

“He did what!?!” I yelled, outraged. “You said no, right? I’m going to report him to the headmaster.”

“ Mu-u-um! Of course I said no. Please don’t do that,” she implored. “I’m already a geek and a teacher’s pet and a brainiac and a smart aleck. I don’t want to be a snitch as well. Besides, I punched him in the eye.”

“You did?”

“Yes. Quite hard. I may even have detached his retina. I left school after that and got back in time to do a test of the defense shield for this bunch of suits.”

“Well, okay,” I said, looking over her shoulder to where they were all milling about. “Who are they anyway?”

“The guys in the raincoats are from the Ministry of Theistic Defense, and the two in tweeds are from Tobin & Scott, the anti-smite tower build contractors. The guy in the lab coat is from Health & Safety, and the three on the left are from the Swindon City Council.”

I noted that one of the women in the last group was Bunty Fairweather. I needed to talk to her about alternative plans for Swindon if the shield didn’t work, but this, I noted, was probably not the time.

“Leave you to it, then.”

But I didn’t leave completely. To watch the test, I stopped the golf cart above the long steps, where the landscaped water cascade tumbled into the lake, one of the many garden features within the eighty-eight-acre estate.

“Every journey begins with the first step,” came a deep voice tinged with wisdom and august pronouncements.

“Hello, Millon,” I said, greeting our ornamental hermit with a friendly nod. “How’s the hermitage?”

“Drafty,” he said simply, “but the discomfort of one man is mere sand upon the beach to the iniquities undertaken by the few to many.”

“You won’t want central heating put in, then?”

“Comfort is the measles of modern man,” he said in a halfhearted manner, “and only through cheerless discomfort will the mind be clear and unfettered.”