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break,” Culpepper told them. “The man you saw last night, Sergeant Strongitharm, is the occupant of Furbelow Hall, that gloomy Jacobean manor house you pass as you drive into the village from the west. He’s lived there for a year or so, alone and never leaving the house during the daytime, like a vampire. The villagers see him wandering around after nightfall, always covered from head to foot in a monk’s robe and cowl. He never speaks to anyone, and nobody has ever seen his face.”
    â€œAre you going to ask this vampire if he saw anything?” asked Oliver. “Armed with garlic and a crucifix, no doubt.”
    â€œI’ve already spoken to him on the telephone. His name’s Snopp. Angus Snopp. And he has a perfectly valid reason for living that way, although it’s also somewhat tragic.”
    â€œMay I take a guess?” Oliver asked.
    â€œGo ahead.”
    â€œIt sounds like he suffers from XP.”
    â€œXP?” Effie echoed.
    â€œXeroderma pigmentosa,” Oliver continued. “It’s a genetic disorder that basically means any ultraviolet light exposure can lead to skin cancers.”
    â€œHow do you know these things?” she muttered.
    â€œMr. Swithin’s absolutely right,” said Culpepper, “although I’d never heard of the condition until Mr. Snopp filled me in this afternoon. People with XP can never go into the sunlight, and can even be affected by the UV light from electric lightbulbs. So a dark, seventeenth-century manor house where he can live by candlelight offers ideal protection. He’s had several outbreaks of skin cancer since his childhood, which is why he hides his scarred face, even in moonlight.”
    â€œA lonely life,” said Effie.
    â€œI get the sense he’s accepted his fate. And if he can afford to buy or even lease that kind of property, his condition clearly hasn’t affected his finances.”
    â€œDid Mr. Snopp notice anything last night?” Oliver asked.
    â€œWell, no sign of Breedlove. Just a couple of cars, tootling along the main road. And a small van, which passed him during the first part of his evening stroll, going rather quickly. He thought he could make out the word ‘Cooper’ on the side, but there’s no local business with that name. Mr. Swithin, you have some knowledge of the locality—have you ever come across a Cooper?”
    Oliver ran through the Coopers in his memory—Gary, Henry, Tommy, Gladys, Alice, Minnie, none of them likely to be driving a van through Synne after dark. He shook his head.
    â€œThen it was probably just passing through,” Culpepper concluded. “Anyway, Breedlove can’t have driven himself to the Shakespeare Race, or the car would still be parked up there.”
    â€œUnless he had a chauffeur,” Oliver murmured. Culpepper didn’t comment.
    They had reached the low wall that surrounded the churchyard, with its honor guard of black poplars and the occasional yew. The church itself came into view through the trees, a late perpendicular nave attached to a squat early perpendicular tower, the crenellated base for a spire that was never built. Two people in black cassocks were coming out of the main door. Culpepper halted, as if to maximize the time before the churchgoers would reach them on the lonely road.
    â€œWhen Phoebe Mallard and I spotted this vampire,” Effie said, “he was just standing there, staring across the Common.”
    â€œYes. Snopp was on his way home by then, after a walk that took an hour or so, his daily exercise. He stopped because he thought he saw something. I wasn’t going to mention it, because I can’t imagine it was relevant to Mr. Breedlove’s death.”
    â€œBut what was it?” Effie persisted. Culpepper assumed a fascination with a stone cherub on an overgrown gravestone.
    â€œHe says he saw naked women running among the bushes.”
    Effie was